FUD, intellectual honesty, digital facts, and the TAS articles...

[DaveWr]

Can you have a class action against magazines......

[Mnyb]

Can you have a class action against magazines......

Sadly not for this, and there are bigger fish like homeopaths and Scientology and creationism ( " intelligent" design ) that should go up against the wall first.

[item_audio]

You are using arguments about one part of the chain that do not apply to another part of the chain. Big animal pictures:

1) Digital file. The system is designed to exactly preserve this. RF noise, issues on the power rails, etc. can not change this, without a catastrophic failure. The bits don't change unnoticed.

2) DAC. As soon as the data is converted into an analog signal, it again becomes susceptiable to noise/etc.

3) The interconnect between the system and the DAC. There may or may not be possibilities for error here.

a) With well designed interconnects (computer circuits, networks, modern interconnects like DLink or HDMI with handshakes) again, error detection/correction is in place. What leaves one end arrives on the other end exactly the same, or not at all.

b) Unfortunately, digital coax and optical interconnects are not well designed, there is the possibility of jitter.

Trying to attribute problems of 2) or 3b) to the digital domains of 1) and 3a) are false. So while we can have great discussions about the attributes of various DACs, or just how much effect noise can have on 2) and 3b), we can not have real discussions on, for instance, the audible effects of WAV/FLAC conversions or RF noise changing the signal while on a network.

eric

There are two quite different issues in play here: it's axiomatic that network transfer preserves bit value integrity. Hence internet works blah.

Where and how data is processed in realtime, as part of a sensitive audio system, is a much more interesting place: everything about that 'local playback environment' seems to matter: including all I/O.

So yes, if you're decoding FLAC on the fly, that creates a different playback environment to streaming WAV to PCM: it's perfectly legitimate to question whether that difference is audible. It's not something you can work out on paper: it requires experimentation, measurement, and careful listening, and it inevitably varies from system to system. The 'armchair theorist' is useless in this conversation: only experience counts.

Some of the claims made by the TAS article, however, do seem to cross the line and imply something either revolutionary or crazy. Then again “I can't see how that could be true” might only indicate a lack of imagination, and doesn't allow for future variables. Is it not better to reserve judgment than look an idiot in hindsight?

The final paragraph gives a clue to where they're coming from though . . . it's evidently all about their egos - heroic pioneers of computer audio!

That's an article for SBGK surely.

That seems more like an on-the-money critique. Much more plausible than the wild conspiracy theories floating about like chaff.

However, if we're talking about computer audio mods, there is much greater scope for improvement than perhaps you Squeeze-jockeys realise... it's absolutely possible to transform the way a computer sounds (as a transport only) by software and hardware mods - simply by lowering jitter and rail noise. For them to give away such information freely is irreprehensible, and undermines all criticism of 'peddling' anything.

[item_audio]

By way of getting at the core issues - because some of you guys have evidently thrown out the baby with the bath-water here - if your SB is connected via optical SPDIF to a DAC, do you believe it is possible for an upgraded power supply to make any difference?

[darrell]

If you're serious about getting a digital front end to sound really good, in a costly system - like a good turntable or old-school high-end CD player - you inevitably have to deal with the issues I've outlined. Horses for courses.

I disagree. My speakers/amp combined cost over £3000. I also have a vinyl front end which cost over £1500, years ago. Modest in the general scheme of things, I know, and my turntable was criticised in some "hifi" circles for sounding too "digital", lacking "bloom", whatever that means, but I find the sound from the SB into a good DAC comparable. I do not have to deal with your issues.

However, given that no-one stands to make a penny from the idea that rips or file formats differ, we can't even impute a commercial motive to the OP, who isn't even getting the right to reply. So that shouldn't annoy you.

There might not be a direct commercial angle to the TAS stuff under discussion, it might be that the authors are simply insane (see the recent quote that the original quality of a wave file cannot be recovered from a losslessly-compressed file!). But more generally, this sort of nonsense does feed, precisely, the fear, uncertainty and doubt of the more afflicted audiophile, and as such creates the environment in which dishonest people can sell snake oil.

In any case, it annoys me, in the same way that the previously mentioned homeopaths and creationists do, because I care about the truth, in all areas of life.

I've elsewhere argued that it's ethically indefensible for almost any interconnect to cost more than £500.

But you offer for sale (I nearly wrote "you sell", but that might be going too far) several cables over that price, including an cable, perhaps with unintentional irony called the "illusion", at well over £1000.

What really rubs on us, I think, is knowing that the highest levels of sound reproduction are only available to the privileged few who can afford them.

And you seem to want to make this situation worse by encouraging people to spend money on solutions to problems that you can't even properly define - the very definition of the FUD tactic. Might it be that putting a cheap computer in a shiny box and fiddling with the software before selling it for a relative fortune is much more profitable that actually manufacturing anything worthwhile?

