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?
I don't think its a great mystery that noise rides on grounds, clocks control the timing of data packets, the lengths streamer manufactures go to address these issues is part of what differentiates streamers.
Perhaps those noisy server farms are indeed limiting the full potential of high end audio streaming, somewhat analogous to the quality of the power grid and it's influence on our systems. May not matter as much for streamers since ethernet is galvanically isolated from grounds noise. |
In order to test for this one would need to directly connect their streamer to a server with locally stored files, no storage in cloud. This means server with original files at some record company/mastering concern/etc. Ain't never going to happen. And again I'll go back to analogy to power grid, audiophile insistence on providing clean grid/clean streaming chain is of no concern to these entities. Since this the case I guess we need to provide for our own power grid and local storage of Qobuz, Tidal, other music services massive libraries. Again, this ain't gonna happen. Point is why should we bother with things we can't change. |
So on top of Qobuz using TCP/IP protocol, streamers and their operating systems has a bearing on delivering bits. Here is a read in regard to how Euphony OS (which I use) delivers data to dac, https://euphony-audio.com/hesk/knowledgebase.php?article=18 |
@mswale +1 Still, one can benefit from a 'clean' home network. |
@devinplombier By 'clean' network I'm speaking specifically to EMI/RFI contamination by wifi. A router running active wifi is likely the noisiest component in anyone's streaming chain. Disabling wifi on the router serving my audio only network has improved streaming quality. There are further steps possible via the Dejitter It Switch X if you believe eliminating needless network traffic improves streaming sound quality.
Enterprise quality components within a streamer can and does result in lower latency. |
Galvanic isolation is the bare minimum, vast majority of higher end dacs and streamers have taken care of it, grounds contamination is a well known issue.
While attending to many of these network and other streaming issues often result in incremental improvements, some may only be audible in extremely high resolution/transparent systems and streaming chains. Whatever the case, a good reference for determining the quality of one's streaming chain is to compare it to your physical media, no reason it can't compete on a level playing field with cd's or ripped cd's on local storage. Get you clocking/timing optimized and it can compete with very nice vinyl setups.
As for the Dejitter switch, I suspect this won't be the last switch attending to this issue. We can debate the theoreticals, but in the end I also rely on empirical evidence in coming to conclusions, I fully expect I will try this or another similar switch at some point. |
