2. digital
  3. 154863-122613

Bits Are Bits, Right?

So I'm currently heading down the path of exploring which CD-Rs sound best in my CD player, along with what burn speeds sound best and what CD burners make the best CDs. I already know from my research that the more accurately the pits are placed on the CD (e.g. less jitter in the recorded data), the better chance I stand at getting the CD to sound good. There is a counter-argument to this idea that goes something like this: "Bits are bits and as long as the CD player can read them, the accuracy of the spacing doesn't matter because everything is thrown into a buffer which removes the effect of any jitter written into the data during burning." I know I don't agree with that logic, but for the life of me I can't remember the technical reasons. I know I used to know. Haha! 

So who here knows why buffers don't solve all of our problems in the digital realm? How come timing accuracy matters in the stages before the data buffer?
mkgus

Showing 1 response by itsjustme

itsjustme
682 posts
 
I hate to tread into the waters, and certainly dont want to design and teach the long class necessary to get to all this, so a few simple comments will do:
1. There are no bits on a CD. repeat after me "eight to fourteen modulation"2. A digital signal, primarily SPDIF which is source cloaked is a half-analog signal, with the amplitude digitized and the X-axis (timing) analog.3. Clock recovery or buffering/readout is impacted by many things including originating jitter and various types of noise4. That said, really good modern DACs using USB (asynch) reduce many of these problems by vast percentages.
Neither the hogwarts school of audio nor the "its all simple and really well understood" school (wrong twice!) are even close to right.
In general quit worrying about rippign speeds and CD media and get good files, on anything, transfer them over a DAC-clocked interface, galvanically isolated, and move along.
For the record i can get remarkable sounds from 320-384 kbps CBR MP3.  OK, FLAC is better, but not much.  HD - the jury is out, clearly good in the studio. I wonder if what  hear is simple better master transfer when the jury is occasionally in, to cripple a metaphor.
G
More to discover