Half the information on CDs is analogue


I would like to argue that one of the reasons that some transports sound significantly better than others is because much of the information on a given CD is actually analogue (analog) information.
An excellent transport does not just read digital information: 1s and 0s (offs and ons); it must be sensitive enough to pick up the other information that has been stored as a physical property of the CD medium. This 'physical' information, like the tiny bumps in the groove of a vinyl record, is analogue information.

Before I say more I'd like to hear what others think.
exlibris
Exlibris,

I am afraid the IAR stuff does not agree at all with mathematics and science.

There are indeed many deficiencies in digital, it is far from perfect;

- proper filtering must be applied in the studio prior to digitizing a signal in order to avoid aliasing (stuff that is not filtered folds in around the Nyquist frequency).

- high out of band noise is common on most DAC's and must be heavily filtered (this is not ideal but generally not a problem for well designed gear with oversampling etc.)

- clock jitter can affect sound particularly if the jitter is not random. (again proper design has corrected this in most, if not all, commonly available gear)

Contrary to IAR, the details in the waveform are NOT lost in digital. In fact they are preserved much much more precisely than analog.....way better S/(THD+N) and way better channel separation.

If you don't believe it then STOP using your COMPUTER now .....becuase it is ALL based on similar technology....your disc drive uses Solomon Reed type algorthims too!!!! Almost all digital technology uses these concepts to make digital copies extremely accurate.....1000's of identical copies can be made with never a single error.

In fact digital is so good that the whole entertainment industry is scared of how downloading and piracy of digital data can undermine the control of legal distribution of high quality music and video.

In fact digital or binary type coding is so good that it forms the basis for all lifeforms that we know of on this planet! Yep, your DNA is basically a digital coded string in the form of a double helix - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_helix

The genetic code consists of three-letter 'words' (termed a codon) formed from a sequence of three nucleotides (e.g. ACT, CAG, TTT). These codons can then be translated with messenger RNA and then transfer RNA, with a codon corresponding to a particular amino acid. There are 64 possible codons (4 bases in 3 places or 4*4*4 possible "digital" states) that encode 20 amino acids. Most amino acids, therefore, have more than one possible codon. There are also three 'stop' or 'nonsense' codons signifying the end of the coding region, namely the UAA, UGA and UAG codons.

DNA does not appear to use Solomon Reed encoding but it is very robust digital code, such that every cell in your body contains the same digital information, which is why cloning is possible....something way scarier than music piracy, IMHO.
In some metaphysical sense there is no real distinction between analog and digital information, but practically speaking, particularly if we exclude the printed info on the CD disc/packing, 100% of the data (music) contained on a CD is digitally encoded. I honestly don't see how someone can get so confused on this issue.
I'm just trying to figure out why there is such a huge difference in the sound of various transports.
Some computer geek ought to record the digital data stream (after error correction)as generated by two or more transports. Then write a program to time slip one file until it syncs up with the other, and then do a bit by bit compare of the files. I bet they will match perfectly.

There may be other transport characteristics which affect sound. Jitter is often quoted. What if one transport ran slightly faster or slower than the other. Quite small pitch changes affect music.