Care to explain what you mean?
At least I’ll know what was the message 
the Scarlet inputs / AD - DA convertors are the bottleneck for audio comparison.
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Too early to state this as my final opinion, but I like the opamp mod. A lil bit healtier overall sound, for lack of a better term… Will do more A/B:s later with proper monitoring
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something strange I noted though, is that the new op-amps files have inverted phase
Which proves my point
This is a very commonly used card and it isn’t the cheapest one.
Whoever is making those comparisons either uses very expensive systems or a very cheap one
Plus the way I see it a lot of people use YT, soundcloud or pandora to listen to music these days.
I met only a few people thought my audio journey that can pick up nuances like the ones we talk about here and most of those guys operate in multi-million dollar studios.
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very peculiar! You’re absolutely sure the mod went through correctly?
I’m not 100% sure because I’m a DIY hobby solder guy.
What can be wrong? I guess wrong positioning would result in no audio (or a damaged board) but phase shifted sample playback?
perhaps I should check my recording settings :S
Yes, start from there 
I agree with the subjectivity of the sound you mention, but I really hear a difference, a small one.
I now that creativity is by far the most important aspect for good music but when it comes into production we always want a better sound quality. We all perceive a mastered song as a better version even if the improvement is just a 0.1%. It’s just the very top right end of the logarithmic curve that makes a (most of the time unconscious) perception that we hear a high quality product.
I’m not saying that you cannot make great music with an 6-bit sample (tr-909), but the times when you had no other alternative are gone. Now you can downsample or li-fi something if you want.
In my personal case, specially after this test, I wouldn’t send stems from every part to the OT, process them and return them to the DAW for a finalised production. By the other hand the OT is irreplaceable for sending a couple of tracks with twisted samples to the mix, but it’s not a hardware DAW for me. One of the main reasons is because the D/A converters and op-amps are not as good as the ones in my audio interface. That makes a difference for me in a production that sounds good to one that sounds great.
it’s just about small nuances
I just listened to the examples and I notice something weird on the phase of the “modded” samples.
I notice that phase shift is very noticeable on the center material while in the side material it isn’t that much.
Very strange. The audible effect when both samples are summed at the right sample, is something similar to that effect that happens when you have a bad cable or adapter on a pair of headphones, and a big amount of the center material is removed by phase cancelation. May be this center material phase shifting is what some ppl interprets as a more 3D sound (which I would avoid at any cost).
Hmm, just had a quick listen on ipad with headphones, not noticing any significant improvement, although the time between listening could be a factor, as dropbox does not allow quick access to the files on my ipad, so I’m getting about 7 seconds between the last track ending and the next playing, making comparison difficult.
It might be fun to do a blind test to let people decide what they think sounds best?
yes, the difference is minimal and for me the only way to notice it is with good speakers soloing/muted tracks played simultaneously
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This phase thing puzzles me… have you tried running test tones/samples through the OT yet and checking with a phase meter?
yes, the modded version has an inverted phase. If you sum it with the original the common frequencies are cancelled and you hear only the differences between both samples.
I really cannot understand why the new amp mod sends inverted waveforms. Nothing I would care at all in my scenario anyway, inverted phase samples sound the same at the end.
speaking about stereo or 3D feeling I do notice a wider opener stereo image with the original than any of the octatracks recordings.
no, actually that would be interesting
You do have stereo linked input controls on your MOTU right? If you have two separate pots for the inputs, unless they are stepped, you will never get true stereo integrity as the levels will be off between the channels by a miniscule amount
It seems that not all the material is phase inverted, just the material that is in the middle (the mono part of the sound).
Side material is a bit shifted but not as the mid material.
I’m not judging anyone or trying to lift myself up, but I consider myself to have really good ears. I have come to this conclusion over years of playing music with different people, running sound for shows, and attending countless events that friends have put on where their always welcoming of my input for the sound system. So many times I notice things that my friends do not, but some of them do or they do after I make adjustments. That being said, I certainly can tell the difference between monitoring using dir on OT, and monitoring through my analog mixer or Apogee Ensemble2. The high end seems to be diminished, and the stereo field seems a bit pushed to center and looses some “3d” depth to my ears. Harmonics from high resonance filter sweeps from a moog are not as apparent, the Rytm looses a bit of its magic. However I do not find this a show stopper and imagine that just the same as my friends don’t notice the sound system not being dialed in perfectly, they also won’t notice anything lacking with the OT audio at all. In the end I run most of my gear though the OT and record that way even though I have methods in my studio that in my opinion make higher quality recordings. The OT is so fantastic I deal with a slight loss of quality for ease of setup functionality and all the amazing things it can do… Just my 2 cents…
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I 100% agree!
IMO it was a good (and in some moment real scary) soldering meditation exercise, but for my application it doesn’t worth it. I really love ultra high end sound, good mixing and good sonic environments, but for that I have 10 more input sources for.
Wondering if the phase anomaly is due to the different impedances of the opamp inputs, FET inputs have a much higher input impedance than BJT, maybe it is causing some kind of internal crosstalk when the predominately mono source material hits the inputs of the opamps?
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