Audio Science Review Review

Discussion in 'Audio Science' started by purr1n, Aug 30, 2020.

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  1. Mont789

    Mont789 Acquaintance

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  2. dmckean44

    dmckean44 In a Sherwood S6040CP relationship

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    Well, 90 to 100db range is safe in short spurts, like maybe an album side at 90db or less than the length of a song at 100db. Greater than 105db will always do damage though and if he's measuring using A or C weighting or any other curve, 100db might actually be 110db or more in the bass region.
     
  3. robot zombie

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    Thanks for this. That is pretty fascinating. Something I've always wondered about. I was thinking that if you feel bass in your body, it must also rattle your ears, even if you can't hear it subjectively. Hard to imagine that has NO effect. I mean, if a subwoofer can make a sliver of paper rattle... you know?

    I'll be the first to admit that I know far less than I'd like about this stuff. But amir really lost me when he started talking about subjective loudness. If you are getting assfucked by a broomhandle, does the fact that you don't feel major pain (or maybe you're so used to it that it feels good) also alleviate the sphincter of tearing and splinters? It struck me as a deflection, but I couldn't pinpoint it because he went all shock-and-awe with technical meanderings that I wasn't read-up on. I just *knew* it was off and not much more.

    His explanation for his use of "imaging" was similar for me. You don't have to know what he's talking about much at all to recognize that he's not describing what anybody ever means when they mention imaging. To get all high-and-mighty about some more obscure definition of it that absolutely nobody would ever think to consider in the usual context is meta-level pedantry AFAIC. But in his own weird way he is admitting that his test does not account for imaging as it is more commonly described and valued. Coulda just pointed that out and showed he understood why that was an issue for people.

    Once you see the patterns in how he explains things, you don't even need to be a know-it-all to recognize that he's playing a game. He'll just pull whatever technicality he can dig out of his ass to hold over you, as though YOU are the one nitpicking, when really it is him who is always leaning on myopically specialized knowledge to try and prove his points.

    It just seems much easier to just apologize and essentially say "I should have clarified better. I didn't mean to claim what I ultimately did, and I can see why ___ is important." It's very simple. You can point out what you were actually referring to without using more obscure technicalities to frame it like the criticism doesn't matter and people will generally accept that. They may even say "Huh, I didn't know about that but it is interesting. Thank you!" The king of the hill shit truly benefits nobody and only serves to muddle conversations on what were once simple matters. He talks like an engineer, but he doesn't build anything.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2020
  4. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Subjective loudness is easy. It depends on how deaf we are already. My wife always tells me turn the music down; I say that I can't hear it if I do. Subjective loudness. She didn't deafen herself.
     
  5. Mont789

    Mont789 Acquaintance

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    He seems to have no clue that damage can still happen even on frequencies your deaf to. It cringy how dumb he sounds on Reddit and runs of crying "Reddit toxic" when downvoted. Like when he got laughed out of Hydrogen Audio or AVS forums.
     
  6. Tekker

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  7. Yethal

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    "There are actual, science-based thresholds on what is and isn't audible. That little line at -120dB tends to be the hard limit at where things become simply impossible to hear. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-thresholds-of-amp-and-dac-measurements.5734/"

    Yet that doesn't stop them from shitting on gear that exhibits distortion at that level.
     
  8. Baten

    Baten Friend

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    I admire the effort but commenting all that on an Audioquest jitterbug thread is one sad hill to die/fight on.
     
  9. Tekker

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    Point is, there are users there that deny USB noise, so I’m trolling those users. I mean I know I won’t get anything through their head, but atleast mutiple users reply with serious intentions to me on there, so my boredom is lessened for the time being.
     
  10. Tekker

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    LOL, I’ve been banned for the following reason: You had an opportunity to learn what audio is really about but wanted to pass..

    Someone apparently knew I was announcing my trolling here. The fact that most of the users thought I was serious with my absurd absolute objective statements, just shows that they really are that stuck up.
     
  11. robot zombie

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    They watch this thread. Have since it was discovered by them. Seems a few there watch out for everything said about them on other popular platforms. Which is funny because I don't think too many here are even interested in talking to anyone there, period.
     
  12. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Honestly, this is probably flattering to them but I go out of my way to avoid the place and feel mild disgust when I do click some random hyperlink and end up there. Trolling can be fun I suppose but it gets to feel needlessly puerile after a while.

    I'd be willing to have a conversation with most anyone about how things sound relative to other things and how measurements are revealing of certain aspects of the experience of sound, but when people start going full militant objectivist or subjectivist I begin to lose interest.
     
  13. Ziva

    Ziva Friend

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    Not sure how one can read this thread - even one @atomicbob post in it - and go back.

    'How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?‘
     
  14. Tekker

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    Yeah I was just typing “Audioquest Jitterbug” on Google a few hours ago cus I was bored, and so the ASR thread came up.

    I read the most recent posts, and they were very recent, multiple users were commenting the same day still.

    So I saw a comment where a guy said that the Jitterbug does nothing to the digital data, and I corrected him by saying that that is actually not what it was designed for, rather it was designed for RF/EMI noise transmitted through USB.

    And well, I got the typical objectivists comments back saying “USB noise is inaudible through DACs, digital only”, and I thought “Screw being serious, let’s play their own logic x1000”
     
  15. robot zombie

    robot zombie Friend

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    A surprising number of people doubt USB noise lol. I envy them. My computer talks to me through my speakers without an Eitr in the chain.

