What do we hear when we change the direction of a wire?

The Junilabs Player and file optimizer is amazing. Waiting for the next version which he mentions would have more usability improvements.

The developer of this player did answer questions of another person who asked similar questions. I guess he is getting repeated questions, and hence not finding time to respond. It loads to RAM, does an "optimization" (specifics not described, but looks like its there in the code), waits for a couple of minutes and then stores back to drive.

Regarding user preference, I actually am not fond of results of first optimization - it sounds a bit distant and veiled, even though it clearer than original file. But run the same through optimization process 3-4x and all the veil is gone, and the clarity remains (and actually gets better) and now it is definitely much better than stock file on all aspects. If the preference to original files among the users were in comparison to first optimization, I recommend giving 3-4x optimization a try. At present it doesn’t seem possible to do optimization for multiple files at once, so that’s a cumbersome task. I can hear the differences for sure, and I am working on getting a true double blind test done (its not an easy task to do one that doesn’t have loop holes).

Regarding why it works, I think it is well within conventional physics, we just need to analyze it deeper than our current FFT analysis methods (we are analyzing only a very small subset of test tones at present mostly and I don’t think much conclusive results can be obtained from this). In a normal storage disk, every bit is stored as a set of charges in a cell (typically a floating gate nand cell), and the scenario in which the write action happens can likely manifest in differences in the structure of charges and magnetic fields stored in the cell that the next access after optimization may have either lesser noise or lesser correlated noise. Also to note that RAM and normal storage work in different ways. PC RAM works as a Dynamic Random Access Memory unit with constant refreshes (volatile memory) and Normal storage is non volatile and retains data once stored.

Digital circuits work just with thresholds. Above a certain threshold it is 1, below it it is 0 (or vice versa in some implementations), and there are boundary conditions which the designers have to work hard to ensure data integrity is maintained. This is the reason why you don’t magically get infinite clock speeds. There’s more to it in modern devices (they are multi, triple layer cells etc) and there’s a lot of algorithmic stuff that goes on to it.

There’s a lot of hardwork in making a reliable working digital system, but it’s even harder when you get into analog systems. The problem with analog/mixed signal systems though is that it’s not merely working on thresholds. A fair amount of noise may be mostly harmless in a digital system but will cause significant issues with an analog/mixed signal systems as every single flaw/deviation will cause deviations in the analog circuit (the dacs) and later get amplified in the buffer and amplification stages. So any of the activity you do has a potential manifestation in the analog circuit, and any task that reduces noise at source can be beneficial. Grounds act as common points to transfer noise from one place to another. You can claim optical isolation but it is more fairytale than reality. They have their own jitter and noise footprints and any attempt to correct it will have its own jitter and noise footprints. If you’re thinking transformer coupled isolation, they have non linearities (real world magnets don’t magically follow an ideal abstractions), and other leakage phenomenon (AC noise leakage over copper ethernet has been measured and demonstrated). And I would like to add that the improvements to SQ by this player is audible even through ifi micro idsd bl which does have some form of galvanic isolation afaik.

Any circuit can always be tweaked to fake numbers to specific scenarios while not being truly capable in other scenarios, and hence measurement charts get unreliable. It is impossible to get full test coverage for any analog design at present. I think of audio measurements generally shown to be similar to some vague synthetic CPU benchmark tweaked to show as if a cell Phone CPU beats a supercomputer (Maybe it does at that specific calculation in that specific optimized software, but not likely for a real world task that the cell phone CPU cannot handle, or an emulation layer on the supercomputer with the same code might run faster!).

Yes there are massive amount of layers, buffers and Phys present through the chain. And of course software abstractions, and each abstraction layer = generally longer non optimal code = more processor and component activity = more switching noise, and of course there’s more considering the speculative execution etc and these are accounted for with many of these audio software. There are many of them try to work at a lower level language with less abstractions (some written in even assembly level language code), and hence lesser noise (one general example is using kernel streaming). So the whole thing actually reinforces the benefits of a customized software system.

It indeed is phenomenal that the data storage access noise seems to pass through all these layers but if you consider the path, none of them have anything to compensate for the fluctuations, and as long as it is within thresholds of digital circuit operation it’ll be passed through (but analog and mixed signal systems are picky). It indeed is profound that this distinct improvement is not buried within noise generated from the rest of the link.

