ralphpnj wrote: > Oh my what an awful burden it must be to be born with a pair of golden > ears. Just thinking about it makes me want to weep.
It's a curse. Oh to be able to enjoy music as much from a tinny micro system ;-). > Look I consider myself somewhat of an audiophile but that does not mean > that I am willing to swallow each and every audiophile myth hook, line > and sinker. What audiophiles seems to have forgotten is that the digital > storage method, whether it is used for music, video, words or pictures, > was developed as a means to overcome many of the limitations of the > analog storage method. Sure digital introduces some limitations of its > own but those limitations are not the same as the old analog > limitations. And one of the old analog limitations that digital DOES NOT > share is that digital is NOT dependent on the storage media and the > method of data transmission. By this I mean that it makes no difference > how the digital data is stored, be it on a hard drive, a tape, a flash > drive or optical disc, nor does it make any difference how it is > transmitted, be it via toslink, usb or coax. This feature was "built > into" digital from the very beginning and is very well understood > (outside of the audiophile world) and is the reason why a youtube video > uploaded from China will play back perfectly on a computer located in > Texas even though the digital data will passed through countless wires > and relays along the way - because ones are ones and zeros are zeros. > > Now don't get me completely wrong since I do believe in many of the > basic ideas of high end audio, such as vibration control in > loudspeakers, proper speaker placement, proper power amp and speaker > matching, etc. But all of these ideas have one important thing in > common: they are all based on good scientific reasoning and can easily > be tested and measured. In addition, the previous paragraph does not > mean that there is no room for improvement in digital audio, rather it > means the areas for improvement lie somewhere other than the means and > method of digital data storage and transmission. I agree with the vast majority of what you say except for the transmission method. This is where the *BIG* differences happen. SPDIF/TOSLINK are both a massive fudge - always have been and all the manufacturers know this. The problem, before all of the transmission line reflections and impedance mismatches are that data and clock are interleaved down the same cable. Interleaving will always cause jitter issues, so this alone makes these formats less than desirable. No-one outside of a domestic environment uses TOSLINK/SPDIF, using balanced 110Ohm AES. I work every day with 110Ohm balanced and 75Ohm unbalanced digital audio connections and you can quite easily measure errors in going from one to the other without using balancing transformers. Shielded cables certainly make a difference if you're trying to get away with it, so it's not unreasonale to think that the same thing is happening with different grades of SPDIF/COAX cable - I'm not saying you have to spend silly money on esoteric cables. In fact, I'm positively against it, especially when you know that most of this stuff is just marketing and can be made up at home given some soldering skills and the knowledge of the right cables and plugs to use. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ lovejoy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=47846 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=95872 _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list Touch@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
