Soulkeeper;691559 Wrote: > There is no logical reason to believe HD fragmentation will have > anything more than a negligible effect on ground plane noise (unless > possibly if the HD is extremely fragmented, but then the user wouldn't > need to turn on the sound in order to notice it).
Again, let's be strictly logical about this: hard drives are powerful sources of rail noise. Fragmentation results in more drive activity. Busier hard drives generate more rail noise. Rail noise generates jitter and is detrimental to clocks and analog stages. Differences exist: proving a threshold for their importance is a non-trivial matter. I'm not suggesting that fragmentation is a major issue here: just trying to illustrate that a world of hardware complexity underpins glib assumptions about the 'straightforwardness' of digital transfer. Soulkeeper;691559 Wrote: > But seriously, if you transfer video via HDMI, it is not time sensitive, > but if you transfer audio via HDMI, it is? Please explain? Video transfer is also a realtime, dynamic digital transfer affected by rail noise and jitter. Static image display and document printing are more like file transfer: a one-time buffer filling operation. Apples and bananas. Soulkeeper;691559 Wrote: > Actually, these statements hardly make sense. If you connect your > printer to a 10 kV line, you'll see just how voltage sensitive it is. > ;) But seriously, the ink nozzles of most inkjet printers are voltage > controlled, and laser printers work by very accurately charging > different parts of a rotating drum. If that isn't voltage sensitive, > nothing is. As you may know, audio reproduction equipment by definition amplifies voltage fluctuations. Your printer - as well as not being a realtime device - has wide tolerances, has no voltage-amplifiers in it and produces crudely quantised output which no-one cares about scrutinising very closely. It's a blunt instrument. Soulkeeper;691559 Wrote: > You're giving me no reason to believe your assertions are true. I can > give you several examples of environmental variables that a PC's > "playback" (whatever that's supposed to mean) would be sensitive to. Do > I really need to do that? Yes - even a PC, with all its error checking, is capable of being disrupted by a malformed environment - and all it's doing is operating on bits. How much more so a D-A conversion and clock . . . Soulkeeper;691559 Wrote: > Still, 99% of audio equipment is made without vacuum tubes. Not -that- > good an idea, in other words. That's a different debate altogether: although the figure isn't as high as that. My point is that is was once considered 'best practice' to build computers with tubes. That PCs now don't, but that the majority of high-end audio systems do, illustrates the very different design goals of audio systems and computers. Computers built with bulky linear power supplies a la 1980s transports sound considerably better than those powered by a modern, high-ripple ATX supply: no surprise at all from the audio perspective, but it comes as a bit of a shock to some who forget that their PC is made of wires and traces - not ethereal pixie fluff. Soulkeeper;691559 Wrote: > Often, yes, 'but not always' > (http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-10-most-expensive-laptops/20111014.htm). Some products are made to get the job done as well as possible, as cheap as possible. Others are made to be expensive and exclusive. And that is where the difference lies; There's no magical divide between audio equipment and all other electronic equipment. They all work by the same principles, and they're all sold by the same principles. Again, marketing and expense is not the issue - especially in the reductio ad absurdam case linked above. It's simple to measure primary forums of output jitter, and to reduce it by improving components and their operating environment. The whole spectrum of jitter, and the impact of rail noise on analog measurements is tougher to pin down, but easy to identify audibly. To massively oversimplify this, if you take a standard SPDIF output from a stock motherboard, you might be dealing with 1400ps jitter. From a high quality USB>SPDIF converter, perhaps as little as double figures. The difference is very plain to hear and (partly) measure. This is the logic, and these are the fundamental engineering principles by which all electronic devices work. The problem we're confronting here is that the MP3 generation have been sold the lie of 'good enough'. To some extent, we've all been lured by cheap, serviceable devices that sound OK. But really - logically - that's all they are: OK. Shame that Logitech's genuinely useful Transporter died a death: the market just wasn't ready for it. Maybe still isn't. -- item_audio ------------------------------------------------------------------------ item_audio's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=51315 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=93549 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