Now if you were considering issues from other CPU activity during idle tasks, like say displaying a wallpaper, it would be a gross approximation to think CPU generates all pixels at every instant of time and loads into GPU memory for displaying, then there is no purpose for a GPU. GPU has a parallel pipeline to generate these, has its own architecture that might have its own noise patterns (need not be as high as cpu for the same task) and send via hdmi port, but it could very well be almost completely decoupled from the CPU data lines going to USB! Do they influence each other? Very likely. Can one completely mask the differences of the other? May or may not be! It’s about reducing issues in any area that is feasible. There’s also something known as correlation. Certain types of noise correlate more to audio issues (8khz tizz from 125us polling if the system priority is too high, or other issues which cause sudden spike during these polling) than others. So it’s not quite as direct as things may seem, and of course this area is too profound so we don’t have any well established conclusive correlation metrics yet (and unlikely anytime soon, we haven’t even figured out human hearing beyond a certain basic abstraction). Also not to mention, a lot of the computer tweaks do have modes to remove image displaying load on the cpu, or even going fully headless/commandline.

What about the abundance of switching components throughout the motherboard? PC pcb design is generally very high level stuff (very large multi layer PCB), and the power supply design (regulators etc) is are extremely sophisticated, especially the ones feeding the CPU. A 12V supply is regulated in multiple stages to ensure that there is enough buffer in place to take any disruption that changes power consumption would bring and it is generally very low noise because it’ll have to run through multiple layers in the CPU. Can they be improved by a better power supply input? Surely yes, and a better power supply input can also help the rest of the pcb, but I will have to say they are generally extremely well designed. There’s massive developments on this front on the low power area, and it has also been successfully expanded to certain areas in audio - The new Burson Audio amps uses a SMPS design that sounds very good. You can afford to do this much level of buffering and filtering because it is power (a specific fixed voltage and current with some transient deviation). But you can’t do this multiple levels with data which is a switching sequence of pulses or else you’ll be losing speed. There’s not much ways to fully control the noise on the data line other than controlling your software.

Ok why not a raspberry pi instead? Well just because something is lower power doesn’t necessarily mean it is lower noise. The consideration in most budget SBCs are mass production at a very affordable price and the components used are unlikely to be of any quality comparable to say a high end motherboard, let alone a server motherboard. In fact you’ll likely be getting worse aberrations even on the data integrity (unlikely to be an issue with data rate of audio though) and will need just as much software changes/usability compromises anyway. As mentioned above, the research on the components for Desktop Motherboards are extremely high level. One can try to customize everything from ground, like many companies doing digital transports do, but it’ll get crazy expensive pretty quickly, or leverage all the development on Desktop PCs, and just try to control the few aspects they didn’t optimize for with respect to audio and noise (will have to give up speed and ease of use in that scenario, but just a reboot into another OS and you’re back with a fully functional PC that can be used for any other task).

The data content is 100% identical if you’re considering digital bits (threshold levels), including the hash values. The sound change is very likely to be from the intrinsic noise / charge distribution patterns inside each storage cell (which can be influenced by the conditions in which the write action happened).

And I would like to add that, this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with defragmentation, if anyone is thinking from that aspect - I am testing the tool with an SSD and I can hear the improvements, and neither does defragmentation take a consistent 2 minutes each time.

@anton_stepichev you seem to be making some assertions which may not really be completely true. Digital data works on "thresholds" and has some tolerance to specific distribution levels. Multiple types of charge distribution can correspond to the same digital data if they fall on a specific side of the threshold. So you can have a different charge distribution corresponding to the same data but a different noise pattern when accessing. And this is considering just a very basic memory/storage unit structure. Modern memories are a little more complicated, with self error correcting schemes and other stuff - even a compact disc format uses Reed Solomon codes to recover from certain bit error, and hence they can be corresponding to the same final data even in scenarios where internal noise levels are quite large.

Analog and mixed signal design circuits are however sensitive to all these changes since they don’t work on thresholds. I recommend you to kindly have a read of the full write up I made in the previous posts I have explained the same there.

@millercarbon my apologies. English isn't my first language, I'll correct this next time. The context is, his assertions come from a surface level abstraction of a more complex thing. Every physical manifestation of what we call as a bit, is a set of charges occupying a specific location, within a certain "threshold".

"We have no errors while copying and playing back files, therefore the noises, the charges etc. are within normal limits." - normal limits for a digital read/write circuit. There is no bit error anywhere here, if that's what you're wondering, even at the dac input interface. But that's not the only way to create sound change. The transistors and other analog components in the amplifier and the dac (dac also has lots of gates) can be easily influenced by noise in the data, clock and especially ground lines and here we are looking at the output in a continuous spectrum and not merely threshold conditions. No simple way to correct these errors, actually no simple way to fully characterize and analyse these errors even. Arbitrary signal generation and fidelity is a very complex area.

