We Need To Talk About Ones And Zeroes
Several well-respected audiophiles in this forum have stated that the sound quality of hi-res streamed audio equals or betters the sound quality of traditional digital sources.
These are folks who have spent decades assembling highly desirable systems and whose listening skills are beyond reproach. I for one tend to respect their opinions.
Tidal is headquartered in NYC, NY from Norwegian origins. Qobuz is headquartered in Paris, France. Both services are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud infrastructure services giant that commands roughly one third of the world's entire cloud services market.
AWS server farms are any audiophile's nightmare. Tens of thousands of multi-CPU servers and industrial-grade switches crammed in crowded racks, miles of ordinary cabling coursing among tens of thousands of buzzing switched-mode power supplies and noisy cooling fans. Industrial HVAC plants humming 24/7.
This, I think, demonstrates without a doubt that audio files digitally converted to packets of ones and zeroes successfully travel thousands of miles through AWS' digital sewer, only to arrive in our homes completely unscathed and ready to deliver sound quality that, by many prominent audiophiles' account, rivals or exceeds that of $5,000 CD transports.
This also demonstrates that digital transmission protocols just work flawlessly over noise-saturated industrial-grade lines and equipment chosen for raw performance and cost-effectiveness.
This also puts in perspective the importance of improvements deployed in the home, which is to say in the last ten feet of our streamed music's multi-thousand mile journey.
No worries, I am not about to argue that a $100 streamer has to sound the same as a $30,000 one because "it's all ones and zeroes".
But it would be nice to agree on a shared-understanding baseline, because without it intelligent discourse becomes difficult. The sooner everyone gets on the same page, which is to say that our systems' digital chains process nothing less and nothing more than packets of ones and zeroes, the sooner we can move on to genuinely thought-provoking stuff like, why don't all streamers sound the same? Why do cables make a difference? Wouldn't that be more interesting?
It does if it's TCP/IP because any faulty packet is simply re-sent. That re-send isn't possible with UDP/IP, though, so an error is possible. The audibilty of that error is debatable, of course, and probably depends on the extent of the error in the first place. |
No, Qobuz is correct - analog audio is just a series of sine waves (and cosines). That's the Fourier Theorem. If you doubt that, just look at the squiggles on an LP - a series of sine waves. It's not infinite, though. To do that you'd need infinite bandwidth, which isn't needed and isn't possible.
But the future is "error free" because Qobuz is using TCP/IP and the file is at least partly cached before playback begins. And even hi-res audio requires a download speed of only around 10Mbps, so there's plenty of time for any damaged packet to be re-sent.
It isn't clear what you mean here. TCP/IP guarantees perfect transmission with the transmission of each packet. Each packet is "complete" unto itself.
My experience is just the opposite - I've found Qobuz to be remarkably accessible and transparent about its protocols. My information regarding how Qobuz works comes right from its US execs David Solomon and Dan Mackta. My only connection with Qobuz is as a paid subscriber and to be clear, I have issues with the service. In particular, its files are often the "remastered" compressed versions, so my local files often sound better. But facts are facts, and Qobuz delivers bit-perfect audio direct to your streamer, provided your connection speed and network are capable to the task. And for audio, those requirements are minimal - almost trivial here in the third millenium.
|
That's not the case with providers such as Qobuz, which use TCP/IP protocol. That delivers bit-perfect data right to your streamer. |
Which one was that?
Which one was that?
Which one was that? |
