So you may be familiar with the distortion listening tests at
http://www.klippel-listeningtest.de/lt/.
It was a little under two years ago that I scored a perfect -54dB and posted the results on my Wordpress blog. That was just after getting my NuForce Icon HD. Anybody who knows me will have figured out that I really like this little contraption. But I decimated my blog a while back and along with it went my proof.
I tell myself that it's OK though because I took some guesses a few times, but we all do. I found it annoying that it tried me out like 4 times at -54dB before it was convinced because that was really pushing my abilities and I was sweating, but that's how the test works.
I think I did that run on the 'Music J. Stone' test if I remember correctly. In case you're wondering, these are NOT the kinds of music samples I would've chosen for creating such a test.
On to today. I've been having higher background noise levels in my hearing lately so I wanted to see what I could pull off during my lunch break at my desk in the cubes at my office. It's crazy loud where I work so consider that. These first few are with the "Music T. Chapman" test.
First pic is my regular rig I use. Semi-open AKG K142HD plugged into my NuForce Icon HD. It's way too noisy to get good fidelity but it's what I use. Sucky score of -21dB. Behold:
For kicks and giggles I wanted to see how my "well regarded" laptop sound card in my PC could perform. I had my K171 Mk II handy, a closed can, because I can do much better discernment with these cans. I used the K171's coiled cable plugged into my laptop which has an IDT chip with pretty good performance and can really crank the volume. It has the SRS suite tied into it but I always have the enhancements off because they work against you most of the time. So I scored horribly at -15dB
but later noticed it was B1 noise only.
I ran a few one or two step tests of the different noises and couldn't discern that B1 was a great disadvantage so I didn't do a full repeat of the test. I consider it valid. Anyway, I had no idea how bad it could be... especially since this integrated sound card is much better than my older laptop's.
Behold:
So then I decided to stay at my noisy cube with the sound of people walking around (more like stomping) and talking clearly audible in my headphones. Also, the A/C was pretty dang loud. But, plug in the NuForce Icon HD and let it rip for a score of -30dB.
Tada:
But I wanted to see if I could do better on the other tests so I moved on to the "Music J. Stone" test. Here's what I got on that:
So I tried out the tones. I remember that this test builds up some weird resonance after a few
seconds. It's slow but real and it did it again. I don't know if it's my can or my ears. But I did pretty good anyway. See:
Well, I noticed that my scores were improving, so I tried the "Music T. Chapman" test again to see if I'd land a better score. I wanted a much better score so I decided to use my straight cable and run into a quiet room with my gear. I must've looked like an idiot carrying it all across the office. Anyway, I did really well at first and paused a second to take a screen shot. I don't think I have cleaner power but my laptop was on battery, and I also don't know if the cable made a difference but I chanced it anyway. I pushed through the previous barriers but I had to guess at the -51dB mark. I got lucky, then I just really couldn't figure it out at -54dB so...
...the test then bounced me around a bit until I completed 20 rounds. Dang this thing is long and tiring when you're emotionally entangled in a good score. But it finally established my score at -45dB.
I'm a bit disappointed that I couldn't nail the big five four, but -45dB is still good. I wonder what it takes to get to great, why I didn't do as well as I had in the past, and if my ears just couldn't do it anymore even if I had the best stuff available in the most silent place on earth.
1) So what made the difference in a good score from a bad one?
2) Anybody else have a piece of gear that just takes it to the next level for them?
