Is computer audio a bust?

Interesting article Nonoise. It reads a little like a quantum physics paperback book: part science and part philosophy, and thus the "facts" are open to interpretation. The Boston audio society study appears condemning at first blush (60 people subjected to a total of 554 blinded tests over the course of a year were not able to distinguish between CD and SACD). However, if you read the primary article found here:

http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_emperors_new_sampling//index.html

the author does bring up some more nuanced points towards the end, including this:

Moorer noted that humans can distinguish time delays — when they involve the difference between their two ears — of 15 microseconds or less. Do the math, and you can see that while the sampling interval at 48 kHz is longer than 15 µs, the sampling interval at 96 kHz is shorter. Therefore, he says, we prefer higher sampling rates because “probably [my emphasis] some kind of time-domain resolution between the left- and right-ear signals is more accurately preserved at 96 kHz.”

and

In an article on his Website (www.ethanwiner.com), Winer points out that in a typical room, moving one's head or listening position as little as four inches can result in huge changes in the frequency-response curves one is hearing. What could be a 10dB dip in one spot at one frequency could be a 6dB boost a couple of inches away. These wide variations are caused primarily by comb-filtering effects from the speakers and from the various reflections bouncing around the room, which are present no matter how well the room is acoustically treated. Winer blames this phenomenon for most of the unquantifiable differences people report hearing when they are testing high-end gear.

In particular, the time domain issue may explain "some" people's preferences for hi rez and DSD. I know this is a real phenomenon in the world of speakers and even amplifiers if you believe Golmund's research.

07-22-14: Audiolabyrinth
Joecasey, There is some world class transports out there that computer audio cannot touch period,

Why? How did you derive to this conclusion? Price? LOLs?

if computer audio could, then this is the biggest fleasing in american history of audio!, look at DCS for an example, LOL!,

Degree of "fleasing" is tied to one's level of obsession to this crazy hobby.

IMO, you got FLEASED spending $15,950.00 retail for the balanced 1-meter interconnect.

Performance has nothing to do with price of a component. Price is dictated by markets. This is a cottage industry so demand is low and price will be high in order for companies to stay in business. IMO, DCS and Esoteric understand demographics of their customers so why release computer base products and jeapolized their tradition line.

to get this straight here, I am saying transports, Dacs, cd-players are all in the same catorgory, that is NOT computer audio, though I agree, cd-players,dacs, transports are computers, no doubt, however, they are dedicated to audio!

That's the definition of embedded system but still a computer. Like I said earlier, the debate boils down to storage medium. CD, hdd, sdd, usb drive ...

From Lamp Web Site:

Once again - how can a "stupid" computer modem sound better than reputable real CD transport ? Computers are supposed to be BAD.
I will try to explain how I see it:

Just imagine: It thakes 70 minutes for the Philips CDM2-Pro mechanism to read all data from CD disk. The same amount of data is read by DVD drive in 2 minutes. Blue Ray reads it in half minute. Hard drive reads it in 4 seconds. RAM buffer reads it in less than a second. MY LampizatOr Transport plays from own FIFO RAM Buffer.

The Data from CD must be read by a laser, which constantly needs to adjust focus, servo adjusts linear speed of motor, and track tracking. The data is demodulated from laser waves, and missing bits or errors are interpolated and corrected. Vibrations make reading difficult.

The HDD Lampizator Transport player needs nothing of that. Perfect, 100% accurate data is fed to RAM buffer and just (FIFO) - sent out to DAC according to external precision clock.
This scenario is 100 x more simple, errofr free and accurate. I am surprized that CD players play anything at all ;-)

These are benchmarks, not subjective #, not system dependent ... If starting from scratch, which storage medium would you choose?

The whole not doing Computer Audio is really just a generational thing, like it or not it is the future.

Agree! My attorney, an intelligent elderly gentleman, doesn't understand or trust computers so still uses hard currency. I grew up with technology and can't wait for the next great thing to improve quality of life.

To digress, I configured JRiver to cache the entire file into memory, up to a gigabyte at a time, which mitigates the "spinning media" issues, or at least moves them to a error-free source.

Bingo! Cache is agnostic with storage medium as long as read in before play.

They actually have marketing/development groups dedicated to developing apps and uses that require more powerful CPU's, more memory etc.. in order to get you to upgrade your PC.

IMO, one major reason for increase foot print is due to managed code such as Java and .NET. It's a pig and slow. C or C++ is still use if fast and lightweight are priorities but need competent engineers to develop them.

I suggest when shopping for a new computer, get the maximum of RAM. I bought a laptop for one of my consultant gig years ago and has 2GB of RAM. CPU is fine but not enough to RAM to run some applications that requires 4+ GB.

Nice link Agear. There seems to be a lot going on that we simply don't take into account. I, for one, am not keen on putting my head in a vise in order to eliminate the comb effect from moving my head around :-)

What I also found interesting is the section devoted to the extra care and TLC engineers go to to make a SACD or DVD-A or DSD recording since it's more a labor of love and the end product is meant for a more discerning audience.

Could it be that labels like ECM, MA Recordings, and Mapleshade, who "just" make CDs, put that extra TLC into their product, resulting in a CD that sounds better than other CDs and almost as good as high rez?

The whole thing about eliminating time domain errors is one of the driving themes behind the EC Designs SD card reader, which they say is of more importance than sampling and playback rates, which is why they linked the articles I linked to in my earlier post. If those time domain errors can be lessened to the point that makes them negligible to human hearing, then moving one's head around won't be a factor anymore.

I'm quite keen on reading some reviews when they come out.

All the best,
Nonoise

LOL!, If you want to suffer real computer audio, hook your computer straight to you amp, your computer has a volume control, useing a dac is essentially a cd-player cut in half, thus a dac is part of the family of cd-players!, true computer audio without a dac is a BUST!

Just because comb filter effects exist , that there are such things, doesn't necessarily mean that all results of listening tests for CDs and SACDs can be written off to comb filter effects any more than results can be written off to psychological biases like expectation bias or the placebo effect. To eliminate the differences in sound pressure level from overwhelming the results simply keep them in mind when doing the test. It's not brain surgery.