I’ve had a couple of light working from home days. Not terribly productive, but more useful than laying around waiting to feel better…
I had a taste of a new 17yo peated Highland malt last night. Thought it was possibly the worst expensive whisky I’ve ever tasted - a peculiarly cloying vanilla/maple sweetness, no peat and not even a hint of smoke. It turns out my taste buds are all out of whack, so there’ll be no more whisky until they’re back to normal!
@Graeme_Finlayson all the best, get well soon. If whisky does not taste anymore, then you are really sick.
This is the video from Uncle Paul about AirLens. WOW! It is a streamer. It uses Roon! If I listen to him, streaming has just been invented. It is a brand new technology. Nobody ever heard from streaming before.
Come on Uncle Paul. Tell us something new. I started to use streaming 20 years ago. Or even more?
Galvanic isolation is standard in high quality streamers and DACs today. What’s the point?
But I also must admit, his marketing is brilliant. He would even sell a freezer to an Inuit.
Interesting video along with measurements https://youtu.be/ZCFvIzzMqfk?si=gfwoK0H_LN7W4KtM
And there is also a reply from UpTone at: EtherREGEN: The long development thread. [Some Gen2 dev. pics and update starting on page 92.] - Page 95 - UpTone Audio (Sponsored) - Audiophile Style
Yes, the taste for me was the big reason I knew what was hitting me. I hope that recovers soon. A Scotsman who cannot enjoy his scotch is a sad day.
Ah, good ole Hans Beekhuyzen measuring stuff in the RF spectrum (phase noise/jitter at the streamer/DAC master clock input pin) and then claiming unsubstantiated subjective audible differences based on his measurements. People talk about “phase noise” like it’s some kind of magic voodoo. It’s just clock variation, i.e. jitter, and any half-way decent DAC deals with jitter without producing any analogue artifacts that are noabove the threshold of hearing.
The place to look for differences is the analogue output of the DAC. Time and again, scientifically and objectively conducted measurements fail to show any differences at the DAC output due to the EtherREGEN, or any other fancy “audiophile” network hardware.
A whole load of marketing and pseudo-sciency testiculating going on there from Alex Crespi
None of these claims have ever been substantiated by proper measurements.
John Swenson has still to produce any measurements demonstrating changes at a DAC’s analogue output due to the EtherREGEN and its claimed benefits on ethernet clock timing.
Amir at Audio Science Review failed to find any measreable differences at a DAC’s output due to the EtherREGEN.
If there are no measured differences, then there are no audible differences and the manufacturer’s claims about the product are pure snake-oil.
That’s all I have to say on the subject.
I’m deliberately trying to avoid these types of discussions as they perpetually go round and round in the same circles.
And in any case, I have a new pair of speakers to listen to…
Ok, that sounds more like a tired construction worker than a curious and enthousiast scientist to me. I’m sure you mean something else 
.
What @Graeme_Finlayson says sounds like proper science to me. I’m sure he meant exactly that. Science busts myths, it doesn’t create them. If you disagree with the fact that we can measure far more accurately than we can hear, prove it. That’s the only way to earn my curiosity.
To me that sounds like proper engineering, not science. Engineering done with the measurement tools that are available now. To say that there will be no more measurement-discoveries in the future is not what I call scientific. You can’t prove the opposite but time will tell. To say that something does not exist because we don’t have a measurement tool for it and/or all the necessary tools are already developed and there will be no more ways to measure how we perceive sound in the future is not what I expect to hear from a young promising scientist but maybe from an engineer, salesman or technician.
The best scientists are never sure about something and will never say things like something doesn’t exist because we can’t measure it right now.
Of course, nothing in life is certain. Every statement we make about everything is qualified, either explicitly or implicitly. Often implicitly, because otherwise communication would be too cumbersome. When a scientist says something like, “If the differences can’t be measured, they can’t be heard,” he’s really saying “This area of physics and psychoacoustics seems to be really well-explored and stable, and if our modern measuring devices can’t discern a difference, it seems wildly unlikely to me that anyone will be able to hear anything other than an imagined difference.”
