Please Educate Me

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.

"This question had been asked many times before and, as I suspected, the consensus was that it wasn’t a good idea. But, almost invariably, the OP was torn limb from limb for having the temerity to waste the valuable time of random Audiogon users."

What question?

I 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.

As before, I’d like to thank the many people who jumped to my defense. I can assure you that I’m not so fragile as to take these anonymous remarks seriously.

Many of those people encouraged me to continue posting, usually saying something like, “It’s a tough crowd at first but you’ll eventually fit in.”

You know something? I don’t want to fit in. I returned to this site because I had a question and I was looking for an answer. Yesterday, I left my CD player on pause all night. That didn’t seem like a good thing to do but I thought I should climb the mountain one more time and seek wisdom from the old men at the top.

This question had been asked many times before and, as I suspected, the consensus was that it wasn’t a good idea. But, almost invariably, the OP was torn limb from limb for having the temerity to waste the valuable time of random Audiogon users.

I assume that there’s a function somewhere on this site that allows a person to see the newest posts and to offer an immediate response. I further assume that a not insignificant number of users have nothing better to do than watch that list of new posts, then race to demean the usually well-meaning poster. (I say “usually” because rumor has it that troublemakers post questions using the subject line“Ecucate me.”)

These people merit concern, perhaps treatment, certainly pity. And, believe it or not, I don’t feel any particular urge to feel comfortable among them. 

And if anyone bothers to watch that clip, he’ll find that McGowan has been working on this problem “that makes no sense whatsoever” for years and sounds like he’s got years to go. He seems like a pretty smart guy. That is company that I don’t mind keeping.

Ditto @Paul6001!!!. Millercarbon, I don’t see where the op used the word ‘record’ in the first place; but I do see where they asked a question and the phrase ‘educate me’ should be taken literally unless you know the user quite well and can be absolutely positive that it is they who are being cynical; rather than only you.

What a cleverly apt analogy.
Don't forget wedding crashers.
No one is sure who's side they are on, they hurriedly eat and drink too much, and before anyone can confront them, they disappear.

Paul6001,

I was new here not so long ago too. I liken the experience to being a bride’s guest at a wedding where most of the other guests are the groom’s family - and they drink too much and bicker over dinner and end up having a fist fight in the car park. Like that bride’s guest, it is better to watch, not join in.

On your points - I think there are many engineering choices to be made when processing digital information, especially when making the first capture of analogue sound and also when converting it back. There are loads of engineering choices too when the storage medium is a spinning vinyl disc. We hear replicas of the original sound. It is an illusion. The recording engineers, mastering, encoding, and decoding are choice-maker at every stage. You are hearing their choices when things sound different. 
Your listening - if I was you, I’d put together a headphone system for personal listening. Use Roon to benefit from crossfeed filters. Seems like in your NY apartment you will struggle to have a listening room and a living room in the same space. So don’t try. Headphones for personal listening, and some easy listening omni-directional room-filling, guest-pleasing speakers for social listening.  I’m a fan of back-loaded horns because wherever you and guests  sit in your room everyone gets a lovely listen. 
Now, see you soon in the car park where we can watch some of the old boys take their jackets off and start swinging - and missing. 

Another county heard from. 

Paul McGowan of PS Audio in conversation with John Atkinson of Stereophile, February 28, 2018. The conversation, which has been edited for readability, is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0NUvziOgWQ

Atkinson: . . . Putting a disc on, it's like going back to the last century. [Leaning forward, sly grin.] But there's still something right about the sound of a mechanical disc playing in a mechanical player.

McGowan: It sounds better. It sounds better, so far, than any server we've tried. We're working on a server. And we're going to fix that problem. We think that we may know why the physical disc sounds better. Because on the surface, it makes no sense whatsoever. The bits are the same.

Atkinson: Right, they're the same bits being presented to the DAC.

