OC Noob said:
It also depends on volume and how well trained your ear is. You'd be amazed what some of these audiophiles can hear. Its just like a musician with a trained ear. Good for us most people (like me) don't notice that much of a difference, or atleast not enough to bother me.
Computer sources suffer from all sorts of interferance that you won't get with a high end amp and the source quality is often much lower. i.e. DVD-A/SA-CD vs 128kb (is it kb?) MP3's from the Napster equivlant. Even if the source is a quality and the equiptment it was running through was a $10k+ tube system it will still suffer from interference from all that junk in the computer. Computers are just poor sources for audio, but then again like you said most people aren't going to notice the difference unless they have a high end system for reference.
And with headphones you can throw the headphone amp into the equation. Audiophiles swear it makes a world of difference with their high end cups, but I have no experince with those amps though, so I can't say from experince. Most headphone jacks on recievers don't put out much voltage so I can see the amps making some difference.
Anyway, my point is there is a percievable difference there, it may not be a big difference depending on who you ask, but it is there
ps there are also errors of omision where the sound just isn't produced on low end equiptment rather then there being a difference in the sound quality.
I'll start off with that I'm a huge "audio" guy... A lot more so than I am a computer guy. I sometimes drive my wife a little crazy with it, though I have converted her to a large degree.
I do have a lot in common with the weird "audiophiles" that write in the magazines and stuff. I do have one major difference with the typical audiophile guys, though... That is that I try to be objective and use scientific basis as much as possible.
Audiophiles do hear all kinds of incredible nuance and such in systems... A lot of it is real. But...a lot of it is simply in their head. Hearing is a function of our brain translating nerve impulses from our ears into useful information. Knowing that, it's not hard to see the reality of psychoacoustics. The medical community has long used the scientific method to test drugs. They give people the real thing, and they give other people placebo to try to eliminate the psychological factor in their testing. Audio testing also requires that the psychological factor be eliminated to get valid results.
In a lot of these magazines and such, you'll see reviews and articles about amplifiers. How they compare, which sounds better, etc... They will say with absolute certainty that they hear some special quality in one amp that isn't the same in the other. Warm midrange, smooth highs, fuller bass, sparkling detail, and all sorts of adjectives that people would normally use to describe food... All in an attempt to say that the amp simply has a sonic character that causes it to sound different than the other amp at the same volume and neither amp distorting. And, these are usually extremely high quality amps with ruler flat response, very low distortion, noise free, etc...great specs.
I have heard those sorts of differences in amps myself, although I would have been hard pressed to put descriptive terms on them like they do. I probably would have just said, "This one creates a slightly more believable auditory illusion." And, maybe try to pinpoint why.
But, how do you eliminate psychological effects from testing amps? With a double blind test.
There's a guy named Richard Clark...he has a lot of education with audio stuff and science and physics in general. Has made a lot of money for himself, owns a company that makes CD's, and a few other ventures. Has some patents on various audio stuff that he developed. Someone introduced double blind testing to him years ago and he learned that with amps, as long as they meet certain standards (basically a decent, modern amp without serious design flaws) and are used within their linear operating range (not into distortion) that people cannot reliably tell the difference between two amps with their sense of hearing. He brought it up to the community...some accepted it, most did not. He ended up refining his test and turning it into a $10,000 challenge. If anyone can tell the difference between any two amps that meet some very basic requirements in his double blind test, they win $10,000 of his own money. If they lose, nothing happens other than a possible education on amps. So far, thousands have taken his challenge...no one has won.
Basically, in that challenge, people get to pick what amps, what speakers, what music, have control of the volume the whole time, and can switch between amp A, amp B, and an unknown that is either A or B at will. Their task it to try to determine if the unknown is A or B, then rinse and repeat. They are unaware which amp is actually playing, and the person administering the test is also unaware since the unknown is randomly generated by a computer. (That's the double blind part.) People often believe they hear a difference while taking the test and are getting it right every time...expect to get a perfect score, then end up with results as though they had flipped a coin each time. Some people realize part way through the test that all three options sound the same once they can only rely on their sense of hearing.
This is not to say that all amps are the same...because they are not. More power is still better. Features still matter. Build quality can still be a factor. Price is a factor. Aesthetics...size....some have design issues. And, some amps actually purposely change the sound...but, then they are no longer just providing amplification. The guy who does that challenge still likes buying expensive amps.
There's a lot of things in audio that, as long as they meet certain requirements, they don't contribute to the sound of the system in an audible way. Sensitive test equipment may be able to show a difference, but it doesn't mean we can percieve it with our hearing. Wires & cables, preamps, and CD players are often things that also fall under that catagory. Not always, but often. Something that people with good, trained ears can almost always show that they can hear a difference between in a double blind test is speakers. Media formats are an interesting topic...
Computers aren't necessarily a bad source for audio... Computers are used a lot in recording studios nowadays. They're capable of doing very well. Where computers normally start to have issues is when the audio signal gets out of the digital domain and into the analog domain. Computer parts are often designed to be as cheap as possible and corners are cut in the circuit design. Low output, high noise floor, poor regulation. It doesn't take much money to get good results, but in PC parts, you're rarely going to get something that isn't compromised in some way. The easiest thing that I've found to do is simply to never leave the digital domain until outside of the PC. I was overjoyed when nVidia introduced hardware Dolby Digital encoding in the nForce chipsets...awesome audio at an integrated price!
Headphone amps do make a difference...especially with a lot of higher end cans that have relatively high nominal impedance. A lot of headphone outputs are capable of enough wattage to get very loud, but not necessarily enough voltage...there is a distinction there. Directly from the computer, you might not have either...along with poor dynamic range, high noise floor, etc... Headphone amps can solve a dynamic range problem.
Hopefully I didn't bore the pants off people.
John G
