A couple of days ago, there were some discussions on facebook about how the OT AD/DA converters sounded and ways to test it. I got curious and decided I wanted to check for myself and also try to be of help, so I came up with this:
Since this subject pops up from time to time I thought it might be of interest for people in here as well. Some data on the results would be interesting, so if people take the test, I’d love it if they either send me a PM or use the email I created. Example content:
Clip1: OT, OT, Not OT, Not OT, Not OT
Clip2: …
Clip3: …
Listening conditions: Decent
Difference worth caring about: yes
If I get some replies I can create some stats with the result. Replies would be valuable whether you can tell them apart or not (if only people who can tell them apart replies it would skew the stats).
I made this for fun, but discussions on possible flaws in the test or ways this could have been done better are welcome. But please keep discussions on digital vs analouge, how the OT affects the sound, etc. out of this thread. There are already better places for that (also, the discussions tends to be a bit heated, and I don’t want to stir things up!)
Oh, and don’t post your results for everyone to see. Ideally, people should listen without being affected by other test results.
Btw: if anyone is hit by a sense of deja vu, this is indeed v2 of this topic. A version yesterday had the files shared in dropbox. Since some rough waveforms were shown when playing, I switched to Google Drive (thanks for the suggestion @AdamJay!) so that it wouldn’t affect people. I also reduced the volume for one version with 0.7dB so that both report exactly the same volume when analyzed. If I still haven’t managed to get things good enough for a proper blind test I give up. In that case I guess this small experiment can still be of value for people wanting to check what the OT do/doesn’t do to the sound?