High End Audio Bullshit!

[carlthess40]

Where is the link to this video? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DohBCooper]

The funny thing is that the first few minutes are generally decent computer advise for performance, it all falls apart when he relates it to sounding better. It's like he read stuff about recording workstations, had no idea what any of it meant, then decided that was related to sound quality.

I got bored by 7 minutes though and skipped to the end a bit... clueless bugger.

Also, some of the steam was taken off the video text rebuttals when they can't spell worth a damn.

In his defense, he is from the Netherlands and English isn't his first language. He has a pretty interesting channel on YouTube where he builds his own planar magnetic speakers from scratch.

[300Z]

Where is the link to this video? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In the first post?

[dlr]

What's not mentioned in the video, and to me is far more relevant, is that the sound chip or sound card in the PC will affect the sound. High quality sound cards, such as SoundBlaster, will make a difference to the sound and come with various software to let you do cool things.

Our PC and SoundBlaster card are old, and maybe things have changed, but when we bought the PC the 'on board sound' was poor. The SoundBlaster improved the sound, and of course exactly the same information was coming from the disk drive.

Geoff

There's a good article at the Bodzio Software site by Bohdan, the creator of SoundEasy and the Ultimate Equalizer, the latter one that I use on my dipole system. The paper may be rather old with regard to hardware today (no date in the paper nor at the link), but given the stats of PC motherboard integrated audio back then, today's systems, probably even cheaper, basic PCs are likely to be more than adequate.

Computer SNR (pdf)

He has a quote from an old PETT thread in 2012, so even back then PC motherboard audio was often sufficient. I use a Delta 1010 and even Delta 410 for test bed, but I suspect that a good PC today may match the capability of these now obsolete cards.

dlr

[chad1376]

Oh holy hell. I just scanned a few seconds of this. He looks nerdy and bland, which might give him an air of 'puter legitimacy to that room full of old dudes that are even more clueless about how computers work.

Not trying to be aged biased here, but anyone in that audience with even rudimentary computer savvy would have screamed "BULLSH*T" from the back of the room.

This guy spews the same garbage - SSD sounds better that HDD. Not noise - sounds better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j3yihXJkLY

Meanwhile, I'm going to upgrade my PC from 16gb to 64gb of ram, to see if I can hear the difference

[Wolf]

In his defense, he is from the Netherlands and English isn't his first language. He has a pretty interesting channel on YouTube where he builds his own planar magnetic speakers from scratch.

I think he posts over on DIYaudio. I thought I recognized the guy in the initial video intro. Now I know of whom you speak.
Wolf

[wogg]

I don't have any SS drives, so I know nothing about them.
Wolf

Oh man you should. Single greatest upgrade to any computer, using anything without one frustrates the crap out of me now. Basically the random read speed compared to an old spinning platter is off the charts, so your boot up and program loading times are cut down to near nothing.

But your audio won't sound any better

[chad1376]

What's not mentioned in the video, and to me is far more relevant, is that the sound chip or sound card in the PC will affect the sound..

Geoff

This. The inside of a PC is probably worst place in the world for analog anything. Get the digital signal out of the PC and into an isolated DAC. Toslink for total electrical isolation.

[billfitzmaurice]

Single greatest upgrade to any computer, using anything without one frustrates the crap out of me now.

+1. It doesn't actually quadruple your processor speed, but the program loading time is so drastically reduced that it seems that way. I can't say if they're crash proof, but with no moving parts it's far less likely.

[mzisserson]

I will never understand why people spend so much time "disproving" and "debunking" this hot garbage in a dumpster fire.

Imagine the progress that can be made in terms of musical enjoyment if people focused on enjoying the music, and coming to their own conclusions on what matters and what does not based upon their own research into what may be right for them?

I have heard many systems that are designed with some serious belief in pure voodoo that sound excellent. Who am I to judge? Even if they let me completely re-design their system from source to speaker from what I thought was good....Would it truly be "better" or just a same but different?

The further DACs advance the less SSD vs. Spinning disc becomes an issue.So was it the discs all along? Likely not... Newell and Holland have published several papers on the specta distortion that occurs when complex waveforms are sent through cables as related to the property of the cables. No one seems to ever cite those because it makes it hard to argue. $5,000 cables are not the answer for sure, however. Want a SPDIF to live with for the rest of your life? Go to Guitarded Center and spend $10 on a HOSA 1m SPDIF cable. I told a dandy once it was a $1,000 digital cable and put it in his very expensive system. He thought it was more enjoyable over his $2,000 Nordost thingy. When he found out what it was, it was funny to watch his mind unravel and he suddenly heard how "bad" the HOSA was. Good connectors, good quality materials, good construction of it all, and shelidling are about all it takes to keep small signals in check. That does not cost much.

