artee wrote: > An interesting result. It appears that the tester can reliably identify > a difference, but of what - given that the 24/192 hi-res was upsampled > from the 16/44 lo-res. Full marks to the tester for doing an ABX and > publishing the results, though.
Yes, indeed a very interesting result and great that he took the time to run the ABX. As you suggest, we have to be careful what the result actually means of course. Remembering that this is 16/44 played back natively by the RME Babyface vs. a 24/192 -upsample- using SoundForge 10. -The source content is the same so there is no actual real detail being added or subtracted like an ABX of an original 24/192 vs. a downsample.- So basically, the ABX demonstrates that for the Babyface, feeding 24/192 data seems to result in a sound the tester prefers and can differentiate compared to essentially the same data fed as 16/44. Alternatively, maybe the SoundForge upsampling algorithm results in a better sound. We don't know which of the above is closer to the truth due to more than 1 variable being manipulated in the experiment - different hardware playback modes, effect of specific software upsampling. Also, we do not know if other variables may be affecting the blind test - are there any visual cues when hi-res data is being fed to the device? Does the device "click" or emit some unique signature with samplerate change? Do we know if native 16/44 playback results in the exact same volume output as when fed 24/192? Ultimately, nice post though we really have to think about just how generalizable the findings may be since we're not sure of the variables that could bias the result like those above... It is good to read about the subjective quality the tester used to differentiate though. Archimago's Musings: (archimago.blogspot.com) A 'more objective' audiophile blog. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Archimago's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2207 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96407 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