McGowan: Yup, yup. But that's true only insofar as it's ones or zeros. What's different is the timing of the bits, the noise levels [more engineering stuff].

MS Word remains digital when we see and use it, whereupon music ends up analog.  No digital speakers out there that I'm aware of. If there were, they'd still have to move air, so different materials, masses, enclosures,  room characteristics,  etc, etc, will affect sound.

Sorry for the overly critical and angry replies. There's plenty of good experience and advice here...if you don't mind wading through the flaming trolls.

Remember: There is no spoon. :)

@woofman - Hard nosed audiophiles are not happy with digital music. You might say serious audiophiles aren’t, but that would cause a heated argument. 

Paul6001
It's a shame that the immediate response to your question was snark, but I'd like to think this is more a reflection of the times rather than our community.  However, just like other forms of social media it pays to consider your words and choose them carefully.  Also like other forms of social media, you shouldn't take it too seriously. 

I think a few of the posters here have hinted at why ones and zeroes in audio are not the same as ones and zeroes in other types of digital files or processes.  Your original post suggested it as well.  You said timing and flutter but I think you meant timing and jitter.  Jitter is errors in timing that cause distortion.  A music file may be ones and zeroes but that is only until you begin to play it back.  What was previously just data now has to be precisely reproduced not just in terms of the sounds those ones and zeroes represent, but accurately in terms of timing as well.  This is not that easy to, at least not well, and is likely what accounts for the biggest differences in the sound quality of one DAC vs another.  Any part of the signal chain that disrupts that timing hurts the quality of the reproduced signal.  Despite variations from human to human, our ability to hear is pretty amazing and when we hear reproduced music, with even very small timing errors we can tell and it doesn't sound as good as it should.  So yes, all the bits and pieces in your reproduction chain matter, disc players, and cables, etc., but I believe that this is the fundamental reason that digital sounds different than analog.  Analog is subject to other kinds of distortion, but that's a different topic. 

One of the ways audio technology has advanced to deal with this issue is sampling rates.  A sampling rate of 192,000 per second is better that a rate of 44,100 times per second because you're dealing with a much smaller slice of time and these slices represent finer gradations of the signal.  As if your picture had more pixels. 

Now imagine a pure sine wave and just one second's worth -divided into 192,000 slices.  Each slice is like a step in the shape of the that wave.  More slices gives you more resolution and a better, more accurate facsimile of that original sound, but you're still chopping up what was once a continuous wave and reassembling it. 
Oh, and now imagine it's not a pure tone, represented by a perfect sine wave but a complex mash up of instruments, voices, hall ambiance, etc.  You get the idea.  Like my father used to say, "timing is everything." 

Music represents a very complex kind of information.  Reproducing it with the hope of making it sound like the real thing is tough.  It's a modern wonder that digital music works at all and that so many of us hardnosed audiophiles are happy with it.  I'm sure there are plenty of folks here who can do a better and more accurate job of explaining this than me.  I struggled with this too, but someone explained digital audio to me this way once and it was the first time I felt like I was getting a handle on it.  I hope this helps to answer your question.  Just for the record I listen to BOTH kinds.  Regular and extra crispy. 

BTW I leave my equipment on all the time unless it's storming or I'm on vacation.  I know it's a waste of energy but it seems like such a small indulgence...
And welcome to the club.  You're not really an audiophile unless you've been attacked in a forum. 

C

paul6001,  The essence of your post was not lost on me.  While a full answer to your question can be long and drawn out as many in this post would like it to be.  The correct answer is that the digital representation of an acoustic signal is the same regardless of the type of playback system used.  That said, there are several formats to generate the digital word and each format has a method for extracting or converting the word back to audible sound.  The most poplar method has been the system used to make CD's.   We also have SACD and other high sampling rate methods that produce a better representation of the sound.  Generally speaking the more data or gamut the better the sound.  Converting the word to music and playing it though electronics is another question altogether and is better left for another conversation.  Thanks for your post.  Larry 

Mapman +1

You really don’t need a lot of technical jargon. It’s been said previously, but ...
 Preserving the sequence of 1s and 0s, that represent the music, is easy (the digital domain). All the sound differences (analog domain) occur when converting from analog to digital and from digital to analog at various points in the recording and playback stream.

