Melco Audiophile NAS

[n3mmr]

I read this thread start with great interest, particularly since SimonCN says in his second post that he goes about this scientifically.

I haven't read all the comments here, so maybe I am now horribly unfair, but I think you're missing one vital point: Individual auditory impressions are NOT repeatable data!

If you want to know if a particular setup actually produces audible changes, you must be able to determine this in a blind test setup, preferably double blind ( i e noone at the test venue knows which is which, not even the test leader ). If blind is impossible to do, you must at least be very self-critical and not trust your senses off hand.

If you want to determine which is the more accurate reproducing chain, you must have the unaffected audio available for immediate comparison.

I was privy to a rather long series of tests of this kind, in the nineties, mostly testing power amplifiers and D/A-s, and there was one dominant lesson for me; If you have one device which sounded "nicer" or "better" compared to a majority of other, similar-sounding devices, it was invariably the odd-one-out that was the coloring, distorting or compressing device. And I REALLY mean invariably. No exceptions whatsoever.