A Joke a day..

[dnar]

Almost as crazy as believing in an invisible god.....

[buffo]

Almost as crazy as believing in an invisible god.....

Even more crazy, in my opinion. At least there is a precedent going back several millennia for religion. Not that this proves anything, mind you, but I recognize that "institutional inertia" is a factor in people working to overcome the beliefs they were raised with.

By comparison, audiophile craziness is relatively new, so there is no inertia to overcome. No one is indoctrinated into the audiophile cult as a child. Furthermore, the physics of audio are well-understood, and have been for several centuries, so there isn't any identifiable period where people didn't have solid science readily available to explain what they were hearing. Thus there has never been a driving force pushing people to reach for the supernatural (at least with regard to sound), because science could already explain everything in excruciating detail.

No, the fringes of audiophile fanaticism absolutely REEKS of bullshit, and the fact that these otherwise intelligent people are so willing to swallow it wholesale is incredibly depressing, to say the least. What the hell happened to common sense?

Adam

[steve-o]

Ok, I'll play the devil's advocate .. The storage device spits out ones and zeros in series, right? What happens if the device is 'slow', not functioning correctly or minorly defective. It may still work in a pc though with unperceivable imperfections but what would appear as a couple of messed up pixels on a pc monitor may be perceivable as a less than perfect sound on a crash cymbal in music, no? I dunno, just throwing ideas out there to try to understand if there's anything to this drive/ music issue that they're talking about ..

--edit--
oops just noticed the is the joke thread .. I'm getting off topic ..
ok the number 9 walks into a bar ..

[planters]

I was about to give what I thought was a compelling explanation of the digital (ie TTL) data stream and how it relates to the potential for errors and then...oh ya. So, what happens to the 9?

[steve-o]

The bartender says "I cant serve you."
The number 9 says "why not?"
The bartender says "because you're under 21"

[buffo]

Ok, I'll play the devil's advocate .. The storage device spits out ones and zeros in series, right? What happens if the device is 'slow', not functioning correctly or minorly defective.

All right - I'll play the scientific method's advocate...

The timing differences that would qualify as "slow" would be measured in 10's of nanoseconds for a digital storage device. Time variations of such tiny magnitude are irrelevant to the D:A converter on the sound output device, which operates on timescales of 10's of microseconds. (3 orders of magnitude difference) It doesn't matter how fast or slow the buffer fills, so long as it stays full enough to keep the D:A converter supplied with a continuous stream of data.

"Errors" in the bit stream are corrected for using the same parity calculations for all drives, be they SSD, Hybrid, or standard HDD units. So that's a wash.

"Minorly Defective" is a misnomer. Either the data is correctable using parity, or it isn't. If enough bits are lost that you can't restore the original information through a parity check, then you will have missing data. This rate of data drop-out is a well-defined characteristic for all storage mediums, and in fact it is the basis behind the error-correcting schemes used. They have selected the error correction method to be effective at restoring the original data in it's entirety even if the error rate runs several times higher than is expected by the design of the media.

It may still work in a pc though with unperceivable imperfections but what would appear as a couple of messed up pixels on a pc monitor may be perceivable as a less than perfect sound on a crash cymbal in music, no?

I think you are mistaken. I believe any errors would be far easier to notice on the monitor vs the audio output. Example: You can detect a single pixel being out on a 1920x1080 display fairly easily. That's an effective error detection rate of better than 1 part in 2 million.

But even if a given human could detect a single sample being out of place in a digital audio playback (doubtful, but possible in theory), that's still an error detection rate of only 1 in 44,1000. Bottom line: I'm pretty sure errors in audio playback would be FAR more difficult to perceive than errors in video. (Not to mention the fact that they are also far less common to occur in the first place, due to the much lower data rate of audio vs video.)

So we have a situation where the playback equipment is both several orders of magnitude faster than it needs to be and capable of correcting far more errors per second than would ever be expected, coupled with the likelihood that the human ear is far less likely to be able to detect any errors in the first place. And yet we have people claiming to be able to hear a difference.

It makes zero sense. Show me a double-blind test where they can determine the difference at a statistically significant level (coupled with oscilloscope traces that actually prove there is a difference in the signal to begin with) and I'll be willing to change my mind. Until then, it's snake oil.

Adam

PS: Since this is a joke thread, here's something to put it all back on topic...

A man comes home to see his wife packing her suitcase.
"Where do you think you're off to?" he asks.

"I'm moving to Reno, Nevada!" she replies. "Prostitution is legal there, and there are women there earning $400 a pop for the same thing I've been giving you for free all these years!"

"Huh", the man replies. "In that case, I'm going with you."

"Why?" she asks.

"I want to see how you're going to live out there on just $800 per year!"

[steve-o]

Lol .. 800 per year

Ok, that's a good argument from a scientific standpoint of data and logic, so I will now play the smoke and mirrors method's advocate . Music contains some intangibles. I'm a musician, I have several DAWs (digital audio workstations), been recording many years and I've found that the difference between a clear master and a muddy mix is like night and day. Not sure if you could see all the variable factors on an o'scope though .. pure sine wave, yes , complex audio - iffy. Taking -3dB from 5KHz on an audio recording probably would not show up visibly , but you could hear the difference clearly.
I see your points, Adam, and you make valid and logical conclusions. Also, I'm not agreeing with the aforementioned article, just examining it and approaching the data as objectively as possible. As far as the drives themselves making a difference, that would take some research. They might be using unproven test methodology and in their 'system B' introducing "gigo" for example. We would actually have to physically take a look at how they are performing these tests, examine the validity of, and go from there. I am not convinced that a HDD cannot affect the musical content though, through some means that has not been examined or possibly overlooked.

Why did the politician cross the road?
Because he had his d*ck stuck in a chicken.
Too much? .. ok .. :-X no more ..

[tribble]

No one is indoctrinated into the audiophile cult as a child.

That is not true. As the child of an audiophile, and someone who knows other audiophile children, I can offer proof by example.

Furthermore, the physics of audio are well-understood, and have been for several centuries, so there isn't any identifiable period where people didn't have solid science readily available to explain what they were hearing.

This is also not true. The basic mechanics are understood, but we have not been able to describe, for example, how to synthesize the perception of "behind" or "in front of" through two-channel audio manipulation, for several centuries. Sound processing to elicit a particular aural perception is still an active research area; witness the "advances" in sound bar technology over the last decade.

I don't believe this storage or special wire BS either, but audio still has its mysteries.

[carlos3621]

Ther's definately a difference in audible quality , in a high end stereo system, but cables, spikes, etc. , to me are still B.S.

Step in front of a Mcintosh Monobloc driven pair of Tannoy Churchill speakers, and you'll hear what i mean.
Step in front of the best stereo system at your local Best Buy electronics store... and you'll see how little that sounds.

What i see is,
for example,someone with alot of money, ends up purchasing the high end setup, and after listening to it for awhile , decides to make the BIG MISTAKE of trying to change/ or "improve" the sound a little more, reaching the "the point of diminished returns".
cables, speaker spikes, magic discs, power massagers, etc, a waste of money....

[steve-o]

Ok, I shouldn't have egged this on by playing devils advocate .. mybad ..
Can we move this to an "audiophile" thread or sumpthin' so as to keep this maintained as a fun-joke thread?
sorry 'bout that ..
Thx --