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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
paul6001 OP
98 posts
 
Passive-aggressive? Why on earth read that into my question? Although like I said, I’m not a regular here. Maybe I accidentally posted code for something very different. 

I haven’t done enough homework to satisfy you? Well, I guess that I’m going to have to live with that disapproval. We all have our crosses to bear. 

Apparently, I’m not going to learn anything here. If the game wasn’t a blow out I probably wouldn’t have asked. I just got a new pair of speakers and audio is very much on my mind. But clearly I’m on the wrong place. I’ll darken your doorstep no more.
djones51
4,947 posts
 
One reason could be they don't sound different on the 2 CD players you just think they do. You would need to conduct a proper listening test. Other reason could be the type of DACs  and reconstruction filters in the units are different. The CD is the same, the 1 and 0 are the same no matter what equipment you use but the equipment is different. It's the same with MS Word or whatever they can run different on different machines, Photoshop is a better example it can run fine on some machines and crash others. 
middlemass
948 posts
 
Apples and oranges.
Post removed 
noromance's avatar
noromance
10,181 posts
 
@paul6001 For the record, your post made sense to me, even without a specific question, due to the subject line. Not sure why folks were somewhat rowdy tonight. I think the answer lies in the conversion from the electronic to the physical/biological transducer that is the ear and brain/mind. This is absent in the Word example as the digital stays within its electronic domain. 

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