Phil Leigh;630286 Wrote: > Yes you have gone up the wrong garden path. There are no clocks or > glitches in the transmission path either case. > The only conceivable mechanism by which FLAC files streamed as PCM > might result in a different sound from the Touch compared to the same > files streamed as FLAC is electrical noise within the Touch which > increases (VERY SLIGHTLY) when decoding FLAC and which might have an > impact on the DAC clock - i.e. it might increase jitter slightly. > > Attempts to prove this theory by measurement have so far failed to be > conclusive. There is equivocal anecdotal evidence.
Thanks. In that case I shall refrain from referring to any discussions elsewhere about how the quality of an ethernet cable, or network switches, or their power supplies, could affect sound quality, as suggested by several people. I had been under the impression that with PCM one could get subtle timing problems in the sequence of bits, and that could result in potentially audible degradation. I know people argue about this, but I'm not going to (either way). So let's assume we have reliable transmission which does not, of itself, create any changes to the bits or their timing. As you say, the only difference remaining can be in the reliability of the FLAC decoding and transformation process or in the PCM handling process, due to noise or whatever. In my case, the Touch does not appear to be able to handle 24/96 PCM, but happily handles FLAC. I can't use 7.6 because it mucks up other SBS plugins and causes several other issues, so I'll stay on 7.5.x and use FLAC. I actually got into this whole topic via a quite different route to do with the 'wavin' plugin which relays PC sound to the Touch. I was getting delays of 2 minutes (yes - you read that right 2 minutes) in the Touch. I verified that the data was leaving the PC on time. The Touch was just not playing it. No, I don't believe it either, but I could see the data leaving the PC and not coming out the other end. Anyhow, that was using wavin to FLAC on the PC. I tried changing wavin to transmit PCM instead, and the problem disappeared. So I thought there must be something in this PCM transmission business. Then I found the toolbar, and got to where I am now. -- PasTim ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PasTim's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=41642 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=84742 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
