2. misc-audio
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Please Educate Me

If I can’t find the answer here, I won’t find it anywhere. 

Something I’ve wondered about for a long time: The whole world is digital. Some huge percentage of our lives consists of ones and zeros. 

And with the exception of hi-fi, I don’t know of a single instance in which all of this digitalia isn’t yes/no, black/white, it works or it doesn’t. No one says, “Man, Microsoft Word works great on this machine,” or “The reds in that copy of Grand Theft Auto are a tad bright.” The very nature of digital information precludes such questions. 

Not so when it comes to hi-fi. I’m extremely skeptical about much that goes on in high end audio but I’ve obviously heard the difference among digital sources. Just because something is on CD or 92/156 FLAC doesn’t mean that it’s going to sound the same on different players or streamers. 

Conceptually, logically, I don’t know why it doesn’t. I know about audiophile-type concerns like timing and flutter. But those don’t get to the underlying science of my question. 

I feel like I’m asking about ABCs but I was held back in kindergarten and the computerized world isn’t doing me any favors. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do. I’ll be using Photoshop and I’ve got it dialed in just right. 
paul6001

Showing 2 responses by cleeds

cleeds
6,070 posts
 
peteraudio21
Digital information is discrete, analogue information is essentially continuous. The pressure waves that come to your ears are continuous. How you convert the discrete information into continuous by interpolation is one of the main issues.
You are mistaken. We know from the Fourier Transform that the continuous analog wave can be represented using digital data and Nyquist Theorem (it's not a theory) proves that the reconstructed wave will be a perfect analog of the original, within the bandwidth of the system. There is no interpolation involved with the possible exception of when an error is encountered and can't otherwise be corrected. That's actually pretty rare.
... Any time you convert from digital which is discrete, to continuous, which is analogue, you have to will in the missing lines between the point ...
No, that's not how digital audio works. If you want to understand why, you might want to watch this video.
cleeds
6,070 posts
 
jjss49
there are so many people on this board who feel they are entitled to be nasty and be critical while expressing little respect and courtesy for others, it is pitiful ...
It is actually worse than that - for some of the people you’re referring to it is actually their personal style. They enjoy calling other users snowflakes or libtards or whatever and I’m convinced it’s one of the prime reasons they post to Agon. It’s a way to vent their inner frustrations and pain. Probably one of them will respond to this post and accuse me of "virtue signaling," which is one of their favorite complaints.
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