We Need To Talk About Ones And Zeroes

@devinplombier 

A person relies extensively on cut-and-pasting at the risk of appearing lazy and unintelligent.

... we all have access to google AI and we would know how to query it if we felt like it. Doing it on our behalf adds no value and merely pollutes the thread.

No one can be expected to read 2,000 words of google-generated drivel and I admit I did not - so if I missed something I apologize

I like Google AI because anyone can re-run a query - you are not reliant on what a single contributor 'knows', and can 'remember', and can 'articulate'.  It is not as if I  am so unintelligent and ignorant and lazy that I never contribute original content!

Unfortunately, it is obvious that many contributors here do not have much technical understanding or do even basic research.  Witness your own assertion that most network components do not have processors, though they clearly perform logic!

You now seem to agree that streaming is not guaranteed to be 100% perfect.  I have no idea whether this is audible (except for obvious drop-outs) but many people report hearing differences.  Data loss and un-corrected errors are one possible explanation.

@devinplombier 

I appreciate your kind words on my system. NADAC stack is indeed a very ‘special’ product. It’s a shame that they didn’t gain much traction in US market.  

Thank you for your thoughtful response. Agreed, our ears are limited to perceiving what is presented, not what might be absent or subtly compromised. We all are capable of listening but do we all perceive the information in same manner? Are we listening for bass or treble, detail or dynamics or do we strive for coherence, timing, tone, presence and emotions. I believe, we are also listening for what our audio system is not communicating or producing, right? 

I also agree that most claims of “transformational” improvements from passive digital components are almost certainly exaggerated, given bit-perfect nature of digital streaming. 

I’m all for exploration, but I’m also deeply skeptical of hyperbolic claims, especially when they come without context or proper a/b comparison. To me, It’s all about striking a delicate balance. 

As far as measurements, while they remain critical for getting the basics right, they don’t always reflect emotional or perceptual experiences. At the end of the day, everyone is free to chase what brings them joy. But I do firmly believe that our pursuit for a good sounding system benefits most when curiosity is anchored in reason and when we leave enough room for both exploration and skepticism to coexist.

@mapman 

So the network needs to have sufficient bandwidth for the job.  That’s pretty much a given with modern home network technology

If you are streaming over the internet, you should also include the myriad of servers, routers and connections that make up the paths from music server to your home network and are shared by millions of other users.  All of which is often conveniently hidden by drawing the internet as a cloud, which is the last thing it actually is.

There is a fully engineered network design which uses a seven layer model - the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) international standard but by and large we have chosen to use something quite different - the Internet.

The Internet has grown like topsy, and contains almost no standards.  About the best you can hope for are RFCs - Requests For Comment.  It only contains four layers!  Its address range prior to IPv6 is a pathetic 64,000 times smaller than Ethernet addresses - no wonder it has run out!  IPv6 fixes this but is really struggling to take off.

But I do firmly believe that our pursuit for a good sounding system benefits most when curiosity is anchored in reason and when we leave enough room for both exploration and skepticism to coexist.

@lalitk 

I could not agree more, and in fact this applies to most things in life.

I try to keep an open mind and adopt the position that very few things are 100% black or white.

@devinplombier

 this blog post by Benjamin Zwickel - the founder and designer of respected DAC manufacturer Mojo Audio - who is considerably more qualified than I to dissert on the subject

I ploughed through the article and quickly guessed that Mojo Audio does not natively support DSD!  Talk about bias.

The author mistakes DAC for ADC, which is forgivable.  However, the statement that "Even Sony no longer supports DSD and SACD" is laughable.