High End Audio Bullshit!

[Ron_E]

What software did you use to access them?

I use VLC Media Player for playback. https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
I used Exact Audio Copy to rip the disks to Flac. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Ron

[malboro2]

I converted my 1500+ CD's to lossless Flac files and find them to be as good as the original unless there was trouble reading the CD.

Ron

What software did you use to access them?

[chad1376]

A few important tips for anyone that stores their music on a M.2 drive.

1) Always store the card with the contacts down, so air bubbles don't mix with the bits. Never shake the card. Install it in the computer with the contacts down for the same reason..

2) 3300MB/s is way too fast - your whole music library will play in a few seconds. Here, I've installed a 18k resistor to slow it down to the Redbook standard of 1,411,200 B/s, but it depends on the bit rate of your files. High-res requires a smaller resistor.

3) Compressed files will need a larger resistor, since the bits are compressed, they create pressure in the memory chip, and the bits will want to come out faster.

[Dave Bullet]

Those that talk about noise in the digital domain need to back that up with a specific protocol that does not perform error detection and correction. Then we have a basis. With an appropriate protocol, there is no chance of the bits being wrong. Any "noise" introduced will simply reveal itself as gaps in playback when buffer underrun occurs on the receiving device. this will be clearly audible (or can be measured). It won't "sneak through" as any hiss, loss of detail, compression or some such.

[Ron_E]

OMG.

Someone who did this said that transferring the CD’s to digital introduced a distortion called "digital stutter”, and the people he knew who did it wished they still had their CD’s. I couldn’t find anyone who ever heard of digital stutter, but then there aren’t that many people around who actually transferred and entire 1000 CD classical collection into a 3 TB drive.

I converted my 1500+ CD's to lossless Flac files and find them to be as good as the original unless there was trouble reading the CD.

Ron

[Ron_E]

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

Think high capacity really fast flash drive that looks like a hard drive to your PC. They make SSD's using the SATA interface which has turned out to be a bottleneck for current SSD memory technology. I just rebuilt my computer and my wife's computer with NVMe M.2 SSD's (tiny printed circuit board that plugs into a slot on the MB). SATA drives have a maximum speed of 600 MB/s while my SSD benchmarks at 3300MB/s.

Most of what he said about digital audio was nonsense. The resources need to play back digital audio are trivial unless you're doing some form of signal processing. I'm currently playing a flac file and the media player is using 14MB of memory and is momentarily pulling data off the old mechanical HD at 130KB/s.

Ron

[malboro2]

OMG. I guess anyone can talk at a show.

I did look into this awhile ago. My wife was even willing to let me spring for the separate DAC(not a $2K model). But using my MBP, I didn’t want to connect it physically to the system. I wanted to be across the room, and bluetooth didn’t have the bandwidth I needed(at least when I looked at it). Other options were more than I wanted to pay, or too expensive to do for me, or too complicated. But the killer for me was the lack of serious mac software that would allow me to organize the 1000 cd’s of classical into something as good as my current CD collection. They are in paper cd sleeves in file boxes organized according to musical period, instrument, and style, and also organized by individual piece in Ninox Database(that allows me to instantly find the numbered cd with a pice I want to play.

Someone who did this said that transferring the CD’s to digital introduced a distortion called "digital stutter”, and the people he knew who did it wished they still had their CD’s. I couldn’t find anyone who ever heard of digital stutter, but then there aren’t that many people around who actually transferred and entire 1000 CD classical collection into a 3 TB drive.

[hudelson2]

Another item that seems like pure BS are expensive power cables. Never mind the electricity coming out of the wall socket is dirty with voltage sags, spikes, and hash, going through kilometers of indifferent quality of wire, and magically one meter or so of an exotic power cable should clean up the power and remove voltage sags, etc.

[300Z]

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

He's also on the FB group too.

[Wolf]

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

[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.

[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.

[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".

[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.

[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.