Ethan Winer may be on the verge of proving expensive interconnects don't matter.

[RCHeliGuy]

OK, let's go in another direction.

Let's say that you have network storage for all of your music.

Now let's say that your DAC has a WiFi connection and you start to stream music to your DAC.

There are no wires in the data transfer path now.

Do you think there is any possible way that this can sound different from from music that comes across a USB cable?

Remember the exact same data is being transferred and the exact same data is being buffered for the DAT to process.

For that matter how will this sound compared to a music file being read off of a USB device physically connected to your DAC?

Music file chunk A is transferred to DAC storage and is nearly identical to transferring a file which we do trillions of times each day reliably.

What you are debating at this point are transfer protocols that are all guaranteed to move your data intact from point A to point B.


I think it's time for me to come out with expensive "wave guides" to hang from your ceiling to help make sure all the music goodness makes it from your WiFi router to your DAC. If I can come up with enough techno babble to make people believe me, I'll have people swearing they can hear a difference.

 

[Brad225]

Mark,

Thank you for making another insulting, disparaging comment and your inability to understand that an opinion or observation that differs from your reality is not valid.

You sound like someone who voted for DT.

Gordon,

It is funny you should describe it this way. As I was reading Marks comments to you about things we believe, I was think " This sound like someone that would have voted for Hillary".

Changing the mind of cable people (on either side) is like convincing a liberal to become a conservative (or vice versa).

It's all good though. If we were all alike it would make for a not so interesting world.

 

[Brad225]

OK, let's go in another direction.

Let's say that you have network storage for all of your music.

Now let's say that your DAC has a WiFi connection and you start to stream music to your DAC.

There are no wires in the data transfer path now.

Do you think there is any possible way that this can sound different from from music that comes across a USB cable?

Remember the exact same data is being transferred and the exact same data is being buffered for the DAT to process.

Mark,

Is this a serious comment or tung in cheek? Do you believe wireless and hard wire provided the same signal quality for audio or video transfer.

I ask, as I tried to use wireless transfer for TV signal in our office and home to a location that was going to be difficult to make a cable run. Once completed the picture was much lower quality and I ended up running wire to them.

 

[C.A.P]

This I can and will believe.. Hard wired will be better as its a direct connection not relying on a antenna to grab signals and use its amplified data to get place to place.. Now mix in every device in the house that can cause interference and you WILL get signal degradation or lag..
As for cables WHICH this topic is about.. IF YOU HAVENT TRIED you have no valid proof.. Sometimes its just right by Hammurabi's law and some time its not.. TRY it DONT BE LIKE MIKEY ! Now tell me where that one was from?

I have no dog in this fight as I will try anything , Im in the open minded type.. Hell I seen guys with wood spheres all around the room. Did it sound better????? Who knows? It did to him.. When I go to someone else home to listen I bring my sample torture disc which I am arguably familiar with and have heard on thousands of systems.. I know what it sounds like on mine and that's the starting point of my basis of what's better or worse.. If its a similar set up and wires are different and it sounds better I ask to demo in my system or if its worse or NO better I smile and say that sounds great .. Its his money and not my place to judge his beliefs.. Knowing its money saved or I SYNERGIZED my set up better with cost not being the factor..

Being so solid on cables or IC are all the same is like comparing women.. All of them have the same parts , YET some are better than others..

 

[timm]

What a pathetically patronising little comment that one is.

Would you like to enlighten us all buddy?............what, exactly, is this "understanding of inner workings of DACs" that I fail to comprehend? And what magically makes it possible for a USB cable to impart an impact on sound quality?

At the moment, the only person with glaring "limited knowledge" is you ; if you are trying to proclaim there is jitter or timing issues on asynchronous connections. In fact, that shows you have not even looked up the word "asynchronous" in the dictionary!

Please "unlimit" my "limited knowledge".

Over to you......go.

I'm waiting.

Adam. This was no hit on you. And this is not an argument - but a discussion. I pretend no expertise and if you are a designer of audio components - then I apologize to anyone offended. Note I haven't spoken in absolutes as you seem to have? So I have nothing to defend. I have given examples of possible prejudice for cables and then those prejudices being over come. So in the USB/regen experiment cable bigots heard differences then heard none. That implies difference in the cable since what was once different is now the same. Even for those that have purchased the 250 dollar USB cable. I am coming from the 'ears camp' ... not the 'Brain camp'.

