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We Need To Talk About Ones And Zeroes

Several well-respected audiophiles in this forum have stated that the sound quality of hi-res streamed audio equals or betters the sound quality of traditional digital sources.

These are folks who have spent decades assembling highly desirable systems and whose listening skills are beyond reproach. I for one tend to respect their opinions.

Tidal is headquartered in NYC, NY from Norwegian origins. Qobuz is headquartered in Paris, France. Both services are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud infrastructure services giant that commands roughly one third of the world's entire cloud services market.

AWS server farms are any audiophile's nightmare. Tens of thousands of multi-CPU servers and industrial-grade switches crammed in crowded racks, miles of ordinary cabling coursing among tens of thousands of buzzing switched-mode power supplies and noisy cooling fans. Industrial HVAC plants humming 24/7.

This, I think, demonstrates without a doubt that audio files digitally converted to packets of ones and zeroes successfully travel thousands of miles through AWS' digital sewer, only to arrive in our homes completely unscathed and ready to deliver sound quality that, by many prominent audiophiles' account, rivals or exceeds that of $5,000 CD transports. 

This also demonstrates that digital transmission protocols just work flawlessly over noise-saturated industrial-grade lines and equipment chosen for raw performance and cost-effectiveness.

This also puts in perspective the importance of improvements deployed in the home, which is to say in the last ten feet of our streamed music's multi-thousand mile journey.

No worries, I am not about to argue that a $100 streamer has to sound the same as a $30,000 one because "it's all ones and zeroes".

But it would be nice to agree on a shared-understanding baseline, because without it intelligent discourse becomes difficult. The sooner everyone gets on the same page, which is to say that our systems' digital chains process nothing less and nothing more than packets of ones and zeroes, the sooner we can move on to genuinely thought-provoking stuff like, why don't all streamers sound the same? Why do cables make a difference? Wouldn't that be more interesting?

devinplombier
livinon2wheels's avatar
livinon2wheels
263 posts
 

It seems to me, and in this bunch there is someone who will correct me if they think I am wrong... :) IT seems to me that there are very few things that determine the accuracy of the played signal out of our streamers. Number one is the source file. How good was it? SACD or at the other end an mp3 file? And then at the end of the digital transmission chain is the accuracy of the DAC that we use to decode the digital file and finally then our playback equipment...amplifier and speakers or headphones. Everything else in the middle is basically the same for everyone. Its all ones and zeros with error correction built in. So that part is the same for everyone. The difference is truly in our playback equipment and I am going out on a limb and say any audible differences within today's DACs are negligible and surely well below the threshold of hearing and definitively well below my ability to discern the differences. And even if I COULD hear the difference between my 329 dollar DAC and a 30,000 dollar DAC, my common sense and budget dictates I buy the 329 dollar unit. I know there are those here that could and would buy the 30k unit but I also suspect the reasons for doing so go above and beyond perceived better performance. Any of you guys going to admit to a leaning towards buying something for its looks? I have done so in the past...and probably will again. Any takers?

 

incorrigable
203 posts
 

 The other glaring variable in resolution is antique coaxial internet service versus fiber optic or microwave mesh. At my old house I was limited to coaxial and it was not pretty. The technician told me he had a job for life replacing coax connectors under the sidewalk. They lose continuity like clock work in summer heat. 

richardbrand's avatar
richardbrand
1,389 posts
 

@nonoise

There are fundamental differences between digital video and digital audio.

Digital video is always lossy because compression is used to make the bit rate manageable.  4K Blu-ray uses less aggressive compression than streaming, but there is still compression.  The Motion Picture Expert Group has combined a range of lossy compression techniques which are realised as mpeg formats in various versions.

If no video compression were used, the bit rates are fairly easy to calculate.  Take the bits for one video frame and multiply by the frame rate of your choice.  The bits for one video frame are the bits per pixel times the number of horizontal pixels times the number of vertical pixels. At 24 bits per pixel and 4K resolution we need about 24 * 2,000 * 2,000 bits, or about 100-million bits per frame.  With a 60-Hz refresh rate, that's about 6-trillion bits per second.  Fortunately, there's not much change between most frames and the following one, and one compression technique is to just send the changes, with an occasional complete refresh.

Our eyes are much more forgiving than our ears.

Audio can be losslessly encoded at bit rates which are achievable with today's technology.  However, while lossless encoding and decoding can always recover the original digital sequence if all the packets are delivered and error corrected, it does not stop packets getting lost or corrupted when streaming.

 

cleeds
6,582 posts
 

richardbrand

... In general, UDP/IP is the protocol used for streaming ...

That's not the case with providers such as Qobuz, which use TCP/IP protocol. That delivers bit-perfect data right to your streamer.

sns
4,218 posts
 

So on top of Qobuz using TCP/IP protocol,  streamers and their operating systems has a bearing on delivering bits. Here is a read in regard to how Euphony OS (which I use) delivers data to dac, https://euphony-audio.com/hesk/knowledgebase.php?article=18

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