The physics and measurements gaurantee it. There are many more thousands that believe the earth is flat. Did you do a blind ABX or just the usuall useless sighted slow swap. Dont answer, its obvious.
The cables don't provide the guarantee, the higher layer protocols do. Regardless of the cable used, upper layer protocols use error correction to guarantee that the data sent and data received are identical. I don't mean "similar" or "close enough", I mean identical.
The ones and zeroes either arrive at the destination or they do not. If they arrive, they are identical to the ones and zeroes that were sent. Period. It can be no other way. Literally, it is impossible for it to be any other way.
If someone believes that changing a USB cable or Ethernet cable can change the "tone" (or any other aspect) of their music they are outright admitting that they have no idea what digital data is or how it is transmitted over a cable or network. It would be quite entertaining if it wasn't so sad.
Thank you too!
I have been having this same argument with my ears, but the ignorant stubborn b@stards keep insisting.
That has clearly been shown to not be the case. It is called jitter. The actual transmission of the data is an analog signal and it passes from a 0 to a 1 when the analog signal rises above a certain threshold. Jitter occurs when the timing of those pulses is not rendered accurately.
As long as a computer gets the info it doesn’t care about the timing, in digital audio all sorts of measures are often taken to ensure the correct timing of the 0s and 1s.
So proper passing of 0s and 1s is insufficient to garantee optimum sound, the timing is as critical.
dave
I found that the higher end FIrewire cable made a subtle but audible difference, the newer USB DAC came with the claim that a cable would not make a difference, that turned out to be much the case. I heard no difference using the same level of elevated cable.
So YMMV.
dave
Hi Dave,
As we are talking about switches, this topic is about data transfer on a network. The network only passes packets of data, it doesn't understand what the data is.
Discussion about what happens in the DAC is a red herring.
regards
The switch can still affect the timing.
It is a shame that Firewire — a protocol designed to actually transport audio/video — did not get sufficient love. USB & Ethernet bring the problem that they are designed for data packets not a stream of audio/video and a lot of work has had to be done in an attempt to get over their issues.
Fortunately, Intels moves to tuen USB3/4 into Thunderbolt (which includes Firewire protocols) we may finally see better interfaces.
USB & Ethernet as transport methods are still developing and getting better as the little gotchas that many do not even know exist are worked thru.
dave
Nonsense. Cabling is engineering. Music is art, audio is engineering.
Take the example of your Ethernet cabling for downloading gigabytes of data from the internet or whatever. (I assume you understand that at this point, your precious music is just a stream of data bytes).
All your downloaded apps run perfect first time. All your downloaded music plays perfect first time. Gigabytes on end, days on end.
If you know something that goes 'deeper' than this, pray tell share with us.
Jan
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It is Expectation Bias or Confirmation Bias; you believe something will be better and, unsurprisingly, it is despite there being no difference at all. Most people do not understand the person they can most easily fool is themself.
My music files are stored on a NAS with a ZFS file system using ZFS mirror RAID. They are all check-summed and remain exactly the same because ZFS ensures they do, particularly with ECC RAM. To play them, they are sent from there through two switches to a RPi with a DAC. They arrive in the form of clear music with no audible imperfections after passing through two "non-audiophile" switches.
All switches do is transfer digital packets, nothing more. If you believe in magic, you will think you see it.
Look at the situation when you download a music stream from say Amazon. Do you realize that the various 'packets' of data very often arrive in the wrong order, that they arrive via different routes, through different data centers in different parts of the world? Yet all is assembled correctly by your software and emerges as a perfectly rendered piece of music.
Does anyone think there are blemishes that are created in this process that can be fixed by changing the capacitors in your home modem or server?
Jan
Does anyone think there are blemishes that are created in this process that can be fixed by changing the capacitors in your home modem or server?
Jan
They keep getting better, sounding better. Take Shitt’s USB I/O evolution. Mike Moffat — a true digital guru — did not like USB, but it was necessary. They did a USB V1, V2, V5 using one of the available off the shelf USB I/Os. He was still happier with SP/DIF. So he wrote his own software and now prefers the newest (now with. fancy name) USB over SP/DIF.
dave
Extending this further, even if an USB to network (RJ45) cable/adapter is used, the digital packets still arrive correctly.
We all know Dave deals in woo and believes in all of that magic stuff. The Red Herrings should come as no surprise.
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