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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
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cleeds
5,960 posts
 
peteraudio21
Digital information is discrete, analogue information is essentially continuous. The pressure waves that come to your ears are continuous. How you convert the discrete information into continuous by interpolation is one of the main issues.
You are mistaken. We know from the Fourier Transform that the continuous analog wave can be represented using digital data and Nyquist Theorem (it's not a theory) proves that the reconstructed wave will be a perfect analog of the original, within the bandwidth of the system. There is no interpolation involved with the possible exception of when an error is encountered and can't otherwise be corrected. That's actually pretty rare.
... Any time you convert from digital which is discrete, to continuous, which is analogue, you have to will in the missing lines between the point ...
No, that's not how digital audio works. If you want to understand why, you might want to watch this video.
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,102 posts
 
Our DACs are processing digital information the same as our microwaves, yet we judge them very differently.
Our microwave is NOT interconnected to other gear....We dont use our ears to listen to microwaves...

Bits are always bits and waves.... This is not and never can be argued against....Fourier theory like says cleeds is rigorous maths...Wave=digital....But there exist MANY type of dac implementation with differences...

And our ears listen to the results of multiple gear interactions(cables amplifier dac and speakers power conditioner etc) in their THREE working dimensions: mechanical,electrical and acoustical...

We dont listen to pure  bits but to differently processed and smpliled bits and , we listen to the end resulting sound of many interacting factors in their 3 working  dimensions in a specific system and room and house with specific ears...

Why in the world could we wait for the same results  ? They are  coming from different dac or they are  coming  from  the same dac family perhaps but in very different working conditions ?

Because of the system working dimensions implementation in our specific home that are NEVER the same...I called these working dimensions, the system embeddings controls...


desktopguy
375 posts
 
There’s nothing at all strange about OP’s question. We’re completely surrounded by digital information on computers, laptops, tablet, cellphones, RFID chips that track those phones in stores. The list is endless. And all that hardware seems to work pretty well; or to phrase it more accurately, it normally works, and it works normally.

But of course digital audio is vastly different. Some digital is sonically tragic; some is exalted and worth every penny. I think OP is asking a logical question that boils down to: why all the variability in digital audio?

I think the answer is tied up to a heady brew of factors, including:
  • The complexity of music (for ADA encoders to handle), compared to other, less dense content streams
  • The particularity of how music sounds--how top level audio is known to sound--and how easily that particularity is disrupted and degraded in the digital realm (and in particular, when it is converted back to analog for rendition on an audio system)
  • And the high expectations and well-developed sonic biases, expectations, and beliefs of those in this hobby. Collectively we’re very quick to gun down bad sound (regardless of how it came to be bad)
I fought with digital for years (as in, "fought to like it and find it acceptable"). That fight got way easier when I discoverd multibit & NOS DACs. Digital is more ear-friendly to me now.

But I never messed with high-end network streamers or any of that signal distribution gear others know so much about. I suspect new digital gremlins await me there, ready to pounce.

Repeat: OP asks a reasonable question. The fact that he got treated so unreasonably says way more about this site as a venue for audio information than about his question itself.
alfa100's avatar
alfa100
221 posts
 
Because reading text or looking at pictures on your p,c. is comparable to listening to music off a small radio. It does the job , conveys the information you need . This is not like listening to music from an audiophile grade system where everything matters right down to speaker toe in. But then again my engineer could not convey (via email) precisely the color of a commissioned object. His digital camera transfer to his computer was not accurate.   I had to personally visit his workshop. Likewise we are passionate about getting the sound right. Try reading a component review and gush over the descriptions you will read. And most of it is in a language we understand and can discern
glupson
7,842 posts
 
"Repeat: OP asks a reasonable question."


OP, in fact, did not ask a question. She/he posted her/his musings and informed us of activities.
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