Handmade SATA cables that are CE and FCC complient and tested...
As I work on a PC 24/7 using critical files, if they go I can loose a couple hours of work (I back up) I thought I would copy some files here there and everywhere, to hard disk, CD, DVD, memory stick... Well I was shocked, it seems Windows is pretty good at doing bit perfect copies...of course these were only 3D cad and PCB design files.
As to fragmentation, defrag the drives, it is reccomended, we notice loading speed slows down with CAD files when they are fragmented, so its good practice.
And thats what I would like to see, known good practices that will give a PC or MAC the easiest and least stressful way of getting data from A to B (defraging being one), and facts that can be verified.
As I work on a PC 24/7 using critical files, if they go I can loose a couple hours of work (I back up) I thought I would copy some files here there and everywhere, to hard disk, CD, DVD, memory stick... Well I was shocked, it seems Windows is pretty good at doing bit perfect copies...of course these were only 3D cad and PCB design files.
As to fragmentation, defrag the drives, it is reccomended, we notice loading speed slows down with CAD files when they are fragmented, so its good practice.
And thats what I would like to see, known good practices that will give a PC or MAC the easiest and least stressful way of getting data from A to B (defraging being one), and facts that can be verified.
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For the claims on the mp3's there is a very easy way to determine if the files are identical or not (with a very high certainty level). Run an MD5 checksum on each file, if it is different the files are different, if it is the same then they are the same.
If the checksums are the same then my belief is that the two files will sound the same (and I would be VERY surprised if the checksums are not the same even if the file was copied 100 times). Though analog_sa's comments are interesting, especially the one about differing read patterns on the drive causing modulation of the power supply (this could possibly explain other claims that I've found rather unlikely, that SSD's sound better than old fashioned HDD's)
Tony.
If the checksums are the same then my belief is that the two files will sound the same (and I would be VERY surprised if the checksums are not the same even if the file was copied 100 times). Though analog_sa's comments are interesting, especially the one about differing read patterns on the drive causing modulation of the power supply (this could possibly explain other claims that I've found rather unlikely, that SSD's sound better than old fashioned HDD's)
Tony.
Damn. I'm finally going to reply. Been resisting up until now.
These claims that a file copied repeatedly is somehow degraded is mad.
You can simply perform a diff of the two files. They will be identical.
Besides if they were corrupted by multiple transfers, you wouldn't 'lose the top end' or 'get poorer dynamics', it wouldn't increase jitter. You'd get pops and squeaks and all the usual problems associated with bad digital data. I suppose it's possible the concealment of errors may be changing the sound, but if error concealment is having to occur on such a grand scale, I'm amazed your machine boots at all.
I don't think fragmentation would cause problem. Modern HDDs can transfer data at several Gbps with contiguous data. There is enough bandwidth in a modern cpu to be able to reconstruct a continuous stream of data from a file distributed amongst several badly placed fragments at a rate of several hundred kbps without a buffer underrun. If you get an underrrun, you get dropouts, not jitter.
the only jitter problems occur are after the buffer in RAM feeding the DAC.
I can only imagine that some people are perceiving differences because of maybe the conditions the PC is under at different times. PCs are irritatingly dynamic, it's hard to always know what a PC is up to. It could be downloading some update, or garbage collecting and freeing up unwanted memory, perhaps a task is errant and hogging CPU. All sorts of things can be going on under the hood that can't always be anticipated that can be affecting playback, possibly. A low latency or realtime OS can help with that.
Regarding the cable. I can only imagine that there is less radiation or something causing interference. That's a possible argument, again, if that affects your DAC, then I think there are more important issues that need resolving. And if your cable is a problem for you, why aren't you losing sleep over PCB tracks on your motherboard?
I don't see how a cable can affect PSU behaviour in this situation. Again, you should be isolating PSU issues from the DAC as best you can.
These claims that a file copied repeatedly is somehow degraded is mad.
You can simply perform a diff of the two files. They will be identical.
Besides if they were corrupted by multiple transfers, you wouldn't 'lose the top end' or 'get poorer dynamics', it wouldn't increase jitter. You'd get pops and squeaks and all the usual problems associated with bad digital data. I suppose it's possible the concealment of errors may be changing the sound, but if error concealment is having to occur on such a grand scale, I'm amazed your machine boots at all.
I don't think fragmentation would cause problem. Modern HDDs can transfer data at several Gbps with contiguous data. There is enough bandwidth in a modern cpu to be able to reconstruct a continuous stream of data from a file distributed amongst several badly placed fragments at a rate of several hundred kbps without a buffer underrun. If you get an underrrun, you get dropouts, not jitter.
the only jitter problems occur are after the buffer in RAM feeding the DAC.