[ralphpnj]

I've just worked through that TAS article. Not only do they claim that WAV-FLAC-WAV degrades the sound, but they also claim that the effect is cumulative! Utter fruitcakes.

The final paragraph gives a clue to where they're coming from though. Dishonest, and complete tools, yes. But it's evidently all about their egos - heroic pioneers of computer audio!

In the final Part 4 of this series, we reveal how easily-made tweaks and optimizations to our computers can result in nothing short of vast improvements in sound quality. And lastly, we quantify the remarkable degree of improvement that anyone can achieve by applying our “best of” recommended software, tweaks, and computer playback refinements to his own computer- based audio system.

That's an article for SBGK surely.

I can hardly wait....

There is no need to wait since Part Four of the Computer Music Series was published in TAS #221, March 2012. By the way the conclusion of this insane series was/is everything one could possibly hope for since it is filled with same misinformation and BS as the first three parts. By all rights this four part series is a groundbreaking work and will be studied for years to come by every snake oil salesman as a primer on how to use FUD to build a market for their worthless products.

[EricBergan]

Where and how data is processed in realtime, as part of a sensitive audio system, is a much more interesting place: everything about that 'local playback environment' seems to matter: including all I/O.

Look, cards on the table here. I've got 30+ years experience directly developing device drivers for serial, parallel, disk, network, etc. I/O. Lots of different computer types and OS. I've worked side by side with the guys developing the prototype h/w below the chip level. I've lead large groups of people developing systems for financial houses among other markets, and so I have a pretty good understanding of large real time data issues, as well.

I understand you have people who have told you it's all a black art on the digital side, but I think they are being taken out of context.

eric

[Phil Leigh]

By way of getting at the core issues - because some of you guys have evidently thrown out the baby with the bath-water here - if your SB is connected via optical SPDIF to a DAC, do you believe it is possible for an upgraded power supply to make any difference?

Oh that's right... TOSLINK is crap, right?
Pity about all that optical crap that was used in the studios to record some of the music we love then isn't it?

[Phil Leigh]

There are two quite different issues in play here: it's axiomatic that network transfer preserves bit value integrity. Hence internet works blah.

Where and how data is processed in realtime, as part of a sensitive audio system, is a much more interesting place: everything about that 'local playback environment' seems to matter: including all I/O.

So yes, if you're decoding FLAC on the fly, that creates a different playback environment to streaming WAV to PCM: it's perfectly legitimate to question whether that difference is audible. It's not something you can work out on paper: it requires experimentation, measurement, and careful listening, and it inevitably varies from system to system. The 'armchair theorist' is useless in this conversation: only experience counts.

Some of the claims made by the TAS article, however, do seem to cross the line and imply something either revolutionary or crazy. Then again “I can't see how that could be true” might only indicate a lack of imagination, and doesn't allow for future variables. Is it not better to reserve judgment than look an idiot in hindsight?



That seems more like an on-the-money critique. Much more plausible than the wild conspiracy theories floating about like chaff.

However, if we're talking about computer audio mods, there is much greater scope for improvement than perhaps you Squeeze-jockeys realise... it's absolutely possible to transform the way a computer sounds (as a transport only) by software and hardware mods - simply by lowering jitter and rail noise. For them to give away such information freely is irreprehensible, and undermines all criticism of 'peddling' anything.

Yeah we know all about how PCs need lots of hardware and software tweaking to work nicely as s/pdif transports. THAT'S WHY WE DON'T USE THEM!

We use SB's, so unless so can sell us something that changes the inside of the SB in terms of either software or hardware....

[darrell]

So yes, if you're decoding FLAC on the fly, that creates a different playback environment to streaming WAV to PCM: it's perfectly legitimate to question whether that difference is audible. It's not something you can work out on paper: it requires experimentation, measurement, and careful listening, and it inevitably varies from system to system. The 'armchair theorist' is useless in this conversation: only experience counts.

Some of the claims made by the TAS article, however, do seem to cross the line and imply something either revolutionary or crazy. Then again “I can't see how that could be true” might only indicate a lack of imagination, and doesn't allow for future variables. Is it not better to reserve judgment than look an idiot in hindsight?

There are an infinite number of unfounded hypotheses which we could consider, but it would be a complete waste of time. Of course, scientists sometimes need imagination to take a leap into the unknown, and discover something new about our universe. But let's not kid ourselves - the assertion that a binary data file is identical to another binary data file, but at the same time not capable of delivering the same information content, is not an issue at the frontiers of science, it is simple madness.

Without some sort of quality control (not to say a sanity filter), we might as well all go looking for Russell's teapot.