 

[timm]

Mark.

As a wee lad I did in fact write a network algorithm based on a checksum as you describe. I called it a 'pitcher and a catcher' .So without getting into theatrics - this is what I am questioning - and the impact of the wait... checksum errors ... timing etc. the music of course doesn't wait so the question becomes could a poorly designed cable create grief at the DAC end - creating more work for the DAC and in the end impacting its sound.

I sent a note to Paul McGowan from PS Audio as I know he has written on this topic. I'll see if he can point me to his discussion on this topic. After all - he doesn't sell USB but has DACs he is trying to sell. He believes cables make a difference. I'm not so sure where his designer ted smith stands on the issue. He seems to lean - just give me a cable with proper spec - as you do. Unless he has changed his mind over the years

 

[Rich]

I'll just leave this here for everyone's edification: http://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/why-usb-cables-can-make-a-difference/

*stirs pot and slowly walks away*

 

[RCHeliGuy]

Mark,

Is this a serious comment or tung in cheek? Do you believe wireless and hard wire provided the same signal quality for audio or video transfer.

I ask, as I tried to use wireless transfer for TV signal in our office and home to a location that was going to be difficult to make a cable run. Once completed the picture was much lower quality and I ended up running wire to them.

Brad that was deadly serious.

I've streamed 4K or UHD video wirelessly at home and it looks fantastic.

This issue has to do with compression and signal strength, not with the ability to transmit the data.

If you have a bottleneck on your network, wired or wireless you will have issues. Otherwise you will not.

Heck I've wirelessly streamed 4K video from Netflix that looked good and Netflix uses more compression than I like. The key issues I see are not picture quality issues, but compression artifacts when there is panning or lots of motion. However that has nothing to do with using a Wireless network.

 

[amey01]

I'll just leave this here for everyone's edification: http://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/why-usb-cables-can-make-a-difference/

*stirs pot and slowly walks away*

I've seen this before. It is all pseudo science.

There is more talk about "jitter and timing" in here than I can poke a stick at - but anyone with half a can up top knows that jitter doesn't exist on async USB interfaces!!


Take this comment from the first paragraph

Any variation in the shape or timing of these waveforms can cause errors in these signals.

Really? How?

You can make this stuff up to sound good, but the technical reality is something else.

Seriously, the guys who designed this stuff aren't stupid........and they certainly didn't give up at such trivial "stumbling blocks" as the shape of binary waveforms!

Or this pathetic quote from Mark Coles of Sablon Audio:

They are technically the same however music is life and death to some audiophiles and much more important to others.

Who is he kidding?

No Sir, music is not "life and death" to me - my health records are life and death to me. I really hope all the hospitals around the world are using Sablon Audio "artesian" cables!!! I would hate for a 3.4v signal coming through as a 2.9 one and getting misintepreted on my infusion pump.

And like most everyone else, he also mentions "jitter and timing" - a nice red flashing beacon that he has absolutely no idea of the technical realities of what he is dealing with (and charging people so much money for).

 

[timm]

I'll just leave this here for everyone's edification: http://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/why-usb-cables-can-make-a-difference/

*stirs pot and slowly walks away*

Haha. Nice rich.

 

[RCHeliGuy]

I'll just leave this here for everyone's edification: http://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/why-usb-cables-can-make-a-difference/

*stirs pot and slowly walks away*

ROTHFLMAO!

These guys are hilarious!

They are grasping at straws and what they are describing are FAILURE conditions for cables. They are describing horribly degraded signals which would imply shit cables that are either too long, or not shielded properly and picking up interference. Once again for $7 you can have a properly shielded cable with solid end connectors.

What they are very conveniently skirting around are latch voltages.

Latch voltages have a fairly large error bound so that zeros stay zeros and ones stay ones, but they are completely ignoring that fact.

I have seen the mess that is a digital signal and these guys are doing a great job describing that mess well enough to create FUD. Fear uncertainty and doubt will cause grown men to empty their wallets.

What they are omitting is that the mess doesn't matter. You can send an ugly signal or theoretical perfect square waves and the results are the same. Even with typical voltage fluctuations and ringing there is plenty of margin to get a solid signal through.

 

[RCHeliGuy]

I've seen this before. It is all pseudo science.

Thank you!

They are doing their best to create confusion and keep people deceived.

 

[timm]

Thank you!