    Worth noting - lil OT here... those filter dongles don't work for me. Not even Wyrd works, and that's supposed to separate the power side completely. Wherever the interference comes from, it goes straight into the output section of most DACs I've ever plugged in. The DAC works, it plays music and sounds like it's supposed to. There's just those extra noises on top of it all, almost like coil whine translated into an audio signal. "Lifting" the ground loop doesn't help. I have tried everything that's supposed to work, and spent much more time trying to explain to people that yes, I understand what I'm supposed to do and no, it still doesn't help.

    I'm not sure exactly what happens but safe to say it's got nothing to do with the digital side! It's interference that carries through the analog parts of the circuits, while the DAC continues to output what it's supposed to, completely unaffected. I spliced-off the ground on a USB cable and that killed the noise, when it worked. The rest of the time, it was dropout city. It seems like if the USB bus itself isn't adequately isolated, you can't fully get around it unless you completely decouple the USB crudline from the DAC, such as by running it into another digital source that doesn't have the ability pass anything extra from the raw USB signal over to the output side. Or properly isolated pro DAC. Take your pick. I use an Eitr and run SPDIF, and that solves the problem. Perhaps SPDIF is just naturally isolated from the source.

    Can't for the life of me figure out why that is. And I've tried just about everything. A good majority of people I've asked think I'm crazy or assume I'm talking about something else. For me it's got nothing to do with belief. If you have problems with USB noise, you KNOW. Like, it is very easy to verify and in fact even demonstrate. It sounds a lot like what you get putting an old cell phone too close to the TV. Maybe I should take some video of me plugging it in lol, because it should not be hard to understand that a DAC still has an analog output section that can be vulnerable to the same interference as any other analog circuitry.
     
  16. fastfwd

    fastfwd Friend

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    Wyrd is a powered hub, and its power supply is cleaner than a typical consumer hub's, but it won't isolate your source from your DAC. For that, you need transformers, or maybe transformers plus optoisolators.

    I don't know whether galvanic isolation will solve your problem. But if you want to try, this thing says it will isolate source from DAC (if the interface is either 1.5Mbps low speed or 12Mbps full speed):


    If you need 480Mbps high speed or 5Gbps super speed, you have to pay more for something like this:

     
  17. robot zombie

    robot zombie Friend

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    Appreciate it, but I've tried those things already. Only thing that's ever worked is swapping the motherboard or going toslink. That or the Eitr, which fortunately is working well.

    I figured it was an isolation issue, assumed the reason higher-end DACs aren't so susceptible is simply due to better isolation on the outputs, where even a lot of midrange stuff seems to skimp. It's intertwined with the USB signal somehow, so that whatever active circuitry that gets touched at all gets bitten.
     
  18. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Hey, some people believe we actually landed on the moon in 1969. How is that possible when Elon Musk, the premier scientist of our modern times, can't even get a rocket to land safely?

    (because I sometimes forget tone doesn't translate to text, I am going to point out that this is an exercise in absurd humour. EDIT: that considered, there are parallels to be drawn in how the moon landing has evidence to ratify it and yet there remain deniers)

    Maybe they genuinely can't hear USB noise, who knows. It'd certainly explain several other stances presented, but as far as I'm concerned Schiit's USB Gen5 (and apparently Unison) is... the shit, and iFi's USB sanitation alone makes for a compelling reason to look into their gear, esp if main source is kinda old laptops like what I'm running. I'm on a Fulla 2 now straight out of USB and I'm already planning to save up for a Pi2AES when I can afford it now that I don't have either USB de-crapifier (Bifrost MB, Micro iDSD) on hand; while the Fulla still sounds great for what it is, my shoddy USB likely isn't doing the overall rig much good especially with sensitive 'phones like the HP-3 that seem to pick up even the tiniest hint of noise.
     
    Last edited: Dec 25, 2020
  19. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    I've never heard USB noise. I've never had any problem with USB.

    But I am not going to deny that wires between stuff and stuff can carry problems. Can even act as aerials for problems.

    Maybe some ASR people have a sincere wish to reduce the audiophool paranoia. Like Computer-Audiophile folk have an interest in increasing it. But audiophoolery is not best-countered by brick-wall denial of all possibilities.

    Over my audio-online-discussion years, the thing that used to cause the most steam to shriek out of my ears used to be the network-cable stuff. Always spouted by people with absolutely zero knowledge of how networking works. Even there, though, I was occasionally forced pause and think, "This person is hearing something. It may be completely unrelated to what they think it is, but that does not mean they are not hearing something." one percent: the rest were just full of bullshit.
     
  20. Degru

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    The Diana review is.. interesting. The measurements have clearly bad seal, as indicated by the peak and sharp rolloff below 50hz (-10db at 30hz), and lots of distortion in the bass (and treble too).

    He later admits that he got measurements that did seal, but did not use them because he preferred the equalization that he arrived on based on the badly sealed measurements.

    So, his excuse for incorrect testing methodology and deriving incorrect performance evaluation from it is... he likes stronger bass boost EQ.

    We can therefore conclude that his headphone reviews do not prioritize objective accuracy whatsoever, and are simply a means for him to create an EQ that he enjoys.
     
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