Interesting!

I must say that i dont understand all the scientific explanation of WHY  my homemade devices works.....

For sure it is easy to understand the principle behind Helmholtz bottles for example.... But the schumann generator grid effects on acoustic? the ionizer effect? 

These are the 3 more powerful devices i used with some many other one, mainly simple generators like diffirent bells of different size... 

Mahgister,  " We can correct anything in a room, even the worst position...But for sure the speakers location distance MUST be precise... Othen than that, even with one of my speaker pressed in a corner for example my imaging is balanced.....
"
  Time aligning can allow for differing distances and for precise balancing of when sound arrives to your ears. You can set gain so imaging is good but when you set time and gain you get balanced sound and more definition. I built a single fold horn with a 108" throat depth and dialing that in was a revelation. Some of my SMAHL and LMAHL tweeter buyers want free standing ones because they claim to be able to hear a difference in time alignment just by moving the tweeters across the top of the speaker cabinet. My hearing is not that acute so I take their word for it.

You’re now decorating for sound. Great if the wife oks it. Bass traps come first in corners where floor meets sidewalks and ceiling meets sidewalls.

paul6001: “I’m not willing (at this point, anyway) to trade decorating for sound. And I can’t imagine that there’s any other way to diffract or absorb the sound, short of hanging curtains in front of them, which sorta defeats the principle. Suggestions, anyone?”

I have a similar issue but I’m considering using some GIK freestanding acoustic panels that I can place into position at the first reflection points on each side wall when listening. You might check those out.

Hi Paul -

"Why is digital audio information treated differently than digital information in any other form."

Well in fact since you are a master printer, you know that your Canon is going to print the same file differently from your Epson. And that the print will look different on glossy and matte papers from the same or different makers. You know that a Leica lens will render the identical scene differently from a Canon. Perhaps most on point, every app will convert your RAW file in a slightly different way.

Then, though they all use the same sRGB file, your smartphone will display differently from your laptop and your big bux calibrated monitor. And it’s not just how they display, it is how quickly they render, how bright the image is, how much of the gamut you really see, etc. There is a myriad of variables. Which as a professional image maker you manage by testing, then locking down the variables.

The point is that all (many?) digital media present differently depending on their path back to our ability to perceive them. To paraphrase a photo term, various devices have different perceptual intents - either by design or as the result of engineering decisions be they adequate or inadequate.

The other thing that I think is extremely important to consider is the history of audio. Voices, instruments, all kinds of components along the signal path, and every concert hall are all celebrated for their differences, not their similarities. There is no white balance, there is no way to measure color temperature. There is zero db, THD, SN, SPL and other measures that like barrel distortion are useful, but limited in explaining what we perceive - sometimes distortion sounds good - ask any rock band. How loud it is will greatly affect your perception of the recording; just as how large a print is, how far away it is and how it is lit will impact the viewer’s perception of an image.

A studio performance sounds different than a concert performance - same singer, same song, same instruments. An LP and a CD of the exact same recording sound different, as does a 44.1 versus 192 file. In fact, if you look at it, those differences and their alleged fidelity replicating a recording is what marketers use to justify one component costing more than another.

So IMO it is simply not reasonable to presume (or mandate) that all decoding and playback systems (which is what we are focusing on) will sound the same; when every listener, every room and every system is as different as a fingerprint. It’s simply not possible. Which I find incredibly amusing given that they all purport to provide a window into the ’truth’.

