You're looking for ghosts under the bed sheets. Get real, identical files played from two different memory locations are OBVIOUSLY different, not subtle, as they say. Why does anyone even answer to these BS comments?
I'm talking about USB Mp3 etc decoder stage built into in this case Panasonic shelf system and Axis car radio/player, el cheap brand.Well, right, unless it's the same decoding/filtering engine/codec underneath, in which case Max Headroom will find out that the streams themselves are identical
Also Aus Holden Caprice Bose factory system.
I expect that the bit info is intact.
It' to do with timing stability I reckon/hear.
Dan.
Think of what it costs Audioquest for the back cover of Stereophile for 6 months straight and what part of the price of a pair of speaker cables or interconnects it plays. Then what the dealer makes on it and Audioquest make on it and well soon a dollars worth of copper or silver become worth more than Grandma's old gold tooth,,,,,if only I could put a 72 volt battery on it to bias the dielectric... Oh I forgot the marketing guy who thinks up the name of rivers, mountains,or wild animals to describe them...
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I have a Core i7 system that spent the last 3 years overclocked to 4.5GHz on all cores and DDR3 running at >2400 rates instead of 1866 as specified. System was rock stable, proved by Linpack with AVX and Prime95 for days at a time.
Finally one of the DIMMs decided to give up 2 months ago. First manifestation was an occasional blue screen of death. Kept using the system and a week later I noticed occasional random clicks and sometimes full-scale noise bursts when playing back WAV files in both foobar2000 and Windows Media Player. Turns out, only something like one DRAM chip on the 3rd DIMM in the system was affected, so to produce the effect I had to open 10 GB worth of stuff to trigger it. I ran memtest, pulled out the bad DIMM, and then the noises and instability were gone.
The point is, the DRAM bit errors did not affect the subjective sound quality at all, except for when corrupted samples made it to the DAC, which were immediately obvious.
As Scott mentioned, most of the time any DRAM bit errors will bring the system down fast. Flip one bit in an address you're jumping to and it probably becomes invalid and will trigger an app crash or blue screen / kernel oops immediately.
Do they do shmoo plots with analog?
My first foray into shmoo plots was back in '85. I was designing hybrids for an IBM SRAM testing machine for their R&D group, they were making 50 and 25 nSec 64k (IIRC) chips and we were building parts for their production test equipment. Lots of 10k and 100k ECL. Guy started talking all shmoo and such, I thought he was nuts.
In a nutshell, he would vary the supply voltage and look for bit errors. It would identify such things as on chip supply rail problems.
Nice mention.
Just worked with a detector group looking for dark matter in liquid argon. They were really touchy about the materials used to build it, as ceramics, glasses, metals all had varying levels of background that would false trigger the detector. It was a real learning experience seeing how they have to find low level materials.
John
No RNM is a collaborative kind of guy. Not an evil bone in his body. A legitimate question.
I ask two kinds. The first type will start a discussion. The second and more common causes folks to stop for a bit as they aren't sure why I ask something apparently so simple.
Now why did you ask?
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You have to remember that everyone is using different mix desk, mixing software and there are no standards that say you have to use a specific filter, it is an art form most of the time with the artist and the recording engineer doing what they think sounds good. Just because someone is using something like Pro Tools doesn't mean there is only one way to use it, and besides that every recording studio is using different speakers and the rooms have different acoustics. How can you ever expect there to be a standard on the recording side of things?
Big problem, I would consider a recording engineer more artist than engineer. Understanding the limitations of DSP algorithms in different hardware environments with respect to internal overflow, truncation, scaling etc. is not necessarily for the artistically inclined.
Certainly the 'mix' will affect the sound... deliberately in most cases. same with analog as with digital.
But, limiting the issues just to hardware only, please. Being used correctly. Are there any differences in recording and playback equipment makes/models/brands which could lead to audible differences? Algors, filters, noise shaping etc etc. What?
THx-RNMarsh
But, limiting the issues just to hardware only, please. Being used correctly. Are there any differences in recording and playback equipment makes/models/brands which could lead to audible differences? Algors, filters, noise shaping etc etc. What?
THx-RNMarsh
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Richard, surely you recognize differeneces between audio gear, even if it's supposed to be very linear and neutral?
In the summer of 1981, I was purchasing an opan reel tape deck. So I borrowed a Revox B77 tape deck from a good friend, U still had my old Uher Royal de Luxe and I asked the seller to let me try out a Philips N4520 I thought about buying. Since the deck's sole duty would be to tape music frm LPs, I did the obvious test. I chose two LPs which I considered to be excellent exmples of what could be had from them, and taped the same tracks on each one of them, sticking to manufacturer recommended rec levels, using Naxell UD-XL tape as a reference. And I got three different results with the same system but different decks.
The old Uher, however with a brand new head block) sounded very neutral but with a slight loss of high frequency sound, nothing bad, but it could be heard. The Revox did well but I found it to somehow lack in dynamics. The Phillips, then a brand new model on the market, did the best job of it. Looking at the manufacturer published specs, the Philips had the tightest specs, said to be 25-20.000 Hz +/- 2 dB, and it was the only deck with externally available bias tape tuning and with a chart of how each tape should be ideally set up. I set it up as per the instructions (bias to "+1.5", for EE tapes).
