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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 optimize

optimize
164 posts
 
Strange question.
Why ones and zeroes is the same in computer world compared to audio world.

You take two things and mix them up.
First if you take MS word it will have the same functions on a dell or hp. It is like Adele will sing Hallo on every CD player in the world. And it will never sound like Adele is singing another track than that. It is the same information.

Regarding color in a game that there is a greener green in the same software (game).
That is like audio the data info in the game for a color is a constant number. But then the reproduction device the monitor has different color depth, brightness, calibration and so on.
So it WILL give you different color of green on different monitors.

It is like gasoline that is gasoline like one and zeroes. If you put it in a car it goes to the combustion in the engine and expand. Then you ask why that gasoline is performing differently in a Porsche than in a Mercedes.
optimize
164 posts
 
Really?
Yes. Let me put it like this.
Programmer of a game put in a specific CONSTANT hex #13220 is a dark green of green-cyan. And in RGB color mode model #13220 is comprised of 0.39% red, 19.61% green and 12.55% blue.

So it is a constant variable that is in the software and it is not changing.

Take ten laptops install software that includes that constant.

Put all ten laptops side by side and you WILL have 10 DIFFERENT shades of green.

And as I explained why in the previous post, all of the laptops screens reproduce that constant slightly different.

That’s why there is a calibration devices that you suck onto the display and make a calibration of the screen.

The same goes for CD or any digital device there is a data constant number that is made sure that it always stays the same with error correction (matematics calculate checksums and so on to make sure of that.)

But after that what that constant data is leaving the CD transport and what is coming out of the speakers is ALMOST the same like with the monitor example above.

It stops to be a constant and for audio it is in the analog domain and you need to understand that there is no check sums and no control over that the information (the constant) is intact it is now a sliding scale..

You can build two identical amplifiers and when capacitors, resistors, inductors opamps and so on they are ALL individuals and different from one to another for the exact same component!

That is why they have tolerances. So if you have a tolerance of ±1% then it is at the most only for that component alone at most 2% variation between one and another part of the same capacitor for example.

That is why very serious amp builders measure and match each component in the signal path. Like you could pay someone to match and find two tubes that measure closer to each other than other ones in the same batch, to use in a amp tube. So in the analog domain everything is in a flux state..
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