I can only imagine that some people are perceiving differences because of maybe the conditions the PC is under at different times. PCs are irritatingly dynamic, it's hard to always know what a PC is up to. It could be downloading some update, or garbage collecting and freeing up unwanted memory, perhaps a task is errant and hogging CPU. All sorts of things can be going on under the hood that can't always be anticipated that can be affecting playback, possibly. A low latency or realtime OS can help with that.
Regarding the cable. I can only imagine that there is less radiation or something causing interference. That's a possible argument, again, if that affects your DAC, then I think there are more important issues that need resolving. And if your cable is a problem for you, why aren't you losing sleep over PCB tracks on your motherboard?
I don't see how a cable can affect PSU behaviour in this situation. Again, you should be isolating PSU issues from the DAC as best you can.
BINGO! Thats it! Of cause the people that can´t hear the differences simply have bad designed tracks on the motherboards. No way for them to benefit from better cables then.
Like always, if your system is limited to much already from the beginning you can´t expect to hear improvements.
One thing that must be said at this point:
Since years i sometimes check what drivel goes on at diyaudio and lately i really got impressed by the effort and patience members like phofman or SY in this case invest in trying to keep this section of the forum in good rational shape. Congrats and much thanks for that!!
Since years i sometimes check what drivel goes on at diyaudio and lately i really got impressed by the effort and patience members like phofman or SY in this case invest in trying to keep this section of the forum in good rational shape. Congrats and much thanks for that!!
Just make sure that the files don't get moved around during the renaming process.
Please no, if they start worrying over PCB traces and high speed digital we are doomed
Actualy one would hope they do simulate the motherboard layout before fabrication and use impedance ontrolled PCBs, I know that reputable and companies do as it is cheaper to simulate the layout using a signal integrity software and IBIS data for the devices used, than try and use best practice and have to re-do the board. Our first DDR memory interface took us 3 months, with initial reading learning to simulate and having everything checked out by a consultancy firm to verify our results, that was because we had to get it right
Again if the believers of SSD over HDD think its power supply modulation, then check it out, though I believe rational engineering will remove the mystique. And if it is the power supply get a bigger better one, though SSD create their own noise (as does ALL high speed/fast rise time digital).
Having just moved my CD's to a hard drive, I would be interested in setting up a PC just for music to get the best out of it, but even now I am impressed with the sound out of my basic PC, and even when using Cadstar (a ECAD) package haven't noticed any problems. Just having easy access to all the CD's in the house is a big boost. To keep things as neat as possible I did buy a disk exclusively for music, and did my CD's one after the other over a few days hopefully to limit the fragmention of the files.
As for comparing sound output, we use a Bruel & Kjaer torso what aslo katers for bone conduction and squashy bits, while it wont give an indication of percieved sound quality, what it does is give us a metric that we can measure one part of a system and see if it affects the output. So you can change a cable or a unit in the reproduction chain and get a true indication of any change without having to rely on human hearing, which cos of our emotionaly controlled brains are not reliable enough for most people (the majority of us). Again listening tests are carried out with as many victims as possible, all having a hearing test before so that again you have a metric of the participants hearing ability...
And no they will not let me use the system to test SATA cables
Spoilsports.
So....What's happened to the SATA cable guy?
And what about the guy who bought one and was going to test it?
Hmmmm.....that's kind of suspicious!
It's digital data people not audio so be aware that there are people out there who would like to separate you from your money on crazy things that you may not understand that sounds right to you!
All of us here who do understand electronics know this is bunk, so I would hope if you don't really understand this stuff take that into account and be careful of what you "believe".
There is no beliefs in electronics. It only works or it doesn't...there's no magic involved....I'm sorry to break it to you this way but you can't "hear" 1's and 0's.
Sure you can hear a square wave repeating itself at high speed switching back and forth from zero to a couple volts, but that doesn't sound that great...actually kind of annoying and it certainly isn't music...(well OK some people think they can make music out of it, but that's a whole other topic).
The sound you hear only comes from the cones in those boxes you call speakers or the cones in those headphones you put over your ears...if you have cheap speakers or headphones that's what you be hearing.
Noise comes from amplification. If you have a cheap amp, that's what your hearing. At the DAC stage you can get poor filtering at the output and some DAC's are better at that than others. The output filters can be cheap or expensive.
If your trying to improve your audio system look to the quality of your DAC, amplifier and speakers first.
And let's not forget the source material. You certainly aren't going to get high quality audio from AIF, FLAC or MP3's. These are all heavily compressed formats that take most of the one's and zeros out to save space on your ipod....
Try getting a hold of some 24bit, 96khz sampled wave files to listen to and see if you hear a difference on your headphones or speakers.
You of course would need to invest your money in more expensive audio interfaces. Professional audio interfaces can cost into the thousands of dollars, a far cry from a $10 cable. Wire will always be the poor man's attempt for improvement and the brain will always tell you it sounds better....it's just your brain....At the end of the day it's your ears and your brain and your pocketbook and your decision.
This stuff has nothing to do with the SATA cables interconnecting your computer peripherals to your CPU...
And while were on this topic why not start by getting a good hearing test!
The average human has limited to poor hearing to begin with unless they are very young or somehow haven't damaged their hearing listening to loud material over long periods of their life or have a cold or the flu or sinus problems or just general genetic flaws in the ears and you can go on from there. No one person has the same hearing!
Most importantly though why not just enjoy your music and be happy you have the ears and time and equipment to do so.
just saying!
And what about the guy who bought one and was going to test it?
Hmmmm.....that's kind of suspicious!
It's digital data people not audio so be aware that there are people out there who would like to separate you from your money on crazy things that you may not understand that sounds right to you!
All of us here who do understand electronics know this is bunk, so I would hope if you don't really understand this stuff take that into account and be careful of what you "believe".
There is no beliefs in electronics. It only works or it doesn't...there's no magic involved....I'm sorry to break it to you this way but you can't "hear" 1's and 0's.
Sure you can hear a square wave repeating itself at high speed switching back and forth from zero to a couple volts, but that doesn't sound that great...actually kind of annoying and it certainly isn't music...(well OK some people think they can make music out of it, but that's a whole other topic).
The sound you hear only comes from the cones in those boxes you call speakers or the cones in those headphones you put over your ears...if you have cheap speakers or headphones that's what you be hearing.
Noise comes from amplification. If you have a cheap amp, that's what your hearing. At the DAC stage you can get poor filtering at the output and some DAC's are better at that than others. The output filters can be cheap or expensive.
If your trying to improve your audio system look to the quality of your DAC, amplifier and speakers first.
And let's not forget the source material. You certainly aren't going to get high quality audio from AIF, FLAC or MP3's. These are all heavily compressed formats that take most of the one's and zeros out to save space on your ipod....
Try getting a hold of some 24bit, 96khz sampled wave files to listen to and see if you hear a difference on your headphones or speakers.
You of course would need to invest your money in more expensive audio interfaces. Professional audio interfaces can cost into the thousands of dollars, a far cry from a $10 cable. Wire will always be the poor man's attempt for improvement and the brain will always tell you it sounds better....it's just your brain....At the end of the day it's your ears and your brain and your pocketbook and your decision.
This stuff has nothing to do with the SATA cables interconnecting your computer peripherals to your CPU...
And while were on this topic why not start by getting a good hearing test!
The average human has limited to poor hearing to begin with unless they are very young or somehow haven't damaged their hearing listening to loud material over long periods of their life or have a cold or the flu or sinus problems or just general genetic flaws in the ears and you can go on from there. No one person has the same hearing!
Most importantly though why not just enjoy your music and be happy you have the ears and time and equipment to do so.
just saying!
Well OK I guess if you can take 24 or 32bit 96khz wav files converted in FLAC that would be fine then!
I don't use AIF or AIFF because I use a PC....but I suppose if it sounds as good to you then use it on your Mac/iTunes!
Using MP3 I would suggest VBR above 256 or 384.
Again this increases your file sizes but I think the sound quality is better...at least to my ears!
Still waiting for the test report and waveform screenshots from the SATA cable guys?!
I don't use AIF or AIFF because I use a PC....but I suppose if it sounds as good to you then use it on your Mac/iTunes!
Using MP3 I would suggest VBR above 256 or 384.
Again this increases your file sizes but I think the sound quality is better...at least to my ears!
Still waiting for the test report and waveform screenshots from the SATA cable guys?!
AIF and flac just offer the completre PCM data, nothing added, nothing removed. What should sound different then!? Please lookup what lossless together with flac means. Lossless means no loss is lossless and indeed is lossless.Well OK I guess if you can take 24 or 32bit 96khz wav files converted in FLAC that would be fine then!
I don't use AIF or AIFF because I use a PC....but I suppose if it sounds as good to you then use it on your Mac/iTunes!
Using MP3 I would suggest VBR above 256 or 384.
Again this increases your file sizes but I think the sound quality is better...at least to my ears!
Still waiting for the test report and waveform screenshots from the SATA cable guys?!
32bit is pointless as you will have a hard time playing back a well done 16bit file and reaching its noisefloor limits already.
mp3 standard tops out at 320kb, only non-compliant versions offer higher bitrates.
Besides that i doubt we will see anything that can prove the SATA cable making a difference besides some impressive word creations.
I'm amazed people are worrying about 32 bit. Getting a 16 bit DAC right, with low noise PSUs, and 11MHz clock frequencies with low jitter is a big enough job for the average DIYer. If you're using a standard sound card or a standard USB DAC (i.e. without good power supply filtering, IV conversion, output buffering and low jitter master clock in the DAC) then all the concerns made here regarding SATA cables and file copying and avoiding MP3 are probably the least of your worries.
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