Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz (Read 11288 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #25
Maybe the differences are from the tube amp's IM as Wombat stated so you may want to remove or change it to something else as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comment...s_out_a/cuv8xf5
Quote
Some additional data is outside of human hearing range, but high frequency distortion is reduced at higher samplerates. Listening for this distortion is where i was able to pick out the differences.


In case of IM it is actually the opposite. The "192kHz considered harmful" section in this article explained the effect with sample audio files for you to try.
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #26
I'm a little concerned that we're coming up with excuses why this test passed, when we feel it should not have passed.


Seemingly a valid point - consistently invoking ad hoc hypotheses, that is denialism 101. But the reservations made here are issues well-known beforehand, that's a big difference. (Of course the typical antiscience-denialism site [insert here anti-vaccination/young earth-creationism/climate change denial/tobacco isn't harmful/six million lies] will have its own "well-known" reservation readymade too, but I suppose that a scientist from outer space would be able to ABX out hydrogenaudio from those at about 15 out of 16 anyway. Well they would likely look for conspiracy theories rather than adhoc-ness ... oh, whatever.)
Part of the problem is that we have no falsification test, and then something that is only a valid (up to chance outside the confidence interval) verification test if done right. That of course is an improvement over a verification test which is known to lead to false positives because the (sighted) environment is inherently flawed - those who fail to see the problem with that setup, will never need to resort to ad hoc hypotheses over the flaw anyway.


Now. If one can believe the arguments that ultrasound could induce harmful distortion (edit: bennetng beat me to it), why should anyone ever be surprised to see 88.2 ABXed from 44.1 even if the latter is upsampled to avoid switching issues?

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #27
I'm a little concerned that we're coming up with excuses why this test passed, when we feel it should not have passed.

That is the usual audiophile suspicion. One gets used to it.

The actual problem is that it isn't very useful to know that there was an audible difference. You also need to know why there was an audible difference, otherwise you can't reach a conclusion, or find an explanation. And often, you can't confidently say that your test setup was good, when you have no idea why you got the result you got. This sort of problem is common in science. You conduct an experiment, you have some idea what the result ought to be, and the experiment is expected to confirm it. If it doesn't, and the results are surprising, that is not treated as a disproof of your hypothesis. It is something that needs a proper explanation, and the explanation could well be a flaw in the experiment. Only when you can't find one, and an independent experiment yields a similar result, you're on to something new. It is still not disproving anything, it is something that appears to contradict established knowledge and lacks a proper explanation. Before letting go of established knowledge, the next step would be to try finding an appropriate explanation, which removes such contradictions, and doesn't create even more of them.

For an example, look at the highly publicised experiment at CERN a couple of years ago, where it seemed for a while that they had broken the speed of light barrier, only to find out after a while that they had a flaw in an optical connection somewhere in their setup. There were people who said right from the start that they suspect a flaw somewhere, and that they wouldn't bet on the result to hold up. You could have told them the same: That they are seeking excuses for an unwanted result.

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #28
May I add my $0.02 to that.

I'm not a complete newbie when it comes to ABX testing, and yet I made mistakes in the past that lead to positive results.
Now if given the benefit of the doubt (no cheating, no lucky guesses) such a test result simply means that there most likely was an audible difference. But sometimes after recreating the test files properly and minimizing uncontrolled variables this difference disappeared.

So I think it is only fair to try to find out more details about this particular test, try to minimize uncontrolled variables until we're ideally just left with what we really want to test and try to reproduce the results.

This has nothing to do with excuses.
"I hear it when I see it."

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #29
I tried the impulse test and couldn't hear anything.  I'll try ABXing the 44.1 upsampled back to 88.2 this weekend when I've had some rest, though an initial listen isn't promising, leading me to think that there's some sort of samplerate-specific filtering going on in the DAC, which given that it's an ES9018K2M is quite possible.

I'm using the DSD output only for DSD files though, PCM is not converted and instead played back 'native', though the 9018 is still a sigma-delta DAC so ultimately everything is getting converted anyway.

Thanks for the short report. If you won't be able to tell the 88.2 reresampled music we may have the second person in a short time proving different DAC sound at 44.1 against higher samplerates.
I really wonder if this comes from attempts of the DAC manufactors to implement funky filters the audience asks for or purposely preventing to risk a bad reputation if it doesn't clearly sounds better with higher rates.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #30
If some DACs do weird extra things for different sample rates, shouldn't it be easier to just measure it, instead of doing fragile listening tests?

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #31
and try to reproduce the results.


Of course, there will always be some false positives reported by chance, even without any technical flaws. Trying to reproduce would then give another false positive in one case in twenty as well (or whatever your p-value threshold dictates).

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #32
Yes, of course, statistically another case can be made to be careful but I didn't want to go there.
"I hear it when I see it."

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #33
Regarding the sample rate dependent sound quality issue, a famous example is Creative 10kx soundcards (Live/Audigy) having very different measured results in 44k vs 48k.

Another not so famous example is Asus Xonar D2 (the first Xonar). The measurements in ixbt and even the official Asus pdf report showed obviously more inferior performance in 44k, even though it is unlikely to be audible.
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/multimedia/asus-d2.html

See page 14-15
http://audio.rightmark.org/downloads/Xonar...stGuide_V12.pdf

The result of Xonar D2 in 44k is strange because unlike Creative's cards, Xonar D2 is supposed to support 44.1/88.2/176.4k clocks natively, as shown in the specs
https://www.asus.com/Sound-Cards/Xonar_D2PM/specifications/

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #34
I mostly think about options like Slow Roll-Off filters that a modern DAC chip has to have. It fights the terrific ringing! These filters can damp highs a lot. People with good hf hearing may clearly hear that while they never will know what that nasty ringing is all about.
The roll-off doesn't matter with high samplerates.
The DAC chip used in this test is capable of this Slow filter.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!


Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #36
Nasty, terrific ringing.  Some here might not know that you're being sarcastic.

Sorry, i can't help myself when touching that topic.
Creating the fear of ringing was surely one of the best marketing strategies in audio business ever. It created the need for so many solutions against it that can only be described as terrific. Only dsd can rescue us!
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!


 

Successful ABX of 88.2 kHz vs 44.1 kHz

Reply #38
Thanks for the link. This is again a nice one from Archimago. I should gave remembered that myself.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!