Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles • Hacker News Board

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#381

Post by rasz » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 12:21 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #297

tlrobinson wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a DAC can "open" or "close" "the stage" by low quality processing of the signal In principle a low enough quality DAC certainly could affect "the stage", but in reality even cheap ones are likely good enough. > There is no way to convince these people they are wrong I'm pretty sure many of them don't want to be convinced since it would make their hobby pretty boring. I also wouldn't be surprised if industry players…

No, cheap DACs are not “good enough” unless you’re completely indifferent to audio quality. There’s certainly woo and outright fraud in audio. But there’s also attention to detail. Professional studio engineers will spend $3000 on a high-precision digital clock for their DACs because it makes a clearly audible difference. Software people don’t understand that human hearing, and human sensitivity to timbre and distort…

>Professional studio engineers will spend $3000 on a high-precision digital clock for their DACs because it makes a clearly audible difference.

No, this is pure steaming BS. $0.2 crystal has 50 ppm stability.

>Some people’s brains and ears are better at all of this than others.

Better than radio receivers operating at GHz ranges I guess.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#382

Post by rasz » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 12:30 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #183

oneplane wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not 'noise', that is packets that didn't make it. It's not having a perfect picture vs. no picture, but about data packets either going from A to B or not going from A to B. Say the HDMI cable is crap and it can only do 100 packets per second, and HDR needs 1000 packets per second, the HDMI chips are going to negotiate a HDMI transfer settings without HDR. Going back further, say the HDMI data path is negotiat…

HDMI doesn't have packets. It's largely digital VGA. It's very easy to flick individual bits, and the effect is basically the same as analog noise. The only difference is the threshold.

hdcp

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#383

Post by sjwright » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

cies wrote: post #366

sjwright wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter how good your DAC is if your signal path includes scratching the sound waves into lacquer, stamping it into vinyl and scraping it with a stylus. Compared to digital distribution formats, it's utterly Rube Goldberg-esque. Performance Microphone ADC Processing Mixing & mastering DAC \ \ \ Scratched into lacquer Electroplating Stamping into vinyl Scraped with a stylus Phono amplifier / / / Amplifier Sp…

Well, all I'm saying is that it could... If you have a really shitty DAC for some CD player, or you have a really good DAC to convert it to record, it could be the DAC quality that creates a superior sound. All other factors always reduce quality; only the DAC may actually explain the improved quality. That's my point. Which I made jokingly.

Yes you are right, vinyl might sometimes be better than horribly, catastrophically broken digital.

In reality, bad DACs are uncommon, mostly found in disposable-grade consumer products and on computer motherboards. (And even then the problem is poor implementation, not a poor DAC chip per se.) Anything sold into the mainstream Hi-Fi or audiophile market is nominally perfect relative to our ears’ potential.

More fundamentally I think you are overestimating how bad a DAC can be. The “bad DAC” is mostly a myth invented by the manufacturers of expensive DACs and their gullible customers. It’s a scam and far too many people have fallen for it.

(Edit: To be more precise, these DACs aren’t scams, there is legit engineering going on, but they are pointless if your intent is listening to the output with human ears rather than test equipment.)

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#384

Post by sjwright » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 2:48 AM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #170

sjwright wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything "audiophile" in the digital domain is all equally absurd. The only difference is that some require a half-second of consideration and others require literally no thought at all to identify as stupid.

I wouldn't go as far to say "anything", but certainly most. As long as a DAC with sufficient resolution and stable clock is being fed with enough bits, then yes.

I would go that far.

If it’s all-digital and marketed to audiophiles, it’s a scam and/or absurd. You can’t improve upon bit-perfect. (Room calibration being a notable exception.)

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#385

Post by fuzzfactor » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 10:16 AM UTC

fvdessen wrote: post #310

deltron3030 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good DACs and ADCs are useful for recording studios who have a lot of analog outboard gear (where the signal leaves and enters their digital setup multiple times). But for normal listening where there are only one or a few conversions, the point of diminishing returns is pretty low. Most of the perceived gains in quality of higher end equipment (DACs, Amps etc.) come from the higher voltage of the outputs (where you…

I have a decent hi-fi audio system at home, and there is a clearly audible difference between playing from my high-end CD player, and playing FLAC from the audio out of my Macbook. The difference is not one of loudness but of 'energy'. A snare hit played from the high-end cd player sounds like someone actually hitting a snare; you can feel there's actual energy in the hit, while the macbook out sounds flat, even at h…

Consider audio benchmarking.

For Widows there is Rightmark, maybe you could run the Macbook's output against a decent Windows DAW.

audio.rightmark.org

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#386

Post by lmilcin » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 10:29 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #373

mrob wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital transmission refers to the whole transceiver system, not just the transmission medium. If I can put a "1" in and reliably get a "1" out, it doesn't matter that it was only a 0.9 part way down the wire.

But that's the question, isn't it? If 0.0001% of the time you get 0.45v instead of 0.9v on the far end, now what?

I suppose you need to read up on digital protocols, it is all well handled. If it wasn't there could be no Internet or digital media or even processors or motherboards.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#387

Post by zmix » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #299

zmix wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Everything is ultimately subject to physics, including optical signals. Nobody claims otherwise. 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 no…

I still don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. Certainly doesn’t have anything to do with how actual systems in the real world work.

You don't understand the concept of "race condition"?

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#388

Post by bayindirh » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 11:07 AM UTC

fvdessen wrote: post #310

deltron3030 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good DACs and ADCs are useful for recording studios who have a lot of analog outboard gear (where the signal leaves and enters their digital setup multiple times). But for normal listening where there are only one or a few conversions, the point of diminishing returns is pretty low. Most of the perceived gains in quality of higher end equipment (DACs, Amps etc.) come from the higher voltage of the outputs (where you…

I have a decent hi-fi audio system at home, and there is a clearly audible difference between playing from my high-end CD player, and playing FLAC from the audio out of my Macbook. The difference is not one of loudness but of 'energy'. A snare hit played from the high-end cd player sounds like someone actually hitting a snare; you can feel there's actual energy in the hit, while the macbook out sounds flat, even at h…

Another possibility is that your CD player might not be flat. Marantz, Yamaha and other manufacturers add their slight sound signatures to their higher and models.

I never benchmarked my Yamaha CD-S300 to other devices, but its flyers and web site never says it's completely flat on the analog outputs. The reviews of the player notes that it has the distinct Yamaha signature too.

Also "Monitor" and "Flat" devices as their name implies sounds pretty flat and dull.

All-in-all you should consider taking response graphs of your devices rightmark.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#389

Post by PappaPatat » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 3:51 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #59

I don't understand this type of audiophiles. I also have a fairly high end, vintage audio system at home, but I'd never do anything like that in the name of audio quality. There's a quote I love about these people: A normal person uses the audio system to listen music, while an audiophile uses music to listen to his audio system.

Total personal anecdote:

Yeah that basically describes me, between the ages of 16 and 26. We would spend hours moving gear to different locations (homes), fiddling with cables, different amplifiers and loudspeaker to find the best possible match our (limited) finances would allow.

Tube amplifiers combined with mosfet pre's, magnapans with external bass speakers. Class A amplifiers that would require a dedicated powerfuse per amplifier. First press vinyl from Japan. Van-den-Hul needles. Granite turntable platform.

Every single weekend we'd swap pre amps, amps, turntables, arms, elements, needles and listen to the "audio system via music" :)

What happened to my setup, you ask? I got married. My living room was modelled around the audio experience: it was not an ideal love nest :) I actually gave my hand crafted, tailor made end amplifiers away just a year ago to a young stranger I overheard talking about his audio quest and who is in the phase where he is searching for his ideal setup like I was 30 years ago.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#390

Post by TylerE » Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 8:06 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #386

TylerE wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the question, isn't it? If 0.0001% of the time you get 0.45v instead of 0.9v on the far end, now what?

I suppose you need to read up on digital protocols, it is all well handled. If it wasn't there could be no Internet or digital media or even processors or motherboards.

That is a higher level, though.

I'm just so tired of all the bullshit where it "Must be a 1 or a 0". That is patently not true. HDMI video, to name one example very relevant to this thread, has no error correction, and bit errors will indeed crop up as the "sparkling" artifacts GGGGGP reported.