Please Educate Me

" But those don’t get to the underlying science of my question."
- So, what is the question?

The question essentially is this: Why is digital audio information treated differently than digital information in any other form. Microsoft Word is a bunch of ones and zeros just like the ones on my new Vampire Weekend CD. But VW sound different when played on a NAD CD player than they do when played on a Parasound CD player. Why? Aren’t both players reading the same ones and zeros? 

We don’t expect Microsoft Word to perform differently on a Dell computer than it does on a H-P. What’s the difference between those ones and zeros and the audio ones? Somebody hinted that it’s the manner in which they the information is converted from digital to analog. That could be the answer although I wish someone would expound on it. And doesn’t Microsoft make a similar conversion when it converts digital information to something akin to analog in the form of letters that we can read?


You know, my PhD is in political science, not electrical engineering. But I know enough to be confident that this is a legitimate question, perhaps even a deep one. Some people seem to be willfully misreading it.


A few months back, I asked whether I would do any damage if I left my amp on all the time. I got several helpful answers. Maybe my question is a bit too esoteric for this crowd. I’ll hew closer to equipment related questions going forward.

When someone says, 'educate me', it reads like passive-aggression designed to test the steel of their preconceptions against someone else's claims.

It is the season of senatorial grilling of cabinet nominees, so maybe it is just in the air. But the fact that your post contains no questions leads me to believe that you are looking for neither an education or a conversation.

In that respect I think MC was too generous, because you will not pick up the trail where he left off. 

The best education is the one you work for. And I know you've done no work yet, because audiogon forums are the last place you should look for this info, not the first. 

I suggest you start this education by informing yourself what those 1s and 0s actually are, both at rest and in transit.

Passive-aggressive? Why on earth read that into my question? Although like I said, I’m not a regular here. Maybe I accidentally posted code for something very different. 

I haven’t done enough homework to satisfy you? Well, I guess that I’m going to have to live with that disapproval. We all have our crosses to bear. 

Apparently, I’m not going to learn anything here. If the game wasn’t a blow out I probably wouldn’t have asked. I just got a new pair of speakers and audio is very much on my mind. But clearly I’m on the wrong place. I’ll darken your doorstep no more.

One reason could be they don't sound different on the 2 CD players you just think they do. You would need to conduct a proper listening test. Other reason could be the type of DACs  and reconstruction filters in the units are different. The CD is the same, the 1 and 0 are the same no matter what equipment you use but the equipment is different. It's the same with MS Word or whatever they can run different on different machines, Photoshop is a better example it can run fine on some machines and crash others.