271–280 of 405 posts
Plus the requisite "no blind A/B testing" world of course.
If their stereo equipment is so high end, then why are their input power electronics so crappy at producing clean voltages? Filtering and isolating against common noisy power lines seems a pretty obvious design consideration. I love throwing that point at situations like this.
I'd be inclined to make a battery powered mechanical AC generator with a big old flywheel on it to sell to these audiophiles :)
Regarding the equipment, most of the "audiophile" grade gear is analog, using very little input cleaning circuitry if any at all. Whether this is desirable from a sound quality perspective or not (assuming the input power is clean) is debatable. Would be interesting to see what an electrical engineer in the audio field says about this.
I'm sure there is some method to the seemingly mad claim that having your own "pole" could make a difference in your audio quality through your amplifier. If you consider that the coils on the other transformers that are positioned on the same medium voltage lines (running the other houses on the block for example) act as attenuators which partially soften out any harmonics from devices under them (like switching power supplies found in any computer), then effectively by installing your own, dedicated transformer (not actually just having your own pole) you would be isolating to some extent potential noise from those neighbors (noisy neighbors in the real sense), to only devices in your own home. If you think of electrical harmonics like sound waves, they would lose amplitude when traveling through the coils of a transformer. There are also ways for transformers to be built so that it prevents these harmonics from carrying upstream (see zigzag winding, isolated or "harmonic mitigating" transformers) but this would do nothing for the noise on the low voltage side coming from neighbors on the same transformer. This would be the power line equivalent of sharing a single broadband connection with your entire neighborhood while trying to play a latency sensitive game with no QOS.
It would have been really interesting to see the ocillosope before and after.
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> It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. I don't disagree with your main point, but this actually isn't quite true. The HDMI signal is split into 3 distinct interleaved periods: video data, data island and control. Video data is not packetized and the only possible error detection it has is from TMDS signaling, but no such error handling is requ…
Yes, but when when there's signal degradation in an HDMI cable it shows obviously, not as a subtle video quality change. If you can see an HDMI signal with white blinking dots everywhere, you can be confident that the cable is not altering the signal in any really detectable way.
I have seen an HDMI transmission with white blinking pixels at content edges that were not from the original signal. I ran test signal through that source and verified the errors on an HDMI waveform monitor, after which I tested the cable and threw it away.
HDMI video is not magically impervious to error because it is digital. It's actually a pretty straightforward transmission scheme.
This was while working on an HDMI-output device, working with team members who had written the original HDMI specifications (so, yes, I've read them).
It is possible to have subtle degradation in HDMI-delivered content. It's rare, but possible. As one might expect, comprehensive failures (e.g. black screen, periodic HDCP key mismatch) are far more common, as are negotiation/configuration failures (e.g. wrong resolution, wrong framerate, wrong color space).
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I know people that work in IT and still pretend that audio transmission over USB can add jitter to music and that a DAC can "open" or "close" "the stage" by low quality processing of the signal. Audio transmission over USB with cheap converters and poorly chosen levels can result in loss of sound quality. I'm pretty sure you can tell the difference between 8 bit, 12 bit, and 16 bit sound. Choosing levels poorly can r…
Regarding your usage of 'cheap', I would read this as the difference between a 50c or $5 component. I can understand spending more to get a reputable brand compared to buying the cheapest no name item from AliExpress. However audiophiles are a whole different level. People spend tens of thousands of dollars on items that have questionable difference in quality. I guess people do the same with cars though, a Toyota Co…
If you just want to put together a cheap car with a good engine, that's a different thing from wanting to build a comfortable or speedy car with a good engine. Someone who isn't in the market for that extra level will just be a sceptic and say "this Audi is just a volkswagen with a prettier body", but if you sit in one you'll feel the difference. (not sure if Audi's have VW engines)
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One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…
I've always wondered whether I could sell audiophile SATA cables for those who listen to music from their hard drives... Edit: a commenter below has a link to an actual audiophile SATA cable.
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How do $1,000 aftermarket wooden knobs (with no detectable physical effect) differ from, say, a $1,000 bottle of wine (which cannot be distinguished in a blind taste test from a $5 bottle)? They're just class signifiers. The difference I see is that audiophiles are less prestigious than oenophiles, but I don't see how you get from there to "audiophiles have a mental illness".
There's a slight difference. AFAIK oenophiles don't typically try to use pseudoscience to justify their purchases (or encourage others to make purchases) If someone told me I should buy a wine because the doorknobs in the winery were special wooden knobs I would also question their judgement/sanity.
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You mean like those people, who argue, that: "Everything is a sequence of Zeroes and Ones, therefore the signal either gets transmitted or not !", while totally leaving out the fact, that this digital signal material izes in the real world via an analogous signal, which is electricity, and therefore each digital data transmission (as long as not optical) is submitted to physics that happen totally outside of the "dig…
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Everything is ultimately subject to physics, including optical signals. Nobody claims otherwise. But it is incorrect to say that digital transmissions must be at the mercy of physics. Digital transmissions can defy physics. There are numerous techniques which ensure that a signal reaches the destination with precisely zero flipped bits and exact timing. And even whe…
Sorry, I misformulated my sentence.
It should have read (emphasizing what I left out from the sentence in my previous post):
> You mean like those people, who argue, that: “Everything is a sequence of Zeroes and Ones, therefore the signal either gets transmitted or not!”, while totally leaving out the fact, that this digital signal materializes in the real world via an analogous signal, which is electricity, and therefore each digital data transmission (as long as not optical) is submitted to the physics of electricity, that happen totally outside of the "digital domain"?
Though, I think you are nitpicking, because, from the rest, it should be totally obvious, what I wanted to say. Use the error correction, man ;-)
Therefore:
If an analogous signal's "success" can suffer from the material, through which it travels, then a digital signal will suffer for the same reasons, simply, because it is not a digital signal, but, materialistically, both signals are of the same sort.
Even if we could create the perfect mathematical concept in our brain and have a solution for anything, as soon as we step into the real world, that is, the material side of affairs, many unexpected things can happen, that have to be accounted for at the next time.
In engineering we call this a "race condition". I like the definition on FOLDOC: https://foldoc.org/race%20condition
> ”Anomalous behavior due to unexpected critical dependence on the relative timing of events.“
Or, in other words: chaos!
Even if you buy into this theory, how is this cheaper or better than using batteries to power your gear?
Visible stepping on a "pure sine wave" inverter: ¹ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Issb89NhQ&t=7m20s
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Regarding your usage of 'cheap', I would read this as the difference between a 50c or $5 component. I can understand spending more to get a reputable brand compared to buying the cheapest no name item from AliExpress. However audiophiles are a whole different level. People spend tens of thousands of dollars on items that have questionable difference in quality. I guess people do the same with cars though, a Toyota Co…
Wine might be a better comparison (at least a Rolls and a Toyota look different). Many could tell the difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar), but not a whole lot of people can tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $200 bottle. The law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quick with both wine and audio. I think with audio once you’re in over a…
Wine loaded with sugar??? AFAIK, in a dry wine all the sugar is converted to alcohol- even in the case it's been added before the fermentation, which is still pretty rare, at least in major wine producing countries. That is definitely not the difference between a $5 and $20 bottle of wine (in Italy you can still get excellent wine for $5 a bottle if you buy it from the producer, btw).
Gonna toss a related idea out there: Converting single-phase AC power to DC requires treating a lot of ripples. Maybe an audiophile should convert three-phase AC power to DC to ensure higher power quality?
A motor-generator is a better solution. Preferably with a big flywheel.