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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 1 response by dletch2

dletch2
455 posts
 

paul6001 OP50 posts02-24-2021 5:03pmI can’t help but notice that when Paul McGowan raises the exact same point that I did in my original post—100 replies ago—no one makes fun of him, no one mocks him, no one feels the need to attack. Maybe Audiogon members should be paying a little more attention to the merits of a question rather than the cred they attribute to the poster.


Well actually Paul does get a lot of deserved mocking, perhaps not here, but certainly elsewhere. Some of the stuff in his videos makes one shake your head.


The percentage of people here who have a deep understanding of how audio works is not that high. The percentage of people who think they do is much higher. You just have to participate in any thread that compares analog to digital to see the litany of blatantly wrong things that are assigned to digital while ignoring the litany of things that are blatantly an issue with analog especially vinyl. 


This probably is not the best place for your questions.
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