Having wandered in and out of these discussions for a few decades, I have concluded that like photography what this hobby is about is becoming proficient at discerning and defining those differences for yourself. Then putting a system together so that you hear (experience) all that nuance and variety in a way that is pleasing to you in your listening environment. It may be sacrilege to say it, but everything else is just noise.

paul6001,

”Conceptually, logically, I don’t know why it isn’t.”

Doesn’t that invite a response, doesn’t that ask somebody to inform me why it does?

No, it does not. It is a part of your musings, not a question by any means.

"Glupson, you got me. A triumph of form over content. As punishment I hereby ban myself from this forum."

No need for punishment. Some of us are just not good with either form, or content. You are not the only one who exhibited deficiencies in both here. I was not out to get you, I will happily return you to wherever you came from. It is just that I have low tolerance for bragrants who call others’ lives and plates whatever you called them.

It’s because I’m a New Yorker that I appreciate a good brawl. 

If one is to spend 24/7 obsessing about a pair of speakers, one will reach a point where there’s not much to do except worry about “halfway wavelength cancellation frequency.” God only knows what will come next. 

Actually, when the speakers first arrived, I plunked them down on the stands where the old speakers stood. Despite all my micro adjustments and calculations, that’s still where they sound best. 

But a breakthrough lurks around the corner! I can feel it! Despite what KEF and everyone else says, I’ll find the secret and enter a new audio dimension. Then I’ll tell millercarbon what’s what

To the OP,

Why do you allow your bell to be rung?
As a fellow New Yorker (albeit now a suburbanite,) I would think you’d be able to shrug this kind of dreck off.
Your question is a perfectly logical one to me.
Im surprised you keep coming back for more abuse.

millercarbon.  Get a life.  There are no reasons whatsoever for your comment, other than to be a prick. You offer no advice, and make accusations that are totally unfounded.  Go back to watching stoner cartoons.

We can correct anything in a room, even the worst position...But for sure the speakers location distance MUST be precise... Othen than that, even with one of my speaker pressed in a corner for example my imaging is balanced.....


This is the good news and i know it by my listenings experiments, 2 years in my acoustic....



The bad news is that it will not be esthetic and cheap at the same time...

And each room is a case by case problem with only listening experiments to correct the course...Standard acoustic treatment solve all problem if you recreate the room for audio, but it is not cheap...I had useed many unorthodox controls and treatment at no cost almost with success..

The only thing i will try at last will be adjusting speakers and room with a mic and a program...This summer...

But my results are already astounding.... Not esthetic at all tough....I even cannot do justice to the foolishness of my room with only one photo.... But the S.Q. is the best i ever listen to ....I laugh the last then.... 😊


Thake my good news for a glimmer of hope....

My best to you freom the soul...

Paul6001, You said in part " 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. "
Above and beyond digital source variances you also have room variances which effect what you hear. Then add variances between drivers and time aligning and balancing gain and then add drivers have problems with certain frequencies to be EQued. Then add your own hearing. My left ear hears better than my right. Then add crossover limitations which many suffer from because they want plug and play.

When I started to build my current system I knew all these things had to be addressed as they were all part of the aggregate. The only answer I know to adjust all these variables is to get a UMike and Room Equalizer Wizard ( free audio output analyzing software) and use something like a Xilica XP4080 to control all the potential variables. You have to learn to measure what you are doing and then be able to control what you output if your goal is the best possible sound with your existing, or indeed any setup.

My system is very simple. Feed my source files from a PC to the Xilica and then Bi-amped output to my two way all horn rig and there is no need for all these bits and pieces so many assemble to try and fix their problems. Do it right the first time and keep it simple. Doing things this way also means you change rooms and you can adjust for the new room. Change speakers or amps same thing. You like warm tube amp sound or any other preference you can adjust to do this. It is not fun to learn but once you do you are good to go for any variable you might introduce in equipment or environment.