Obviously, despite very similar specs, tape machines will nevertheless soud different and this will also depend on the tape we use.
In 1993, when I was choosing a casette deck for myself, I had a similar situation when comparing a Nakamichi, a Denon and a Sony deck, I also got a similar situation, the Nak and Denon had automatic tape biasing systems, whereas the Sony had a full biasing system using two frequencies, but it was 100% manual. Yet, I was able to obtain the best rec/replay results with that Sony deck (TC-K 808 ES).
More recently, I am able to compare different RIAA stage behavior between my resident preamp, a Luxman C-03, a Philips Black Tulip AH280, a Harman/Cardon Citation 23 preamp and a Marantz 3265 preamp. Four different sounds from the same TT and phono cartridge.
Add different tape recording results, and you already have TWO easily audible differeneces in series and you've just started. Add loudspeakers and you have still more room for differences God alone (if even He) can predict the final result.
In the summer of 1981, I was purchasing an opan reel tape deck. So I borrowed a Revox B77 tape deck from a good friend, U still had my old Uher Royal de Luxe and I asked the seller to let me try out a Philips N4520 I thought about buying. Since the deck's sole duty would be to tape music frm LPs, I did the obvious test. I chose two LPs which I considered to be excellent exmples of what could be had from them, and taped the same tracks on each one of them, sticking to manufacturer recommended rec levels, using Naxell UD-XL tape as a reference. And I got three different results with the same system but different decks.
The old Uher, however with a brand new head block) sounded very neutral but with a slight loss of high frequency sound, nothing bad, but it could be heard. The Revox did well but I found it to somehow lack in dynamics. The Phillips, then a brand new model on the market, did the best job of it. Looking at the manufacturer published specs, the Philips had the tightest specs, said to be 25-20.000 Hz +/- 2 dB, and it was the only deck with externally available bias tape tuning and with a chart of how each tape should be ideally set up. I set it up as per the instructions (bias to "+1.5", for EE tapes).
Obviously, despite very similar specs, tape machines will nevertheless soud different and this will also depend on the tape we use.
In 1993, when I was choosing a casette deck for myself, I had a similar situation when comparing a Nakamichi, a Denon and a Sony deck, I also got a similar situation, the Nak and Denon had automatic tape biasing systems, whereas the Sony had a full biasing system using two frequencies, but it was 100% manual. Yet, I was able to obtain the best rec/replay results with that Sony deck (TC-K 808 ES).
More recently, I am able to compare different RIAA stage behavior between my resident preamp, a Luxman C-03, a Philips Black Tulip AH280, a Harman/Cardon Citation 23 preamp and a Marantz 3265 preamp. Four different sounds from the same TT and phono cartridge.
Add different tape recording results, and you already have TWO easily audible differeneces in series and you've just started. Add loudspeakers and you have still more room for differences God alone (if even He) can predict the final result.
I find the quality and 'balance' - by which I mean the way bass, mid and treble relate to each other - variations across recordings huge. These differences completely swamp amp/preamp, and in many cases, loudspeaker differences. If you then add the room acoustics, as jcx has shown above - its no wonder some stuff gets rave reviews while someone else is unmoved. If I had to guess at the order of contributions to sound differences across systems in various locations
Room acoustics - 30% contribution
Loudspeaker - 30%
Recording - 30%
Preamp (incl phono eq if used) - 5%
Power Amplifier - 3%
DAC - 1% (assumes well engineered exemplar)
Remaining 1% on other factors e.g.
Cables (provided they can provide the necessary current demanded with a few 10's of mV IR drop across them) - perhaps 10 ppm
Maple cable lifters - perhaps 1 ppb
Oak cable lifters - .01 ppb
(ok - last two are a dig at the sandman )
If we added the psychological contribution (i.e. 'peeking' which I have not done above) I'd say 60 or 70% which of course would push all the factors listed above down correspondingly - but I wont go there because that's a whole different discussion. Why? because the high end is NOT about specifications details, but about branding and lifestyle. If it wasn't, we would not have amplifiers that can barely do 20-20kHz with 2% distortion, damping factors of 10 or less, glowed in the dark and required the gain elements to be replaced every couple of years.
Just my two pennies worth.
As I don my asbestos flame proof suit, peace and goodwill to all of you!
Room acoustics - 30% contribution
Loudspeaker - 30%
Recording - 30%
Preamp (incl phono eq if used) - 5%
Power Amplifier - 3%
DAC - 1% (assumes well engineered exemplar)
Remaining 1% on other factors e.g.
Cables (provided they can provide the necessary current demanded with a few 10's of mV IR drop across them) - perhaps 10 ppm
Maple cable lifters - perhaps 1 ppb
Oak cable lifters - .01 ppb
(ok - last two are a dig at the sandman
)If we added the psychological contribution (i.e. 'peeking' which I have not done above) I'd say 60 or 70% which of course would push all the factors listed above down correspondingly - but I wont go there because that's a whole different discussion. Why? because the high end is NOT about specifications details, but about branding and lifestyle. If it wasn't, we would not have amplifiers that can barely do 20-20kHz with 2% distortion, damping factors of 10 or less, glowed in the dark and required the gain elements to be replaced every couple of years.
Just my two pennies worth.
As I don my asbestos flame proof suit, peace and goodwill to all of you!
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