See how cumbersome that is? But that’s what he’s really saying, to those who understand what he’s talking about.
I don’t think there can be proper engineering without science.
Nobody says that. What scientists say is that nothing is acceptable without proof. And you don’t need to wait for future discoveries BTW; you should be able to prove today that ears can beat current measurements with blind listening tests. I won’t hold my breath.
Ok that is the part where I don’t agree.
Interesting. It seems pretty stable and well-explored to me as well. Why do you think differently? What are the breakthroughs and fundamental re-assessments of the past twenty years in this space? What do you think is going to happen?
I’m sure you have a good reason for that and perhaps you don’t really want to go into it. But at the end of the day, listening tests are the final arbiter. Without them, we’re just flying high into the theoretical. My challenge still stands: show with a properly conducted listening test that ears can beat audio analyzers.
Audio analysers with FFT (eg the APx555B) can now plumb the measurement depths a good 50 to 60 dB below the threshold of human hearing.
2 audio waveforms can be captured, time-aligned and compared via inversion to produce a complete null. This is a real acid test of measured differences. If this shows no difference between two pieces of equipment, then I’m 100% convinced there really is no difference, audible or otherwise.
For loudspeaker measurements, we now have the Klippel system - arguably the most advanced measurement system in existence.
Measurement devices far surpass human hearing capability.
I did the REW measurements and adjustments for my new speakers yesterday evening. With an old Dell laptop, REW, a Focusrite 2i2, and a humble Dayton Audio EMM-6 microphone, REW confirmed my left and right speaker placement to within < 1 mm of the listening position via time delays in the sub-microsecond range. Human ears can’t even come close to detecting these sorts of differences.
Acoustics measurements, hearing and psychoacoustics are very well understood and very well documented. There’s been nothing new in a good number of years. Have a read of some of the stuff written by Toole, Olson, Linkwitz et al. and some of the publishings by the AES. I think we can measure all of the things we need to measure. Just the accuracy and precision by which we can measure will improve, but still, we are already way beyond the capability of human hearing.
Flattery will get you everywhere! A young, promising scientist I am not. I’m into my 50s now. And there’s less days in front of the horse than riding in the back of this cart.
I have more than 3 decades of science and engineering experience across a wide range of industries and I try to keep track of new technologies.
In reality, there hasn’t been a great deal of really groundbreaking, new stuff of late, rather a refinement of the existing.
I keep an open mind, but I’m very skeptical of people claiming that they can hear differences that can’t yet be measured. The burden of proof rests with them.
Thanks for all the replies. I know a lot of the acoustic stuff is scientifically discovered before the 80’s. My Yamaha speakers are from the 70-s and my Threshold amp from the 80-s and I also think “what the hell have they been doing these last years”. The developments are up to boutique companies and they will not likely tell is what they found, even if it is not much. What are they thinking at Ansuz or Antipodes? I have always been very sceptical until I heard the difference, more than just once. Are these differences measurable? Some manufacturer showed Hans (in the video) that there is a work around. That is up to the scientists to make better measurement tools but first is to be known what exactly to measure. That is not up to the audiophile who is just listening to music, but to the manufacturer who is always struggling what to tell and not to reveal about the findings.
This argument simply doesn’t hold water because the engineers who make these “boutique” devices can only use the technologies and science that are currently available.
Unless you’re suggesting that they stumbled upon the infinite improbability drive? But then, if they had, controlled listening tests would reveal this.
I think audiophiles just mean good because they also want other people to enjoy better sound. There are even audiophile-engineers who explain what is going on, like Hans van Beekhuyzen. There are also engineers who first want to see proof of controlled listening tests by scientists before they hear for themselves. I have been a member of these 3 groups. I now blame the audio-industry in general for making it an elite business. To attend an audio show, one now has to buy tickets in advance. For every demo you have to make a reservation. There are hardly possibilities to listen to new audio stuff and compare.
I don’t know what Hans is or what groups he’s part of, but what he’s saying in his videos is neither engineering nor science.
On his website, he describes himself as a techniekjournalist. He’s a journalist, not an engineer, and this is evident when hearing some of his claims–or at least it is to engineers.