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  3. 194442-192372

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?

devinplombier

Showing 4 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,899 posts
 

Like any well engineered solution, the best systems are in fact built based on facts or rules first, then trusting your ears from there.  
 

Arguments for trusting your ears alone are flawed.   Your ears can only hear what is there, not what may be missing.  Facts and rules come first to help have best chance of covering all the bases first thereby giving your ears the best chance of being the most happy. 
 

 

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,899 posts
 

For the application of producing sound, the networks job is to have enough bandwidth to deliver the data needed fast enough so the streamer can stream in real time.   So the network needs to have sufficient bandwidth for the job.  That’s pretty much a given with modern home network technology.  
 

For wireless connections, you have to make sure the wireless connection is strong enough.  Bandwidth will decrease with distance and can become a bottleneck if not done well. 
 

Thrn it’s the streamer and DAC working together to take the data off the network and convert it to sound.  This is where there are lots of possibilities and results can vary widely depending on specific implementations component to component.  
 

The good news is that the technology here is now fairly advanced as well and in practice realized well by many newer products at all price points.   

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,899 posts
 

Yes but is it “high end” TCP/IP? 😬

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,899 posts
 

This is too far out there to even discuss. 

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