HFC article is now on line.

[Deleted]

Has litlle (or should I say nothing) to do with M.C.'s findings though.The test you refer to doesn't have identical files at all

Frans
I didn't say that it did. That's why I said as an aside, because you were already aware of these files.The point here was that I did identify audible differences and elaborated on what I heard, not just made a choice. The C.A. member made an incorrect choice,although hearing differences between them.

one of them is altered to have the noise floor increased to -60dB and if we would consider the 'added' info as distortion that would be around 1% (-40dB).

That is incorrect, as you will see in the email,although I said in my reply"....it’s like X has better dynamics with perhaps a lower noise floor."

I have emailed you a copy of the results

[Deleted]

May 8, 2012 21:56:04 GMT @sandyk said:

So then, to re-iterate, one can take a CD and rip a track a mumber of times using a variety of drives, PCs, power supplies or whatever, and save the results to a memory stick. And on playing the resulting files back there can be audible differences between these numerically identical tracks? And one could rate these various rips from best to worst sounding.

Derek
What is being missed here, is that I am only to make these differences obvious to those with good gear, especially the many experienced RG members who use decent HAs and headphones, as a result of a lot of work to my P.C. , including better filtering of the SMPS supply to the optical device.
Chris from Spain, John Kenny, and a few other members are also able to do this, and have others able to DL their comparison files and correctly identify the differences. It's only when you get into making linear PSU media centres as several here have done, or improve the PC by using better than average optical devices and perhaps the +5V JLH USB PSU that these differences start to become far more obvious.Many people can differentiate between 2 comparison tracks, and several have been able to differentiate between 3 versions of the same, but after that, I doubt anybody would be reliably able to identify the differences between each.
A Sydney friend who visited me recently,even created 8 generations of the same track , all on my Corsair Voyager using the +5V JLH PSU . Despite the far better PSU , he was just able to hear the differences between the 8th copy and the original on the same Corsair Voyager.
Alex

P.S.
I just let him take control of my P.C. and I wasn't even aware what he had done until he told me later.

Yes, Alex. I understand what you are saying and I do not disagree - that's the point of my posting. I'll come back to this later today when I have more time.

My point is that the differences that people hear should be able to be 'amplified' by sending the same data over and over again around and within a sub-optimum ripping environment (albeit one that gives otherwise accurate copies).

The answer to that can only be 'yes' or 'no' or 'maybe'. Which is it?

Derek

[Deleted]

My point is that the differences that people hear should be able to be 'amplified' by sending the same data over and over again around and within a sub-optimum ripping environment (albeit one that gives otherwise accurate copies).

Derek
Despite what T.A.S. says, I have found that after a few copies the differences are very hard to reliably pick.It is possible that much younger ears than mine, using suitably high resolution gear may be able to notice further degradation with more copies.
Where I want to make the differences as obvious as possible for those with lesser gear, or are highly sceptical, which then introduces a strong expectation bias, I rip in Windows Safe Mode with a JLH in line with the internal LG BR writer, and save the .wav file to a Corsair Voyager powered by a +5V Linear JLH PSU, with the noisy +5V Vbus wire disconnected at the PC end of the USB cable. The file that I want to sound worse may sometimes be ripped using a Samsung USB powered portable DVD writer, still using EAC, but not in Secure Mode, which means it is ripped at higher speed.I then save the ripped .wav files to a normal HDD, which unfortunately these days, for this scenario, already has 3M 2552 anti-vibratation tape on it. The Samsung ripped file is already degraded in comparison with the other .wav file, and further degradation is barely noticeable, although converting to .flac and back again to .wav often causes a very small noticable further degradation. Unfortunately, sending the files via Filemail etc. degrades very low level detail of the better rip,
which makes differences between them less obvious.Presently. I send the better sounding .wav file as an uncompressed Zip which helps to reduce the deterioration a little.
Chris has already posted that the .wav file of mine that Frans had saved and retransmitted,along with a MP3 version did not sound as good as the original copy that he had downloaded and saved previously.
As Ripley says "Believe it or not"
Alex
N.B.
This reply is in response to a direct question from Derek
This reply is not intended as an invitation to re-open this debate.
It was never intended to be a discussion thread as stated in the initial post of the thread.