Converters don't matter, it's been proven

EVERYthing matters. Some things matter more than others. I tend to fall in the proximity camp. The closer to the genesis of the sound or musical idea - the more important it is. i.e.: player > instrument > mic > pre > conversion. In that order.

That guy Ethan is a huge troll, the hugest. The fact that he's selling things makes it even better. The righteous crusade aspect of it hints at some kind of insanity, a neurosis of some sort.

The part that kind of bothers me is lots gullible people eat that stuff up and then go around telling smarter people with more experience and better ears that they are delusional and they have "proof." It just reminds me of cult behavior or wacky politics. Burn the witch! Off with his head! Here read this pamphlet that will change your life..

I don't know if he's smoking too much pot or what, but somethin' ain't right.

I like Ethan, I just feel his testing material always has a low quality to it, I've also heard him trying to make points with horrible 1980's Casio keyboard sounds, it's just futile if u don't make ur point with very high quality test material IMO.

I'm no expert, but I think it's pretty nuts and bolts to say jitter is indeed the enemy, it represents accuracy, does it matter if a photographer has jittery hands? haha

btw, bills point rings so true to me

EDIT: I'm really not sure if I'm confident in how I did this listening test.  I could easily have been hearing what I wanted to hear.  I'm not even really sure how to properly do a listening test for word clock differences.  I'm having some serious doubts about the word clock improvement theory right now.  The more I go back and forth the less I am convinced I hear any significant differences.

I don't know if this ruins the credibility of my test.  But I was just listening to my Audiofire 8 all day, trying to get used to how it sounds.  I kept switching around between 5 different DACs on my switching rig, listening for this or that quality.  Somehow I accidentally set the Apollo to be the active interface, and was listening to the Audiofire over the ADAT connection, listening to the Audiofire DAC with the Apollo word clock connected.  After all day of more or less garbage from the AF8 I said, "hey wait a second why does this sound so good now?"  Then I realized I was clocking with the Apollo.

After that, I could just do an instantaneous switch on the Windows playback devices to listen to with, or without the external clock, just by switching the active audio driver.

So I did some not blind testing and clearly preferred the Apollo clock.  It's quite a subtle thing to hear.  The tonality of the analog section obviously does not change.  But there is a shift in the image and clarity of the sound field, sort of a focusing effect, which is much less fatiguing to the ear, and just plain sounds better and more natural.

One thing to note is I'm comparing a pretty high end clock (I hope) in the Apollo, to a fairly low-end (sounds like it) clock in the $150 Echo Audiofire 8.

If you are comparing a bunch of high end clocks, I've never done it, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they all performed pretty well.  So maybe what you heard was just a bunch of completely adequate clocks, with perhaps subtle differences.  To me it doesn't sound like the Apollo needs a lot of help in that department.

Something always bothered me about the Audiofires, I used them for many years before being exposed to better stuff.  So I am pretty familiar with their sound and what's wrong with it to my ear.  What used to drive me crazy.  My new conclusion is the clock is a big one.  I might also upgrade the power supply and op amps just to squeeze out some more performance.

Another way to say it is, a good internal clock might be a big part of why the Apollo sounds as good as it does.

Interesting. Scientific or not, it's still informative. Thanks!

Always did like the best converters I can afford. Never been a fan of the converters don't matter concept.

Always liked jolly mics as well. Outstanding mics. :-)

I am not a fan. I guess that's pretty obvious. I'll come to my own conclusions, thank you very much. Some input is welcome, some input gets rejected, that's just how it goes. I'm sorry but I'm not interested in your so-call 'truth.'  Is it OK if I think that it's your argument that is flawed and not mine?  Or would you remove my agency completely?

Frankly the conversation that Ethanites want to have is a conversation I am not interested in having.  My room is well treated, that's a lesson I've learned.  But there's so much more to it than that.

It's clear that you share the same biases that Ethan Winer does. It's also clear that a lot of other people--including highly overqualified experts (gee, thanks)--do not.  It seems to me that if "authority" is being brought into the argument, that Mr. Weiner is severely outclassed and outnumbered, along with you too.

And I do not see why people need to be so virulently adamant about their own personal points of view, as if it should be the same for every person. This is a basic life lesson: they don't.