By the way consider this. I can set the UMike up in my listening spot positioned next to my head and connect it to my PC. Keyboard and monitor right in front of me and I can sit there and adjust on the fly in real time and save those settings for future use. Up to 30 presets so you can even dial in your preferences for specific genres of music and sit down for an evening of Cello or Rock or Blues/Jazz or whatever. Selecting a preset takes all of 20 seconds. Any other way leaves a lot to be desired in my experience. My goal is to be right there sitting with the musicians or next to the 30’ pipes and this is the only way I have found to do so.

Good old Millercarbon and it is amusing that he chimes in first here to educate. Self annointed self appointed curator of the only accurate opinions and audio knowledge. Just ask him and he will tell you so in detail.
  I am coming to the conclusion he is a retired bored guy who just likes to stir crap up and spend his days pontificating and harassing. Goes well with all the absurd audio topics and claims made here though so there is that.

Room correction or different speakers with narrow directivity but I wouldn't worry about it. 

Also, I did a little calculating. (I might have a problem here.) My quarter wavelength cancellation frequency is 214 hz. Halfway is 107 hz. Is that good? Bad? I can’t do much about it but should I worry?

From my original post:


”Conceptually, logically, I don’t know why it isn’t.”


Doesn’t that invite a response, doesn’t that ask somebody to inform me why it does? Like desktopguy so nicely did. Complaining that, “He never asked a question” seems to be a level of pedantry way above 20 kHz, out in the range where only hummingbirds and . . . other things dwell. 

That bit of self-restraint is actually causing me physical pain. I need a drink. 

Glupson, you got me. A triumph of form over content. As punishment I hereby ban myself from this forum. At least until another inane question pops into my head. 

And to think, all this audio interest/excitement/curiosity was caused by the arrival of my new (used) LS50s. We’re only a week into this relationship but I can tell it will be one of the deepest and most meaningful of my life.


Now HERE’S a question, although it probably belongs in another forum: My tiny NYC apartment forces the speakers into an awful position. (The apartment is small but at least it’s expensive.) I can move them in and out about four inches and about the same horizontally, and I’ve been carefully positioning them inch by inch all week. The problem is that on one side, at the point of first reflection and a lot of other points as well, are two big works of art covered by glass. I’m not willing (at this point, anyway) to trade decorating for sound. And I can’t imagine that there’s any other way to diffract or absorb the sound, short of hanging curtains in front of them, which sorta defeats the principle. Suggestions, anyone?


I expected transparency and accuracy from these speakers. I didn’t expect the warm, rich sound. Maybe it’s the small room, maybe it’s my unfamiliarity with audiophile speakers, but they’re so friendly and inviting. This truly is love. 

"Repeat: OP asks a reasonable question."

OP, in fact, did not ask a question. She/he posted her/his musings and informed us of activities.

Because reading text or looking at pictures on your p,c. is comparable to listening to music off a small radio. It does the job , conveys the information you need . This is not like listening to music from an audiophile grade system where everything matters right down to speaker toe in. But then again my engineer could not convey (via email) precisely the color of a commissioned object. His digital camera transfer to his computer was not accurate.   I had to personally visit his workshop. Likewise we are passionate about getting the sound right. Try reading a component review and gush over the descriptions you will read. And most of it is in a language we understand and can discern

There’s nothing at all strange about OP’s question. We’re completely surrounded by digital information on computers, laptops, tablet, cellphones, RFID chips that track those phones in stores. The list is endless. And all that hardware seems to work pretty well; or to phrase it more accurately, it normally works, and it works normally.

But of course digital audio is vastly different. Some digital is sonically tragic; some is exalted and worth every penny. I think OP is asking a logical question that boils down to: why all the variability in digital audio?

I think the answer is tied up to a heady brew of factors, including:

• The complexity of music (for ADA encoders to handle), compared to other, less dense content streams
• The particularity of how music sounds--how top level audio is known to sound--and how easily that particularity is disrupted and degraded in the digital realm (and in particular, when it is converted back to analog for rendition on an audio system)
• And the high expectations and well-developed sonic biases, expectations, and beliefs of those in this hobby. Collectively we’re very quick to gun down bad sound (regardless of how it came to be bad)

I fought with digital for years (as in, "fought to like it and find it acceptable"). That fight got way easier when I discoverd multibit & NOS DACs. Digital is more ear-friendly to me now.

