BLIND TEST Results Part 4: "Do digital audio players sound different playing 16/44.1 music?" - Subjective Comments. Final thoughts on blind testing and critiques.

As we close off discussions and posts around the Internet Blind Test of devices playing 16/44.1 music, I want to publish some of the subjective comments from respondents who undertook this test... Impressions in the respondents' own words about the test when they submitted their results to me.

Remember that these are subjective. Human perception, especially when differences are at the margins of our perception are of course tough to describe. And when we compound that with the limited utility of words to describe ephemeral experiences (even with codifying the terminology as was attempted years back), it's no surprise that meaning can often only be conveyed as impressions. It's great to see the respondents trying their best and in many instances, I certainly appreciate the impressive use of language to express the experiences. Let's have some fun with these!

BLIND TEST Results Part 3: "Do digital audio players sound different playing 16/44.1 music?" - Listener Results.

Thanks for the patience everyone. We are now into Part 3 of the report on the Internet Blind Test on the audibility of 16/44.1 digital playback using various devices. In Part 1 we talked about the test procedure itself and unblinded the devices (ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard, Apple iPhone 6, Oppo UDP-205 as ethernet DAC, and Sony SCD-CE775 playing a burned CD-R).

Last week in Part 2, we reviewed the objective measurements of the 4 devices. I hope the readership recognizes the importance of doing this to set the context of what we're looking at this time as we dive into the results from the blind test respondents. As with many things in life, it is only with having facts at our disposal first, then we can make comparisons and develop ideas based on this foundation of knowledge.

BLIND TEST Results Part 2: "Do digital audio players sound different playing 16/44.1 music?" - Relative objective performance. [And a few words about "Legends"...]

Last week, I revealed the four CD-resolution / 16/44.1 playback devices I used for this blind test. (By the way, if you want to have a listen to the original 16/44.1 track excerpts used, I added a link as an addendum to the post last week.)

While I'm still doing some counting, calculations, and writing the summary of the data, I think it's best this week to start by having a better look at those devices and seeing what objective results tell us about them so we can hypothesize what we might find when we examine the blind test results.

While it may be controversial to some in the audiophile world, I think we should keep our minds open to the idea that science and technology for digital audio playback has already surpassed the human auditory system. As discussed years ago, the human perceptual and cognitive systems do not have infinite resolution. I'm of course not discounting that the ears and mind have excellent abilities when it comes to appreciating miniscule differences, yet I think we have to remain humble; even if we believe we have "golden ears". Also, even if we don't believe measurements capture everything, it's not unreasonable to accept that the vast majority of what is heard can already be quantified in terms of fidelity to the source. This is why I think we need to explore the objective performance first... Then we can see if the subjective preferences from the respondents line up with expectations. I think for many of the well-respected audio engineers that design our hi-fi gear, this sequence makes sense. Ensure that the measurements are decent first, then verify and tweak with subjective listening.

Over the years, I've measured most of these devices in the blind test separately with different ADCs. For this post, let's run each one through the RME ADI-2 Pro FS and compare objectively using the exact same "measuring stick". For completeness, here's what the measurement chains look like with each player/DAC:

BLIND TEST Results Part 1: "Do digital audio players sound different playing 16/44.1 music?" - Devices Unblinded! (Plus unusual exuberance & bias in the media?)

Thanks everyone for taking the time and efforts in performing the blind test which we started back in late January!

I officially closed off my survey from submissions May 1st (I promised April 30th, but gave a few hours more for stragglers from different time zones). I trust the 3 months provided plenty of time for everyone who wanted to perform the test to do so. I'll leave the blind test samples available for download for now and will take the files down in the near future.

You can read about the reason I ran this blind test in the previous post, but in a nutshell it's because of this poll result which I think reflects general audiophile perceptions on the question: