please close this thread before valuable time is lost.
You’re wrong. You have a human brain like anybody else, and your human brain is affected by psychoacoustics like everybody else’s.
The only valid way to investigate sound quality issues is with controlled, scientific testing. That means either using objective methods like spectral analysis or comparing the actual waveforms as dblue suggests, or blind subjective testing where the listener does not know which sound he is listening to.
“Trusting your ears” is a great way to determine the artistic qualities of the music you are making, but it is worthless for addressing issues of audio quality. End of story, goodbye, the end.
Oh guys, slap my face, I have to take it all back, it’s been the headroom, really, I’ve been a monkey after not having slept in two days, but my ears didn’t fool me, sense of hearing was scientific enough but brain slightly stone-aged. At full volume there is no more audible difference, and, believe me, I’m very glad about that.
slaps kcv in the face
I use renoise as a mastering tool. I send all audio from Ableton into Renoise, just for mastering, because I couldn’t stand mastering in Ableton. Renoise shines.