Tim, I'm talking about the fact that being in an unnatural acoustic space (headphones) our mind is subconciously busy constantly trying to make sense of it & as a result we miss the musical cues that we can easily pickk up when we are not so pre-occupied with trying to make sense of this acoustic space (speakers + room). It's a question of which is easier to decipher, they both have the same signals but one is presented mpre naturally.
You really are just falling back on the old worn out mantra - if it can be heard then it can be measured - why not dispense with the headphones & just measure?
While Vincent’s point about thread drift is well-taken, I’m going to try one more time for clarity because you and I and micro seem to be having at least two different conversations. I’m not trying to “make sense of the acoustic space” of headphones and I doubt anyone is. We readily understand that it’s different and we rapidly adapt as we move from room to room to car to ear buds to reference headphones. And I’m not talking about measurement. If I were, and you and micro were willing to accept measurements, this discussion would already be over. I don’t speak for Amir, but I think all we’re talking about, as it relates to computer audio and what is important therein, is listening for audible differences.
Let me exemplify to see if that helps:
Let’s say we have two DACs -- yours and Benchmark’s. We believe, from our casual, subjective listening, that yours has a quieter background and resolves high frequency attack transients faster and better. We think we hear that advantage manifesting itself, in our listening room, as better, more subtle dynamics, a greater sense of depth, and as more precise imaging, and a more palpable presentation of voice/instrument positioning in front of us. We’re pretty sure this is what we hear, but it’s subtle, and we want to verify that there is a difference there, and that we can identify it, even when we can’t see which DAC is playing. To give ourselves every chance of identifying a difference, we’d like to remove any room effects that might dull the differences; therefore headphones. Bear with me. I know I’m asking you to suspend your prejudice against headphones and pretend for a moment that you believe in blind listening tests.
You get ahold of a highly resolving headphone rig and test with the same recordings you heard the differences on in the first place. You don't hear exactly the same thing, of course, because you don’t have exactly the same listening space. In this case the stage is wrapped around the front of your head, not laid out in front of you in a plane. And it is very quiet in there, allowing you to hear subtleties you may only hear through speakers at high volume in an anechoic chamber. Instead of resulting in a greater sense of depth – a nice perception, indeed – that “depth” is a bit more easily identified as subtle variations in volume and the mix of ambient vs. more direct sound. And instead of hearing the instruments and voices more clearly positioned in the plane in front of you, that plane wraps around you, as if you, the listener, are at the center of a half circle being created by the band.
Yes, it is different, but you still hear that your DAC has a blacker background and better resolution of attack transients. You’re not having any trouble adapting to the new “space” because, while it is different, as a human you adapt to radically different acoustic spaces all the time. And best of all, you can differentiate between the samples quite well, perhaps partially because you’re listening for differences in complete quiet isolation. You and all of your test subjects can differentiate between the two DACs more than 90% of the time, and better yet, they
prefer your DAC over the Benchmark by 93%!
Your marketing department is thrilled as they can now publish ads on audiophile sites all over the internet saying that your DAC beat Benchmark’s in blind listening tests.
Oh, and by the way, micro? Nobody said headphone listening is "the ultimate and only tool to evaluate computer audio sound quality." Except for you, just now. We're just arguing that it's valid. Back to your normally scheduled programming. I’ve done all I can do here.
Tim
