New decade, end of the CD?

 

 

If we are talking about digital data transmission over several 100 kilometres then there are effects that come into play that could cause problems for the reception of that data, but even then it would not result in periodic corruption of the data in ways that would warrant the kind of words that audiophilists use to describe it. What we get in those situations is a loss of data or loss of synchronisation. Digital data transmission is older than audio transmission (telegraph predates telephone) so we do know an awful lot about it. This post I am typing is being transmitted digitally through twisted-pair, co-ax and optical cable from my home in England to M@X's server in Canada and then onto all the PCs in all the countries of whoever reads this - in all those thousands of kilometres the digital data-packets are subject to all manner of transmission effects - the same effects that audiophilists are convinced affect their digital data when it is being transmitted a few metres in the benign environment of their sitting room (as Pat woefully said: "Oh yay!  Another article claiming group delay across the audio band is somehow audibly perceptible!") - but because we do know about and understand all these transmission effects and losses we can compensate for them and fix them, so the post that arrives on a PC 1000s of kilometres from where I live is an exact replica of the one I am currently looking at ... there are no missing letters, or corruptions that turn all the "a"s into "e"s, or converts the arial font into times new roman, or makes the background yellow, nor does it correct my lazy grammar or fix my appauling spelling. No, the errors we see (if any) are time-outs and failure to load - we don't lose bits of the message, we lose the whole damn thing - and those errors are not related to how the data is transmitted at all, but to more localised problems associated with either the PC or the Server and the software that communicates between them.

 

 

In addition to what Dean said about digital transmissions:

When it comes to audio transmission in the digital realm, you usually have to make some tradeoffs between reliability and latency/performance. In the internet realm specifically there's TCP for absolutely 100% reliable transmissions which in turn can hang or report errors in case of bad connections, and paket oriented protocols for streaming audio/video live content. But as Dean pointed out, when you're using a protocol that doesn't automatically correct errors and allows for sacrificing data integrity in exchange for increased latency, you'll immediately hear the dropouts ... it's never a subtle effect like "increased harshness" or an eq-like change like less bass, or decreased dynamics or anything of the kind.

When it comes to USB audio I don't really know the specifics of the protocol, but I think even the realtime audio protocols use error correction. On a computer my guess is that if you used a broken cable, the driver would create some kind of exception when encountering errors - and over the years I used many audio devices and never encountered any dropouts. There was a case of jitter-like effects with a Line6 interface, but that was an issue with its driver (software).

A) A digital signal is finite and quantifiable. You can measure EXACTLY if a signal changes AT ALL between its source and its destination.

 

B) Regarding digital audio, the kind of errors that happen in transmission are obvious, and have nothing to do with music. (They would be pops, lost data, or synchronization errors.)

 

C) Most data transmission in the audio realm is error free even using "cheap" connectors because of correction and minimal error in the first place.

 

 

Therefore:

 

There is absolutely no improvement in spending additional money for cable delivering the digital part of a signal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a side note, let's all be careful about those new vinyl reissues and new actual vinyl releases :

 

they may look fine and weigh the 180 or 200 gr they claim, but they're of very variable quality...

 

Some labels reissue vinyls copied directly  from CDs (I'm thinking of garbage Arkarma label, BMG Italy, Amber Soundroom, and even the respectable Second Battle.

 

I'm much more confident about real (jazz) labels like Impulse! and Blue Note who own the analogue masters

 

 

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I'd like also to stress that all 90's and 00's album that are digitally recorded (then digitally mixed & mastered) will make some very questionable vinyls

 

 

Only AAA process should be considered for vinyl warmth issues (however personal aural perceptions will  view the issue)...

 

 

You will understand right away that an ADA process is ridiculous for vinyls and even more so DDA processes .... yet OK Computer, or Division Bell or almost anything from the 90's onwards are recorded from the source digitally (only stuff like Anglagard or Lenny Kravitz were still recorded in analogue)....

 

So buying ADA , DDA (or ADD-A like those iffy-reissues metioned above) vinyls for the warmth of the sound is probably sending yourself on a goose chase

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I spent all day Saturday listening to music...at times very loudly. Both CD and vinyl, heavy to the latter. During my CD listening I found myself getting a headache like feeling......weird.  I told my wife and she said, you probably got tired of listening. That's why she is the better half of this marriage!! I think in this instance she was right.....but only on the CD end.

 

So Sunday I listened on CD and vinyl to:

Tales/Topographic Oceans

The Wall

Bitches Brew

 

and alternated between both formats.......in each case I found myself getting tired, headachy, fidgety during the CD versions.

I had no signs of this "stress" when I put the needle down on the vinyl. I wish I had some vinyl of more recent material that I could test this on.....

Maybe it is just me.....dunno