Ron The Mon wrote: ↑2020-10-31 18:12
Oscar,
I would agree you've opened
several cans of worms here. I also agree it was well worth opening on several levels.
What are you hearing at home, in your system? Original Black>QED>Fake Black? That makes no sense from your clips as they portray X>Y, Y>Z, yet Z>X; which is illogical.
More worms:
I was away the entire Summer from this Forum. While catching up on the "Playground" thread I was disappointed to find
every clip deleted! The latest one was only five days old!! In my opinion, the clips should remain active at least one month. I also noticed there was contention about some clips sounding the opposite online as they do in person.
Fredrik gave some hints a while back relating to how to record clips. One was turn off all other apps and put the phone in airplane mode. I would suggest restarting the phone as well for each clip. Taking the time to listen to one's own clips to confirm before linking is also a good idea. I would suggest we find the common denominator of issues and have a "sticky" thread about it.
I also listened to several dozen different comparisons of your recent two tracks on this thread. I had many findings. Listening on Dropbox, the music always sounded better when using separate tabs for each song compared to both in the same tab. Safari browser sounds better than Mozilla which sounds better than Google Chrome. Downloading on the computer and using a separate player always sounded better than any browser using the Dropbox player. QuickTime Player sounds better than VLC.
All these comparisons were done on my Mac mini into Naim/Isobarik system.
I bring all this up and spent the time because I have no doubt in my mind your Clip A sounds better than B, regardless of player or browser used. It also has
substantially more bass, which you weren't hearing in person and doesn't show up in Clip C vs. D.
I also think other comparisons needed is Dropbox vs. Apple iCloud vs. Google vs. etc. Is the issue the camera/phone or the uploading? It would be interesting to upload to various sites, then download and compare. I will try it unless someone else beats me to it.
Ron The Mon
Ron, you're quite right that my clips to some degree said X>Y, Y>Z, Z>X; which indeed should not be possible in a straight up better/worse comparison.
Then again, although we all make every effort to make single parameter changes, changing e.g. interconnects does involve some degree of touching/moving equipment and so for any "A-B" there will be some other smaller changes as part of the package. Maybe I, by accident, did something very beneficial when recording the QEDs?
I'm currently using the "fake blacks" (although with the increased number of samples presented in this thread they don't appear all that unique as it seems many many interconnects are a little sloppy whether finished by a dealer or a new guy at Linn) and will make a new comparison when they've had some time in the system.
I recorded all the clips with the iPhone in flight mode, but did not investigate different methods for upload and playback.