Baffled and Frustrated: Streaming/DAC Sound Issues

Junk this digital crap and get some LPs

or else become Albert Einstein

@jerryg123 

Sorry.  What is 'douchey'.  Is this a shower for a Frenchman?

What I was saying is that all the digital problems are caused by smashing the analogue music into billions of tiny pieces and then worrying why you can't put them back together again.  Because you can't.

I was suggesting that even highly intelligent engineers are still failing to find a way to do it.

Sorry for going over your head.

@tony1954 

Well, Tony after this thread has been up 3 days, it would appear no-one else understands these systems either.  Indeed others are saying they have the same kind of issues.

Hence my sage and practical advice.  Clear thinking.  If not from a master digital engineer, of which there seem to be none who can solve this.

@audphile1 

I still take the view that the problem is caused by breaking up the analogue signal into billions of tiny fragments that cannot be correctly reassembled.  This is the origin of dither and clock error.  It would seem no-one can solve this - the issue is 40 years old and there is no solution in sight apart from accepting the problem and reducing it by engineering.

As to starting vinyl from scratch, many older audiophiles are disposing of vast numbers of vinyl albums, either on downsizing or when their ability to listen comes to an end, one way or the other.  There is a plentiful supply - that's where I got most of mine from.  Many are near mint because we cannot play all our LPs very often and we look after them when we do.

I have also written that many audiophiles obsess about record-cleaning to an unnecessary extent or even ridiculous extent.

@cleeds 

Wikepedia:    A Fourier transform (FT) is a mathematical transform that decomposes functions into frequency components, which are represented by the output of the transform as a function of frequency. Most commonly functions of time or space are transformed, which will output a function depending on temporal frequency or spatial frequency respectively. That process is also called analysis. An example application would be decomposing the waveform of a musical chord into terms of the intensity of its constituent pitches. The term Fourier transform refers to both the frequency domain representation and the mathematical operation that associates the frequency domain representation to a function of space or time.

You can read above that the Fourier Transform decomposes the signal.  The example given is the decomposition of the waveform of a musical chord.  That is exactly what I said.

In analogue audio, the waveform is not decomposed.

Clock error in a DA converter is the timing error in recomposing the analogue waveform from the decomposed waveform for expression by an analogue music system.  I am given to believe that it is impossible to remove clock error entirely.  Hence my comment that the pieces cannot be put together again correctly.

All the cheap oscilloscopes in the world cannot change this.  Nor is their definition fine enough to reproduce the results of clock error.