Topic: Taperssection - product listening comparisons *gold standard*

[Church-Audio]

I thought we were talking about product comparison, not just pre-amps.

In any event, I would like to address Chris's earlier comments.  First of all, I don't know your history, but I do know I have read this thread in it;s entirety and if you have found rudeness and personal attacks, I think that may be some kind of "history"

I am not questioning your knowledgeability, and this is not a personal attack, although it may be perceived that way.  I tend to be right some of the time, dead wrong some of the time, but brutally forthright all of the time, and I am used to people taking offense where none was intended.

So as far as modded stuff goes, it seems like we were talking about product comparisons but you seem to go to mods as a recurring theme.  While some of us here are openly admitting we are making subjective decisions, I have to start questioning some of your comments as being maybe not quite as objective as you seem to present them.

Having said that,  I personally will no longer touch any modded gear.  When someone asks me how I feel I give them my subjective but honest opinion.  If you are on a budget, modded gear can in my opinion genuinely give you a real upgrade with a lot of bang for your buck and put the quality of recording you can obtain on a totally different level than the same "prosumer" stock unit could provide.  There are problems however - you immediately not only void the warranty but if you have problems you have limited to resolutions, and practically never have an immediate option.  I know from personal experience.  Take modded gear and have it die on you even in a city like NY where you can find anything that exists, and you are still outta luck because anyone that would do quality work willl also not be willing to even touch a piece of non-functional modified gear.

That very unpleasant experience put an end to my willingness to run mod gear - the professional stuff is worth every penny.

I maybe wrong, but I had the distinct impression you were also in the business of modifying or at least building non standard gear yourself?   I have even steered a few people your way saying "Sorry, I don't do stealth so I can't advise but a lotta people that run stealth gear seem to have good results form this guy Church who I think provides a lotta stuff targeted at the stealth market - join taperssection and you'll find him.   

And as far as Busman goes, never had any dealings with him either, but people seem to have a high view of his mods and I've heard some good results.  And I understand the mod market exists and benefits many tapers on a budget, and I have had experience with non-stealth modded prosumer gear and I have steered people to him a number of times with the similar qualifier that I have not used his gear but many like it and unlike that other guy who's reputation is apparently beyond reproach and can rest on his laurels (i.e. to put it bluntly if you get a good mod, good for you, if you get one that has defects the other guy is not above totally fucking you over as an individual because he knows you have no real voice as far as his untarnishable rep), my impression is that Busman is OTOH actively trying to grow both his reputation and his business, so I would trust him to give better service.     

So what is with the whole mod issue and the perception of personal attacks?

Are we still all talking about differing views on product comparisons, of which modded and unmodded equipment would both be considerations, or have we moved to the realm of product business or some other personal business now?

I am actually referring to the personal statements made by a member here and someone that is part of a thread that subsuquently deleted all of his posts that referenced me.

This thread has nothing to do with a "particular vendor" it has to do with the fact that all of the guys doing mods dont publish specs and dont have objective tests for people to base an educated opinion on the validity of the mods in question.  I think that's unfair and I think its misleading and I think that anyone buying mods from any company that cant provide published specs on his or her mod and provide a valid objective test must be questioned as to why these seemly basic things are missing. I dont know any electronics engineer that improves a product with out doing some kind of electronic test on the end result never mind listening tests I would have to question why that is. I am pushing for a standard because I believe there should be one. And people when we are talking about improving a circuit we are talking about electronics and if we are talking about electronics then we are talking about things that no only should be able to be measured but also heard. If not your just paying for someones best guess.
Its called spinning the wheel of parts substitution and not about making sure you can measure and hear the differences.

[Busman Audio]

if you referring to me having deleted a post I have not. 

Just keep hacking away at other businesses that sounds like a good way to make friends.




this was supposed to be about listening comparisons!

[Church-Audio]

if you referring to me having deleted a post I have not. 

Just keep hacking away at other businesses that sounds like a good way to make friends.




this was supposed to be about listening comparisons!

What are you talking about? anyway this thread has nothing to do with Busman Audio. I dont know anything about your mods and I have not examined any so it would be unfair for me to comment on them. I am making generalized statements about the industry of mods. As a whole its not directed at any individual.

[Roving Sign]

This thread has nothing to do with a "particular vendor" it has to do with the fact that all of the guys doing mods dont publish specs and dont have objective tests...

Im not sure we know any of that for sure...Im sure there are some simple things that are considered trade secrets...I dont blame them.