I think people who are legitimately interested in high end audio as a hobby and a channel to enjoy the music have more at their disposal than ever. This is not the 90's anymore. Brilliant Pebbles, and cable lifters no longer entice since a quick google search will give any N00B the right information about such things.

It is more of the same, over and over. Haters are going to hate, and with the complexity and variables involved in just about every aspect of the audio chain, it is easy to fall victim to the Sharpshooter Fallacy: Clustering information to support an inherent belief and drawing the target around it. While there is a lot of phooey out there...Poppycock and even tomfoolery, there if a lot of good, too. Many companies pushing the bar forward like Vivid has in driver design, and Bricasti has in clock precision and DAC filtering, especially on the DSD side of things.These projects are expensive. It shows in their products, but like anything else, it will eventually become the norm. Is the cost of the incremental improvement worth it? Perhaps to us it is not, but can companies like Vivid and Bricasti afford to absorb the R&D cost over the years it takes to yield this result because Joe Youtuber thinks it should be cheap? No. Just the programming and software development alone for Bricasti's M1 was over $250,000, and that was 10+ years ago. Making a small change to release a more affordable product like their M3 still brings heavy prototype and R&D costs.That all ends up in the pricetag.

We cannot forget to give credit where credit is due, too. More importantly we cannot forget to enjoy the music. That's the end result, no? In recent years I have come to realize a big part of getting the most enjoyment from this hobby is keeping an open mind, but not so wide open your brain falls out. Buyer beware, question everything, but if along the way you happen across something you love...Love it regardless of what every one else thinks if it brings enjoyment to your listening experience.

Happy listening fellas.

[chad1376]

So here's a tongue in cheek suggestion, if someone is looking to at least theoretically optimize PC audio. A server MB with ECC ram. Cosmic rays occasionally cause corrupted ram data. ECC ram is used in mission critical servers- it checks for this corruption, and corrects it. Consumer PCs typically are not compatible with ECC. The sonic benefits would be immense.

Yah, I know, B.S.. At least if the dude in the video suggested it, it would have some basis in fact.

[charlielaub]

He has a quote from an old PETT thread in 2012, so even back then PC motherboard audio was often sufficient. I use a Delta 1010 and even Delta 410 for test bed, but I suspect that a good PC today may match the capability of these now obsolete cards.

A very low powered computer is more than up to the task of handling audio data in real time. By "computer" I mean something like a Raspberry Pi can do it, no problem at all, 24/192. No spinning disks there, either

When you are talking about "onboard audio" or even audio cards, then you do encounter problems with noise on the ground and EMI noise since you are very close to GHz signals, and there is not really much of any shielding in between. There are few audio cards that really provide high S/N, but this comes only at a cost. External audio devices (e.g. USB DAC, etc.) have the advantage in this regard.

There is really no computer component that I can think of that will impact the sound quality coming out of an external DAC that has its own power supply (e.g. not using USB bus power). Even bus powered DACs can be very good when low noise LDO regulators are used, and these have come along way in the last 10 years.

So basically, don't worry about it too much. I have $50 DACs that are pretty good, and I did measurements to prove it. I try to avoid becoming an audiophool at all times.

Heck, if someone feels good after spending beaucoup $$$ on audio equipment or accessories, who am I to say they are in the wrong. It's the "promoters" of the false audiophile narrative that are really the villains out there, but they are just following their business model. To quote someone I know who has been deep in the audio equipment business for decades, 'we sell entertainment".

[devnull]

This. The inside of a PC is probably worst place in the world for analog anything. Get the digital signal out of the PC and into an isolated DAC. Toslink for total electrical isolation.

Properly done the output of a PC can equal or exceed a stand alone DAC. It's not that hard on a multi-layer PCB to control noise. You can get over 100dB of SNR and 90+ dB of dynamic range out of a PC. Think about a modern high end AVR, it's literally the same noisy, mixed mode, analog and digital, environment as a PC. It's got a SMPS, it's got a bunch of CPU horsepower, it's got a lot of high speed digital video data moving around, it's doing DSP on the audio and video. In reality it's a dedicated mode PC with a bunch of amps. The actual "DACS" in my AVR have a SNR of 123dB, the analog inputs are 110dB. Can you actually hear the difference between a SNR of 100dB and 110dB, doubtful.


Also, don't forget that Toslink limits you to 2 channels of uncompressed PCM.

[DohBCooper]

I think he posts over on DIYaudio. I thought I recognized the guy in the initial video intro. Now I know of whom you speak.
Wolf

Yes he does. He goes by WrineX over there. Pretty knowledgeable and helpful guy.

[Wolf]

Yep- that's who I was thinking of.
Wolf