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Please Educate Me

If I can’t find the answer here, I won’t find it anywhere. 

Something I’ve wondered about for a long time: The whole world is digital. Some huge percentage of our lives consists of ones and zeros. 

And with the exception of hi-fi, I don’t know of a single instance in which all of this digitalia isn’t yes/no, black/white, it works or it doesn’t. No one says, “Man, Microsoft Word works great on this machine,” or “The reds in that copy of Grand Theft Auto are a tad bright.” The very nature of digital information precludes such questions. 

Not so when it comes to hi-fi. I’m extremely skeptical about much that goes on in high end audio but I’ve obviously heard the difference among digital sources. Just because something is on CD or 92/156 FLAC doesn’t mean that it’s going to sound the same on different players or streamers. 

Conceptually, logically, I don’t know why it doesn’t. I know about audiophile-type concerns like timing and flutter. But those don’t get to the underlying science of my question. 

I feel like I’m asking about ABCs but I was held back in kindergarten and the computerized world isn’t doing me any favors. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do. I’ll be using Photoshop and I’ve got it dialed in just right. 
paul6001
mahlman
433 posts
 
Mahgister,  " We can correct anything in a room, even the worst position...But for sure the speakers location distance MUST be precise... Othen than that, even with one of my speaker pressed in a corner for example my imaging is balanced.....
"
  Time aligning can allow for differing distances and for precise balancing of when sound arrives to your ears. You can set gain so imaging is good but when you set time and gain you get balanced sound and more definition. I built a single fold horn with a 108" throat depth and dialing that in was a revelation. Some of my SMAHL and LMAHL tweeter buyers want free standing ones because they claim to be able to hear a difference in time alignment just by moving the tweeters across the top of the speaker cabinet. My hearing is not that acute so I take their word for it.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,206 posts
 
Interesting!

I must say that i dont understand all the scientific explanation of WHY  my homemade devices works.....

For sure it is easy to understand the principle behind Helmholtz bottles for example.... But the schumann generator grid effects on acoustic? the ionizer effect? 

These are the 3 more powerful devices i used with some many other one, mainly simple generators like diffirent bells of different size... 
cakids
166 posts
 
You really don’t need a lot of technical jargon. It’s been said previously, but ...
 Preserving the sequence of 1s and 0s, that represent the music, is easy (the digital domain). All the sound differences (analog domain) occur when converting from analog to digital and from digital to analog at various points in the recording and playback stream.
jayctoy's avatar
jayctoy
4,244 posts
 
Mapman +1
larryh111's avatar
larryh111
33 posts
 
paul6001,  The essence of your post was not lost on me.  While a full answer to your question can be long and drawn out as many in this post would like it to be.  The correct answer is that the digital representation of an acoustic signal is the same regardless of the type of playback system used.  That said, there are several formats to generate the digital word and each format has a method for extracting or converting the word back to audible sound.  The most poplar method has been the system used to make CD's.   We also have SACD and other high sampling rate methods that produce a better representation of the sound.  Generally speaking the more data or gamut the better the sound.  Converting the word to music and playing it though electronics is another question altogether and is better left for another conversation.  Thanks for your post.  Larry 
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