But I never messed with high-end network streamers or any of that signal distribution gear others know so much about. I suspect new digital gremlins await me there, ready to pounce.

Repeat: OP asks a reasonable question. The fact that he got treated so unreasonably says way more about this site as a venue for audio information than about his question itself.

Our DACs are processing digital information the same as our microwaves, yet we judge them very differently.

Our microwave is NOT interconnected to other gear....We dont use our ears to listen to microwaves...

Bits are always bits and waves.... This is not and never can be argued against....Fourier theory like says cleeds is rigorous maths...Wave=digital....But there exist MANY type of dac implementation with differences...

And our ears listen to the results of multiple gear interactions(cables amplifier dac and speakers power conditioner etc) in their THREE working dimensions: mechanical,electrical and acoustical...

We dont listen to pure  bits but to differently processed and smpliled bits and , we listen to the end resulting sound of many interacting factors in their 3 working  dimensions in a specific system and room and house with specific ears...

Why in the world could we wait for the same results  ? They are  coming from different dac or they are  coming  from  the same dac family perhaps but in very different working conditions ?

Because of the system working dimensions implementation in our specific home that are NEVER the same...I called these working dimensions, the system embeddings controls...

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.

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. Draw a set of axes and put some dots on in that form a sloping straight line, or a sine curve if you want. That's your digital information. Exact and the same for everyone. Now draw a continuous line that goes through those points. As long as it goes through those points it matches the digital data. It's how smooth you are between those points that changes the final graph. Did you join each point up with a straight line or did you "wiggle" a little between the points. Any time you  convert from digital which is discrete, to continuous, which is analogue, you have to will in the missing lines between the points. How you chose to interpret those missing pieces will change the "sound" of the output way. Differences in the execution of those algorithms in terms of weighting, speed etc. change the outcome of the waveform. Once the waveform is analogue, and in wires, it is them open to corruption and interference from other sources, etc. etc. etc, Ultimately, somewhere in a system the conversion from discrete MUST occur. It's all about how it occurs.

@paul6001 - typing a letter on a keyboard is DIGITAL to start. the english language is made of letters which when keyed are digital. Represented by 1s and 0s in the disk's memory. If you talk about handwriting interpretation that is another matter, there is some analysis conversion taking place.

Stick to arts please.

Our DACs are processing digital information the same as our microwaves, yet we judge them very differently. The difference I believe is that music is an aesthetic pursuit - thus the method of delivery comes under more scrutiny.

... thus the SONIC RESULT comes under more scrutiny

Good points and interesting view.

I think a lot of audiophiles who obsess over DACs are old timers who are used to having to do that with their old vinyl rigs, which are MUCH HARDER to get right.

Most companies have D2A conversion down pretty well. Little for an audiophile to do other than choose a DAC for whatever reason they choose. Most are very good. DAC technology is much more reliable and robust than phono. Not hard to find a good DAC and just enjoy the music unlike phono rigs which require a lot of expertise and time to get set up optimally. I think this is a big reason many audiophiles tend to poo poo digital still.  10 years ago I could see the point.  Not today though.   They blame it on the sound but its really that a phono setup is a much better toy to play with for those so inclined or merely they are old school and used to that being a thing.

OR here that they got phono gear to sell...

