2. digital
  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 1 response by panzrwagn

panzrwagn's avatar
panzrwagn
649 posts
 

 

"The digital data rides on an analog signal that can pick up noise"

I think you're trying to explain Wi-Fi, which is a Layer 2 Data Link Protocol, as is Ethernet.  Layer 3 Network Protocols, like TCP/IP, handle all the logical addressing, routing, forwarding, fragmentation and reassembly, error correction, and buffering, and diagnostics. Any 'noise' accumulated at Layer 2 simply isn't recognized at Layer 3, unless it corrupts a packet, in which case a checksum error is generated, the entire packet is discarded, and another packet retransmitted. Remember, thi is happening at 100 Mbit or Gigabit speeds, hundreds or thousands of time faster than even the highest audio signals. From a network challenge perspective, even 192KhzX24-bit audio is small beans.

 

 

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