I'm not an Ethanite, if such things exist. I'd disagree about some things; I've heard poly cylindrical diffusers work well - especially in theatres designed for speech. But I agree that the senses are easily fooled and we have to approach our own intuition carefully. Even a broken clock is right twice a day and all that, cognitive and expectation bias are more powerful than a lot of other factors. They make us think deionized water helps with our eczema, sugar pills help us sleep and a Big Ben makes our mixes sound "more analog".

I don't think there's anything adamant about being the only person in the thread disagreeing. I'm just calling it as I see it, too. You disagreeing with me doesn't make me adamant, it makes me a fly in the ointment. I'd happily change my stance if there was evidence to prove it.

I have never heard this before.

8O

wow.

I gots to get me this.

cheers

Wiz

There is this very strange notion that human hearing must be "proved" by so-called "objective" tests, which leaves absolutely no room for someone to disagree once "proven wrong."  It's just too absolute.

As Eric has pointed out, there's a lot of people out there that have been doing this a good while, with very critical listening skills and experience, that have made very real judgements on what things actually sound like. So for someone to come in and say it's placebo, imaginary, whatever the usual attitude is... it's very easy to just brush that off and move along.

What am I going to say? There are so many things that can be heard that cannot be measured by machines. Judging sound quality is INHERENTLY meant to be done with the ears, not by reading a numerical description printed out by a measuring machine, or staring at a squiggly line on a graph. I have no idea what that sounds like.

You are going to read a recipe, and watch a video of how some food is prepared. But you are never going to get to taste it. Is that really a good way to make a judgement about what food tastes like? Or what recipe you like the most?

And that is my point. Human hearing is nearly 100% a subjective experience, so for someone to claim a supposedly objective position that reduces that to 0% is asinine. It takes the whole pleasure of listening completely out of the picture. It really is like dancing about architecture, to use these words and numbers to describe what things SOUND like. This is to insult the objectivity of human experience and the auditory organ.

Yes, science is a wonderful tool to help us understand and improve these things. But it is not a subsitute for the subjective and artistic reality that is musical judgement.

In this instance, I don't think the science has caught up with the reality of hearing yet. Just like the human brain is still largely not understood by even the highest of experts and scientific communities. I do think the tests are flawed. Or certainly, people extrapolate too much from the results. I think the audio test measurements should be given a few more grains of salt, to merely support what is heard rather than to reject it.  Most of them are electrical in nature anyway, not acoustic.

This seems to be the dilemma. With the audiophile culture out there putting magic beads on their power cables. It is tempting to want to throw out the baby with the bath water and say everything is measurable, everyone must be accountable for these flaws. But I do think some people take it too far, and I don't think the people that hear the difference in conversion are in that category. Give us a little more credit! And do your own listening tests in highly optimized environments. You might be surprised at what you can hear.

There is also a case for sensible spending, and sensible attitudes about what to care more about in the scheme of a production.  But once again, that does not eliminate top quality conversion from being important or sensible to any number of people with the listening skills or budgets to appreciate and afford the differences.  As people continue to chime in on this thread, there's a common experience of going from something entry level, to something somewhat more expensive or modern that gets better results.  This has been my experience as well.  No one is being injured or taken advantage of becuase I like my Audient better than my Echo.  In fact they almost come out to the same price, one is just a lot better.

Look, I think there's a point at which anything can go too far. I don't see why people treat 20 dollar LCD mics the saving grace when the capsule sputter is so thin they wont last much more than a few years of serious use. I don't think you can cheap out on monitors either, and I don't buy port stuffing as a way to get around complex problems in acoustic monitor design.

But I think the ADC/DAC and Word Clock crowds have repeatedly failed to demonstrate any difference. The word clock one is inexcusable to me - I've seen many studies and I've heard systems clocked and unclocked and none of its made a rats hair of a difference. A really bad clock might mess everything up, or a bad BNC, but super low jitter vs. suitably low jitter doesn't matter for modern PLL designs. And unless one of you guys has a unique circumstance that can show otherwise, I'd like to hear it.

ADC/DAC I'd almost give creedence - it does have an amplifier stage. But outside of the noise floor, there should be no other problems. The designs are well standardized and documented. The only time I've "heard" converters is when they've bugged out. Like the dodgy 003 I heard one time at a session, only to hear the following week that it ate itself and took out half the rack with it.

(Always leave rackspace, kids!).

But again if you are hearing something, you should be able to show it. It's not a case of bringing out your boys for the Warsaw ghetto. If you can use words to describe it, surely you can use audio to describe it. That is the end game after all!