two hi rez vs redbook train wrecks in progress
Reply #176 – 2014-11-13 03:05:53
I would be cautious about simple abx results from someone making money with audio gear and hanging around in a dedicated forum. I don't know what a dedicated forum is. Do you mean WBF? If so, what is dedicated about it? The forum is open to all and indeed both Steven (krabapple here and sasully on WBF) and Arny were quite active there as with AVS Forum. As an administrator, I make no admin decisions when I am engaged in a discussion with anyone so everyone was on equal footing. And what sales of audio gear? What do you think was offered for sale and by whom? For example Arny is asking uncomfortable question about some claims at a well known forum of that kind. What are those uncomfortable questions? I am happy to address them here and now.Alone for that i can imagine someone does some fake foobar abx to make Arny shut up (no pun intended ) Someone might. Maybe a lot of people. But not me. Winning some argument against Arny is not worth soiling my personal reputation. I post under my real name and credentials. Would you mortgage that if you were me just to win an argument online? I hope you would not. So not sure why you are applying a different standard to me.Just take the files to test, fill one with silence, do abx, impress the world. And if you were the only one with a positive result, what then? You would be found out, not? Fortunately in this situation, that is not what I did. And a number of people passed the same test. A number of them only did so when they saw my positive results. That is a key point. People tend to not take these tests seriously. They are so convinced that they are unpassable that they take a quick listen, quickly give up and say there is no difference. In other words, no critical listening ability is applied. And who finds running ABX tests fun to go through it regardless? Now, give a bunch of type A online forum males the motivation to match my results and all kinds of folks come out of woodwork . Mzil spends a "grueling hour" to come up with a "tell." Would he have spent a second of that without me passing it? Nope. I congratulated him for taking the first step in becoming a critical listener and he got infuriated at me. You seem to be a good judge of these personal situations. Can you explain his reaction to me 'cause I don't get it. He rather be known as the person who found a cheat in the test than having better than average ability to detect small differences. We are talking about small differences. Training and skill matter and matter a lot. Most people have hardly ever participated in such tests or if they have, has not been under these circumstances. I think we are entering a new era in these discussion. What has developed is real. We can pass these supposed impossible ABX tests such as Arny's (I think he said in 14 years no one had passed his test including the one where he down sampled to 32 Khz!). You want to think it is tricks, games and cheating, by all means do. I go by objective data and I say from here on, you better be afraid, really afraid to challenge people to pass an ABX test. They can and will put you on a defensive as to go to another forum and ask for help. It can happen. These simple foobar abx like we use here together with mostly known members should not be taken to serious elsewhere. Please forgive me for putting it this way but that would be putting one's head in the sand. The data is concrete. We passed ABX double blind tests. We even passed them by the guy who said has invented ABX testing (?). We passed them when he said no one could over many years. No, we didn't prove high resolution sounds better. What we did prove beyond any doubt is that we don't all listen equally. I challenge people to go and take the test. See if you can match our scores. Go ahead and even use Mzil's cheat if you like. I am confident even then most people won't be able to pass the test. The above is proven and we can prove it as many times as you like.