Chris Church - do you have any regrets about revealing the details of your high spl mic mod? Seems I remember other vendors copying you after that...personally I thought it was foolish of you to give that out. Why give away your competitive edge?

And to be fair - Edirol never published any THD specs on the UA5 - only the most basic specs appeared with that device's literature...so you cant just blame the modders for that situation.

One thing is for sure - a few of the small businessmen on this board are NOT their own best advocates...

[Roving Sign]

I once read an audiophile describe a tube power amp he had built with a switch to disable the negative feedback.  By his own admission, the THD of the system was much higher without the feedback, but he preferred the stereo imaging of the zero feedback version, except when the source had a lot of transient high-frequency content--he felt the NFB version was more detailed.  With the caveat of not having the bit of kit to test myself, I can conclude he felt that the smearing of high frequencies cause by the distortion of his system yielded better stereo imaging.  I don't conclude that is universally true for everyone, but if you can learn something like that about your own gear preferences, it does make your gear selection procedure much easier.

I too have heard that human ear likes a certain amount of distortion...old issue of Stereophile or something...

[Church-Audio]

This thread has nothing to do with a "particular vendor" it has to do with the fact that all of the guys doing mods dont publish specs and dont have objective tests...

Im not sure we know any of that for sure...Im sure there are some simple things that are considered trade secrets...I dont blame them.

Chris Church - do you have any regrets about revealing the details of your high spl mic mod? Seems I remember other vendors copying you after that...personally I thought it was foolish of you to give that out. Why give away your competitive edge?

And to be fair - Edirol never published any THD specs on the UA5 - only the most basic specs appeared with that device's literature...so you cant just blame the modders for that situation.

One thing is for sure - a few of the small businessmen on this board are NOT their own best advocates...

I dont think that reveling distortion levels or frequency or other tests and subjective listening tests would reveal to anyone how or what was modified inside unless you are psychic.

No regrets because most of the competition that is doing the mod is doing it wrong And I released it so that others could do it them selves because I did not have the time to mod all the mics that my competition sold that were distorting.....  

I think there are alot of small businessmen on this board that are not there own best advocates but as I explained this is not about any one single vendor its about getting a test that is objective all people who buy or sell mods would benefit from this. I dont understand the resistance pardon the pun  


And the reason why distortion was never revealed in the spec on the preamp your talking about is simple it was horrible that unit had no headroom and had very high distortion levels.


Chris

[chris319]

Here is my gold standard:

http://audio.rightmark.org/index_new.shtml

and another:

http://www.fesb.hr/~mateljan/arta/

The ear can be fooled.

[Church-Audio]

Well, if you have to have a live show, then bring two mics*, or two pairs of mics, and swap them between positions halfway through the show.  Then cut the samples into small bits as described by OP, and listen.  It's not perfect, because the source won't be exactly the same.  But what have we learned if you prefer one position or one half of a set rather than one mic over the other?  That other factors are more important than the selection of those two particular mics.  Since probably not too many people swap mics between songs in a set, you probably don't need to own both mics.

On the other hand, if you consistently pick one mic over the other, there you go.





* Gear doesn't really need to be compared in stereo.  Sure, it may be easier to discern differences with two channels of signal, since psychoacoustic effects will become apparent, but try this:  record one song with one pair, another song with a second pair.  Set those two songs aside.  Then record the rest with different mics for each channel (as close together as possible), and compare the mono tracks to each other.  Pick a favorite.  Now, go back to the stereo songs, ideally blind.  Pick a favorite based on your preference for stereo imaging.  If that's the same as your mono favorite, there, that wasn't too hard, was it?

If it's different from your mono preference, then listen to the mono files and try to discern what difference in mono caused you to prefer that mic in stereo.

I once read an audiophile describe a tube power amp he had built with a switch to disable the negative feedback.  By his own admission, the THD of the system was much higher without the feedback, but he preferred the stereo imaging of the zero feedback version, except when the source had a lot of transient high-frequency content--he felt the NFB version was more detailed.  With the caveat of not having the bit of kit to test myself, I can conclude he felt that the smearing of high frequencies cause by the distortion of his system yielded better stereo imaging.  I don't conclude that is universally true for everyone, but if you can learn something like that about your own gear preferences, it does make your gear selection procedure much easier.

The more you change in a test the more you confuse. Simple one set of mics 1 source that can be played back = objective test.

[Will_S]

if you referring to me having deleted a post I have not. 

If you didn't delete any post, what happened to the one referred to below?

http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,113128.msg1517236.html#msg1517236

Graphs don't tell you how something sounds to your ears.  I hear differences in these files and that is a good thing since I do the mods.