It’s a good question, Paul. The ones and zeros are intended to represent SOMETHING. It might be something specific, like the letter “A“, or it might be something much more nuanced, such as the distance, speed and acceleration of a speaker cone at a precise moment in time. Now, the reason Word works consistently on any two different computers is because we (the collective “we”) have decided that it’s IMPORTANT, in a word processor, that letters not be confused with each other. So important that a system was developed, called ASCII, that has been universally accepted for use in word processors. ASCII tells us that an “A” will always be represented by the same sequence of ones and zeros. And if a computer couldn’t get that right, Microsoft would be out of business. 
But music is a very different beast, because you cannot listen to a note of music and tell whether it differs from another note of music as easily as you can tell that the letter “A” your word processor spits out is different from the letter B. Yes, I know, audio has its own standards too, like Redbook. If we want to reproduce the sound of an orchestra for one second, the Redbook standard tells us that we need 44,000 bytes of data. But if one of those bytes has a single flipped bit, I’d wager that even @millercarbon would not be able to tell the difference; consequently, it is not as IMPORTANT to a normal listener as it would be if he or she were typing a letter on a keyboard, and a different letter showed up on the screen. Most listeners are willing to put up with a few errors in the translation of their music from digital to analog, as long as they can’t hear the difference.  But some peculiar people, called audiophiles, think it’s worth spending a lot of money to try to hear those differences, and will go to great lengths to ensure themselves that their reproduction of those 44,000 bytes is as error-free as technologically possible. You can think of it like a word processor for someone with a really bad case of OCD. Throw in the additional complexity of how two different humans prefer to hear the same musical piece on their ridiculously expensive systems, and you have a real hot mess, called “Audiogon”.  Hope that helps.

paul6001,

"...infinitesimally small sense superiority..."

"...infinitesimally small sense of superiority..."

It is not a big difference. It only gives those who questioned your writing a little more credibility and your baffling response to them a tiny bit more silly.

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..

I got so tired of reading the harsh comments I decided to scroll down and just post. Seams to me @paul6001 posed an interesting question - got me thinking. Our DACs are processing digital information the same as our microwaves, yet we judge them very differently. The difference I believe is that music is an aesthetic pursuit - thus the method of delivery comes under more scrutiny. If our goal was to heat food - or process a word document - we would judge it by different standards. I’m not much on a video guy, but I expect those who are judge there DVD players the same way. 

...just another 'nite on the 'net.....*g*

Btw....I'm not an angry anything....bemused, sometimes amused, slave of my muse, but not meaning abuse except in a general sense when I make some....sense, that is. *s*

Paul, swing accepted but felt free to duck... ;)

Being meatless entities as opposed to IRL is irritating....look, I'd rather have a drink or share a blunt with any and all instead of 'all this'.  We could obviously 'read' each other and either come to common ground or avoid as needed.....

The OP states a rather open-ended commentary, and we all go off on our particular tangents; responses vary as typical and as expected.

Such is SOP for 'Gon.  Personally, I'm pretty pragmatic about audio and my approach to it.  I don't strive for the perfection that I know (IMHO) doesn't exist.  Too much between me and the performers at the mic or pickups in the studio or the venue.  What I employ to listen to that is a varied bunch of items that makes pleasant enough sounds to amuse me.

'You' may run from 'here' screaming or laughing; I'd rather 'you' pause and tell me what/why/YHO and discuss much; previous offerings accepted or declined.

As to Why we put ourselves through any/all of this is runs around the reefs of philosophy centric to music and the enjoyment of.

Spending time and pixels on the How is fine.
But whether 500 or 150K$...if it makes you smile and transported to the Other....by the Music, and not the How....

Wonderful.
Enjoy.
J

People keep talking about differences in printing. I’m a photographer as well, so I’m keenly aware of the fine points of printing. But once the image is fixed in Photoshop or whatever you’re using, printing becomes a mechanical process and isn’t relevant to this discussion. 

What would be relevant is how Photoshop works from one machine to another. I’ve known a lot of photo editors in my day but alas, I’ve never heard anything to indicate the slightest difference. As long as the machine has sufficient horsepower, Photoshop is always the same. 

