That is a fair question TBone and I understand the point you are trying to make. I have never heard a needledrop recording in my system, as I have no way to play it, so I can not answer you. I would certainly be open to the experiment.
That is the spirit that routinely lacks in our audio endeavors
. Great to see you open to investigation that loop through transparency testing of digital.
What will it tell me if I hear no difference? That digital is capable of making a perfect copy? I would want to listen to at least three hours worth to see how I feel afterwards. I do hear differences between digital and analog in general, as do most of the people here. So if the needledrops are perfect copies, why do they sound different from live music, just like analog does? There must be other challenges in the whole system chain.
The assumption that analog sounds better than digital, in vast majority of cases, is based not by making an identical copy of an analog recording in digital. But rather, mastering that went into each format. LP requires very specific mastering. As does tape. Digital also does in the way it must, must avoid clipping. These knobs and adjustments obviously make a huge difference and to the extent we are not allowed to have digital that is copies of analog in commercial recordings, most of the time we are right to develop a preference for one or the other format.
Where it gets tricky is in this context. That we assume that difference is not there, i.e. we are talking about a digital copy of an analog recording, yet we insist that there must still be a technical difference that results in audible fidelity that we can readily hear. This is not a situation that is presented often to analog devotees. They either have not heard this case, or it represents a small bit of their total experience. So the notion that analog is superior is based on very small to non-existent sample point. But let's say there is a difference heard here. There are two explanations:
1. That everything we know about audio engineering and psychoacoustics remains wrong. That we don't read Zwicker and Fastl book,
Psychoacoustics
Facts and Models (
http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783540231592) on that topic but some sensational book written for the general public as Myles suggested to me. That the direct science is not applicable but what we like to think does.
My suggestion on this is to sit back in a quiet moment when noone is looking
, and for a moment consider how true these exceptions can be in other fields and to what extent we are willing to believe them.
2. That there is no difference to speak of and that we have created this illusion in our imagination. This is the explanation of science. Because we rely on the cognitive part of our brain to interpret music, what we think we hear is very different than what is played. As I explained earlier, you can hear a piano while waiting on the line on your phone and still recognize it, and imagine it to be the real thing. Extreme lack of fidelity will do nothing to stop you from thinking of the first time you heard that track.
My audiophile life has been made up of constantly attempting to prove what I think I know to be right. I don't take it for granted that I am. I have been proven wrong catastrophically too many times to think I have "figured it out." I can't tell you how many times I thought I was testing A against B, declaring one the winner, only to learn that A and B were the same! I mean what do you do the third and fifth time this happens? Still cry out to "trust your ear?" Which person would you trust if he lied to you over and over again? Yet we choose to either trust here, or actually avoid even knowing the answer at the end.
The power of mind to inject fidelity, and to take it away is huge. If I were to apply scale to it, I say +- 30% of the fidelity can be changed by just imagining it to be so. In the above cases where I thought A and B were different but in reality were identical, I would do another test which is to repeat the exercise but this time, tell myself to attempt to hear the difference again. You know, seeing if that "inner detail" that I thought was there, was really there. And in every case, I can hear it even when I have full knowledge that it is impossible for it to exist!
I can then run the test a third time, imagine that the difference is not there, that it can't be there because A and B are the same, and have the difference vanish!
Here is an observation of something I think everyone has had. Have you ever played the identical piece of music on your system one day and thought it didn't sound right, even though it always had before? I have had this happen many times. I immediately think of this and that to be wrong. But once I rule them all out, I go back and listen, imagine the fidelity that I thought I had and it all comes back!
The plasticity that Myles talked about then exists, not with respect to the brain appreciating analog fidelity more than digital. But in the vivid imagination the bring provides to be the last component in the audio chain. It takes many extraneous factors and amplifies them in one or the other direction to create the ultimate experience. We have to assign weight to this and so substantially or else, we cannot follow a conclusion of "if A, therefore B." For that to be true, there only has to be one "A," not another variable that has a lot more magnitude.
Here are some more questions for you: if I did the experiment and heard a difference, does that say more about the hardware or the software used for the experiment? Would one hear a difference if the same neeledrop recording were played on two different digital sources? I presume one would. Which is correct? The one that sounds more like the straight analog?
The protocol is key. You must, must arrange for the test to be such that your current knowledge of which is better, does not enter the equation. Because if you do, per above, it is trivial to imagine, and proceed to "hear" analog sounding better. If you do the test that way, and repeat it enough to have statistical value (see my article here:
http://www.madronadigital.com/Library/High Resolution Audio/Statistics of ABX Testing.html), then I am confident you will fail in hearing a difference.
We have a facsimile of this test online. The test is running audio through an A/D and D/A converter on a cheap soundblaster PC card many times and asking if there is a difference. Surely if something bad is going to happen with digital, that loop through time and time again should result in horrendous distortion. Yet, to my knowledge only a handful of us have managed to pick out the small degradation that exists:
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...sion-of-ABX-results-of-Winer-s-Loopback-files
Take a listen to the files blind. Don't have to report back to any of us. If that difference can't be heard, when we know objectively it can, then I say that acuity we say exists when hearing a far more subtle version of digitizing an LP with far better quality, can't possibly be more than something in our imagination. Even as a guy who has passed Ethan's test, I have to submit that it does make a strong point in this regard.
A mirror does a pretty good job of reflecting back or copying what is in front of it. But there is something not quite right about the image, isn't there?
True. But by the same token, analog can be a dirty hubcap that you are looking through yet we somehow think that all of that dirt and grime, adds realism to the image, not realizing that we are not looking at the identical image of ourselves into each scenario
.
