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From: ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: Re: A-B CD used wrong speakers!!
Message-ID: <3565@alice.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Apr-85 10:50:07 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.3565
Posted: Sat Apr 13 10:50:07 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Apr-85 06:49:40 EST
References: <2518@hplabsc.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 47

>     Although I strongly believe that no normal person can hear the differ-
> ence between the two sampling techniques, I could never use BOSE speakers
> for any serious testing of other audio equipment. 
>     They are notorious for IM distortion, and low bass distortion. They
> lack imaging quality which would be essential if looking for high freq-
> uency phase distortion from sharp cutoff filters. BOSE 901's are essen-
> tially a "gimmic" speaker that I would not even rank with other HI FI
> equipment.

>                      GEORGE

We couldn't hear any difference over headphones, either.

More seriously, you are making what is actually an important point
about any experiment in which no difference was found between two
situations: maybe a difference might have appeared under other
conditions.

This is true.  To conclude that it is impossible to hear any
difference between 16bit/analog filter and 14 bit/4x oversampling,
it would be necessary to conduct an unbounded number of experiments,
using all possible combinations of amplifiers, speakers, listening
rooms, listeners, and cats.

This, of course, we cannot do.

So we do the next best thing: we report the conditions of the
experiment as accurately as we can.  If you feel that some
aspect of the experiment might have colored the results, you
are free to try a similar experiment without that aspect and
report YOUR results.  Perhaps your listening panel will then
hear a difference.

If they do, make sure you have controlled the things that lead
people to hear nonexistent differences:  make sure you've matched
the levels of the CD players to within 1%, make sure you've
synchronized them accurately, and make sure your listeners don't
know which one they're hearing until after they've made up their
minds (this last is much less important if the ultimate conclusion
is that there's no audible difference than it is if people think
one is consistently better than the other).

Oh, yes.  I should warn you that it's probably not a good idea
for you to go around with your nose so high in the air.  You
might scrape it on the ceiling.

			--Andrew Koenig