Why don't you quit telling others what to do Chris.  You have done enough to ruin my business already with your constant comments whenever tests come up of my gear.

If I made graphs then you would say I doctored them somehow so just quit it just like you did when I made some critical sound sample tests with the R4 mods a long time ago.

Hell busman my ears tell me that after you did the mod on my ole' UA5 it sounded a hell of a lot better and the test you did on the R4 convinced me to buy a R4 w/ mod. Thanks for all you and for my $$ I will stick w/ the mod gear.
Peace

I noticed that this post vanished shortly after I saw you post this (of course it may have vanished sooner, that's just when I noticed it was gone):

http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,113482.msg1519349.html#msg1519349

This test is not valid considering I make these mods to perform better for concert recording and not a home stereo recording of a studio album.

So I'm confused.  If you haven't deleted any posts, what happened to that one?

[Busman Audio]

You are a good researcher Will_S....    I was not talking to you in the first place and that post was not in this thread at all. 

[Teen Wolf Blitzer]

   How does it feel to know you, Core and SP are the most responsible for bootleg recordings being sold the world over?  Lay off Busman.  While you say your rants aren't directed at him...let's be honest.  There are 2 guys in the country modding gear.  Chris and Oade.  One is not a member here.  One is.

if you referring to me having deleted a post I have not. 

Just keep hacking away at other businesses that sounds like a good way to make friends.




this was supposed to be about listening comparisons!

What are you talking about? anyway this thread has nothing to do with Busman Audio. I dont know anything about your mods and I have not examined any so it would be unfair for me to comment on them. I am making generalized statements about the industry of mods. As a whole its not directed at any individual.

[Will_S]

Hoping this thread can somewhat get steered back on topic:

1. Levels need to be matched. Louder almost always sound better. The threshold for loudness differences is in the order of 0.5 dB (under the best listening conditions in an A/B back-to-back change. It rises to about 1.5 dB at 1 minute separation between the examples, again under ideal listening conditions). In the real world 1 dB is fairly close to the just noticeable limit.

This might not be an issue with very accurate recorders or preamps, but should the goal be to match peak or RMS levels?

I was going to whip up a blind comparision of a recording I made with my Audix Micro mics right next to a friend running Neumann KM140s - the idea being we should pretty much all agree that the two setups should sound audibly different, and so it would serve as a kind of test that the sort of blind test you propose either is or is not sensitive enough for the majority of posters here to actually correctly identify the different sources on their playback systems.  But evidently one set of mics (or something else in the respective recording chains) must compress transients or somesuch, as matching peak levels results in fairly different average loudness levels.

Potentially, some preamp/recorder mods might do something similar (perhaps even in an audibly pleasing way), which would make proper comparisons difficult.  How to proceed in such a case?

[Gutbucket]

I think matching RMS levels between samples should be the number one thing done before any audio comparison.

[Church-Audio]

  How does it feel to know you, Core and SP are the most responsible for bootleg recordings being sold the world over?  Lay off Busman.  While you say your rants aren't directed at him...let's be honest.  There are 2 guys in the country modding gear.  Chris and Oade.  One is not a member here.  One is.

if you referring to me having deleted a post I have not. 

Just keep hacking away at other businesses that sounds like a good way to make friends.




this was supposed to be about listening comparisons!

What are you talking about? anyway this thread has nothing to do with Busman Audio. I dont know anything about your mods and I have not examined any so it would be unfair for me to comment on them. I am making generalized statements about the industry of mods. As a whole its not directed at any individual.

  Are you crazy what does this have to do with bootleg recordings? Sure lots of people use my gear for bootlegs do you not think bootlegs happen with open taping? I am like Smith and Wesson I can't be held responsible for what some jackass does with my product anymore then a gun company can be held responsible for the dumb ass that shoots him self in the foot, Lame argument. I am not picking on Busman we actually spoke today and everything was cool. And to my knowledge still is.

My posts are not directed at any one individual at all they are directed against anyone that does mods and there are lots of people doing mods besides Chris and I am not going to name names... This is general information not directed at Chris or anyone in particular. But again I am getting sick of having to explain this.


Chris

[Belexes]

  How does it feel to know you, Core and SP are the most responsible for bootleg recordings being sold the world over? 

I've taped hundreds of shows with CS, SP, and CA mics and no one has pressed/sold any of my stuff. Please connect me to your all-knowing "stealth=bootlegs" connection so I can start getting rich.