"Another question - can you explain how the file sound optimizer can affect the noise, charge or any other ANALOG properties of a HDD for the better?" - it's hard to say how this tool exactly does that since the developer doesn't want to leak much details. To go into exact details of the modes in which the write environment affects the access noise profile, it'll require a deeper understanding into the actual physical characterization of the floating gate cells used (and most of this is proprietary and not visible to general consumers, includes me). I had a few links regarding just how much noise an sd card can pump out into the ground lines, and the swap of an sd card changing reducing it by a large margin. This is because the phy layer design, choice of fabrication methods, read/write circuit design, power design and also the firmware for controlling all these (including throttling and power saving profiles) are all different. Unfortunately the links don't seem to be available now: https://forums.terraonion.com/viewtopic.php?t=1217 . I'll check if I can find the video.

@millercarbon - Your quote "Simple and basic reasoning is how we understand something as complicated as human DNA. Simple and basic reasoning is how we understand something as complicated as how we came to have DNA at all."

Either you have no clue about what you have just said (and just assuming the only top level abstraction you are aware of to be the entirety of the domain), or you somehow find the amount of structural and chemical (thermal/energy related as well) complexities in the process of replication and repair of DNA, something that took ages to be understood to a decent level, with still areas that we don’t fully understand yet, and something that students study for years together, to be trivial.

"If desired, you can come up with a lot of actions that will simulate serious changes in the level of noise and interference of the computer and conduct a simple but effective study of how your DAC reacts to heavy changes in the level and spectrum of interference emitted by it. Have you conducted such experiments?"

Answer: Yes, and noticed a lot of improvements. I have tried a lot of system level tweaks, even went to the extent of taking a custom minimal commandline linux distro for audio (again sounded better than the familiar gui systems), and have also explored custom tools in windows that optimize a lot of the internal system processes. In my experience the more lower noise system gets (lower system activity), any further improvement is far easier to hear than with a stock system configuration. Everything from even changing the buffer size changes the sound. (Includes all types of buffer, either in dac or in system).

"In my opinion, it is quite enough to stop clogging your head with noises and charges and start thinking of something else."

As mentioned I am also trying to set up a proper AB-X to confirm the changes of this player. My friend has successfully done AB-X on other computer audio tweaks I mentioned in earlier paragraph, his network streamers and signal regenerators. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my approach. I am looking deeper into the intrinsics of the drives (the physical manifestation) since it has an impact that is uncorrelated from the rest of your guesses (doesn’t do defragging, cannot check optimal areas in disk if there was ever one since it is out of control of even the OS, it’s the controller that handles it).

"The influence of noise is just your assumption". Yes, I arrived at this guess after all other guesses of - files being different, defragging, and other causes you listed were found to be not true. The other system noises causing changes to sq gives me more confidence in this approach. If you do have other suggestions, do let me know, I’ll check that too! I don't think neglecting this case scenario would be a good idea. I donot have the necessary equipment to measure the access noise, else I would have tried that too.

Regarding the explanations, I have mentioned it multiple times. I don’t know much about modern HDDs (the head alignment etc involves a lot of modern control theory, and almost each batch has its own specific firmware), but with flash storage it is stored as a set of charges within a specific threshold value inside a floating gate NAND transistor cell. The pattern can change the noise profile when accessing. Modern devices are far more complex than the basic structures I have seen in academic resources and I am searching for leads to check the actual pathway/design (need to check everything from firmware etc, and I am not sure how successful it will be considering that most of these are kept as secrets).

And then in a decades time this theory was made obsolete by something even better, and explains more phenomenon that Bohr atom model failed to explain/predict!

A lesson for us all!

Also, not sure where you got this folklore from. Dr. Richard Feynman was born in 1918, while the Bohr atom model was proposed in 1913.

Thank you. I misunderstood the context (millercarbon didn’t mention it, and the same group of scientists were into quantum theories when the Bohr Atom model was being published).

I have been exploring in these areas for a while (plenty of fantastic resources online and in youtube). I am not sure if there is a Personal Message function on Audiogon, but I haven’t been able to spot an option. I am interested to learn further and would like to know your recommendations for books/articles/blogs in any of these areas - Modern Sampling and signal processing (wavelet and time-frequency analysis based), Bio Instrumentation (I know it’s a vast area, any recommendation from any area you are familiar would be fine), and Quantum physics. I have done a fair amount of homework on all of these for wavelet transforms, took guidance from online resources on epigenetics, and I am somewhat familiar with Maxwell’s 4 Electromagnetism laws and foundation of Schrodinger wave equations and the particle in a 1d-box problem, and looking to learn further. Hopefully this isn’t too off topic!

Thank you @rodman99999 I have been reading a bit of those (and it turns out some of those I have encountered in other lectures on youtube and this reinforces that).

@Millercarbon "manueljenkin, click on the users name, and select Message User from the drop down menu." What happened? Any specific requirement from me?