opaqueice;583990 Wrote: > Now I'm really confused. When you said "Exact same thing is happening > to the sound when you upgrade a component that lowers the noise floor. > All audio components inevitably introduce noise into the sound, so the > trick is finding and matching the components that minimize this noise. > The noise masks the original signal, so you end up losing a lot of the > musical detail" you weren't talking about audible noise?? If this > noise is inaudible, how can it possibly make a difference in audio > reproduction?
In engineering terms, when we say 'noise' we don't imply audible noise (in other words, noise is not associated with sound). For example, if you're watching a movie that is streaming from Netflix, and if there are interferences, you may notice that every now and then the picture quality degrades and it becomes visibly pixelated (meaning, the objects on the screen get distorted and start looking chunky and as if made from Lego blocks). This phenomenon is termed 'noise'. It interferes with the original signal, distorts it, and disrupts our viewing enjoyment. There isn't anything audible about that kind of noise. In a similar fashion, interferences that may occur while transporting digital bits that carry audio signal will inevitably result in the degradation of the sound quality. And that will interrupt our enjoyment of the playback. We talk about the signal-to-noise ratio, not sound-to-noise ratio. Do you get it now? opaqueice;583990 Wrote: > Except we can be absolutely certain that doesn't happen. You can check > by recording the digital stream as a computer file - ones and zeros - > and comparing it to the original file or CD rip. I've done that, as > have many others, and the files are absolutely and perfectly identical, > down to every single bit. > > If you're getting bit errors in a digital transport, it's broken. The > level of jitter in a decent digital source (anything made by slim > devices, for example) connected by a reasonable cable ($5 at > Radioshack, for example) is far below the level that could cause bit > errors. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about output (the sound waves emanating from the speakers/headphones being faithful to the input). In good audio systems, this faithfulness (or, fidelity, if you will) is pretty high. In shitty audio systems, not even close. -- magiccarpetride ------------------------------------------------------------------------ magiccarpetride's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=37863 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82520 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