Since I’m kinda getting into the swing of things here, I add this note just to piss people off. Very obnoxious, very immodest, very unlike me. But just to bolster my printing bona fides, as a photographer, among other exhibitions, I had an image on display at the Louvre in 2015. It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t spend your days mocking those you judge to be unworthy of a presence on this forum. 

And just because I can anticipate the hypertechnical response that note will draw, no, the Louvre doesn’t display photography. I was under the pyramid but not in the official museum. Not a distinction I feel necessary to draw in ordinary life. 

And I’m sincerely sorry for that bit of blowhardlery. (Is that a word, Glupson? I tend to think not.) Getting in must have been some kind of fluke and I don’t expect it to be repeated in this lifetime. Again, my apologies. I’ve been taking a beating here and I had to throw a counterpunch.

Glupson, I don’t see any difference between my version and yours. Did I misspell something? I’m a terrible speller. Thank God for copy editors. 

Digital isn't just 1s and 0s. There is a whole bunch of processing actions at play like error correction, power supply noise, quality of chips and sampling rates etc. The better the device and the lower the amount of error-correction required, the more accurate the conversion from digital to analog. That's why a good DAC improves sound.
When you input a letter into Word, you are merely instructing a machine to manage one's and zeros. There is no specific intelligence invoked in the apparatus. The intelligence is outside of the digital space when you interpret meaning. The same with a digital audio component, it's instruction set and software (music medium) as it is 'transduced' from digits into intelligence-detecting sound waves impinging on your mind.
Word works better on some computers than others. Faster, responsive, 256 colors or 24 bit, better quality printing. Try render a PIXAR movie on a 133MHz Windows 98 machine. Everything matters. The colors are better on a gaming machine.

"...in the hope of gaining a small, small, infinitesimally small sense superiority..."

You could not have said it better. That is exactly how that post of yours comes across.

By the way, now when we know you are an accomplished and self-confident writer, would you say that...

"...a small, small, infinitesimally small sense superiority..."

would be slightly more polished if it were...

"...a small, small, infinitesimally small sense of superiority..."

Some of us are lurking here in the hope of gaining a small, small, infinitesimally small knowledge of any possible kind.

Unless this listening was done with proper blind testing then confirmation bias, cognitive bias, placebo etc...
Or differences in reconstruction filters and analog output of the units.

Let me repeat something from my first post: I’ve heard the difference. I’ve heard a PS Audio CD player sound better than my NAD when played through the same system. But search as I do, I can’t find anyone/anything to explain the difference

“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.”


Really? I am more familiar with this world than I’d like to be, given that my son is kinda a junior member. And although I don’t expect anyone to believe me, these people operate on a level that make audiophiles look like freshman going up against doctoral students. With a million dollar prize up for grabs somewhere in the world almost every weekend, they have the incentive to be pretty serious. And with a million dollars on the line, they also have the incentive to seek out every advantage, no matter how theoretical or unproven. But I have never—as in not one single time—heard any talk about differences in color production. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that my son has never heard about it, given his knowledge far exceeds mine. Wouldn’t a more intense green help you to see an assassin lurking around a wall? Apparently not. 

Now, if the kid would only start bringing home some of that big prize money, I’d get off his back about trading the real world for the virtual one. Although I guess that during the pandemic, video games are as real as anything else. 

Let me repeat something from my first post: I’ve heard the difference. I’ve heard a PS Audio CD player sound better than my NAD when played through the same system. But search as I do, I can’t find anyone/anything to explain the difference.

The storage of information as bits makes no distinction about what the information actually is.  Your hard drive does not care whether the files are cat videos, financial data or files containing music.  It's the encoding and decoding of the analog signal into and out of digital that accounts for sonic differences.  The most common audio format is Pulse Code Modulation (PCM).  Furthermore, even within PCM there are different factors and technologies that effect sound quality.  One of the key factors in PCM is the clock.  A stable and accurate clock is necessary to properly encode/decode music.
Oh yeah, try not be such a dick with your next question -- just messing with ya'.