Mark -- you made a mention above about checksum errors etc... based on what he said - that doesn't occur... and the sender never 're-sends' the packet.... Do you agree with what he says there - in regards to computer audio? That - if true - I thought was fairly pertinent info because it does not follow your typical data file protocol?

 

[RCHeliGuy]

Mark -- you made a mention above about checksum errors etc... based on what he said - that doesn't occur... and the sender never 're-sends' the packet.... Do you agree with what he says there - in regards to computer audio? That - if true - I thought was fairly pertinent info because it does not follow your typical data file protocol?

Who are you referring to? "based on what he said"

With TCP/IP both wireless and wired there is checksum.

With USB it depends on the protocol. If you are using the typical Asynchronous USB, that does not use checksum checking.

If you are using a USB drive across a USB cable there is error checking.

I believe the audio driver I'm using specifically does, but I wouldn't worry about it if it didn't.

I started out using the typical Asynchronous USB driver and I never heard a difference when I set up JRiver to use a different driver.

It seems that site assembled a group of people to make testaments to spread fear uncertainty and doubt about USB cables with the thought that by having a lot of people saying the same crap that it makes it more true. This is a perfect example of the Internet spreading a lie or that if you look long enough you can find people who support everything from autism being caused by vaccines to alien conspiracies.

Either way the odds of you actually having an error with USB even without checksum checking is infinitesimally small if your cable isn't broken.

 

[timm]

Who are you referring to? "based on what he said"

With TCP/IP both wireless and wired there is checksum.

With USB it depends on the protocol. If you are using the typical Asynchronous USB, that does not use checksum checking.

If you are using a USB drive across a USB cable there is error checking.

I believe the audio driver I'm using specifically does, but I wouldn't worry about it if it didn't.

I started out using the typical Asynchronous USB driver and I never heard a difference when I set up JRiver to use a different driver.

It seems that site assembled a group of people to make testaments to spread fear uncertainty and doubt about USB cables with the thought that by having a lot of people saying the same crap that it makes it more true. This is a perfect example of the Internet spreading a lie or that if you look long enough you can find people who support everything from autism being caused by vaccines to alien conspiracies.

Either way the odds of you actually having an error with USB even without checksum checking is infinitesimally small if your cable isn't broken.

He basically claims in the article that no checksum is done. There is no transmittal back to the pc on packets in error. It is early on in the article. Basically once it's sent. It's gone.

 

[amey01]

Mark -- you made a mention above about checksum errors etc... based on what he said - that doesn't occur... and the sender never 're-sends' the packet.... Do you agree with what he says there - in regards to computer audio? That - if true - I thought was fairly pertinent info because it does not follow your typical data file protocol?

Firstly, there is error correction in DACs (as there is in any DAC as per the Redbook specification) which is in addition to the USB specified CRC.

Secondly, there are four different USB transfer modes.

Bulk
Control
Interrupt
Isosynchronous

Let's leave Control and Interrupt out of it - they are used to send control signals, handshakes, etc, and also used for low-latency devices such as mouses and keyboards.

That leaves bulk and isosynchronous.

Isosynchronous could be renamed "guaranteed data rate". It is what non-asynchronous DACs use. The USB interface agrees on a speed and sends the data down the pipe one-way. It guarantees a data rate, but at the cost of accuracy. If the data doesn't make it to the other end, or the timing is out (jitter) then noone is any the wiser - the sending device just keeps pumping out in real time.

Bulk on the other hand could be renamed "guaranteed data accuracy" - this is the mode that USB disks use, USB flash drives, etc. It also happens to be what most asynchronous DACs use - and it does employ 2-way CRC checking to ensure data accuracy. It does not guarantee a data rate - in fact the data will stop if accuracy can't be guaranteed. This is why Mark often refers to "broken cables" in this thread.

So in our USB DACs, there are so many checks and balances.

CRC checks on the data, buffering in the DAC to isolate timing issues, re-clocking, and further error correction just before the DAC process.

Once again, the guys who design this stuff aren't stupid, and they the entire digital world we live in is not hanging together on a thread, requiring careful selection of artesian cables in order to work properly!!

 

[Gordon Gray]

Thank you!

They are doing their best to create confusion and keep people deceived.

Another aggressive, derogatory, judgmental comment.

Did you take the following course? It's on line under "Internet protocol". Please "google".

Speech 101 / introductory Course / How to alienate and discourage meaningful, respectful dialogue on the internet.

 

[twich54]

They are doing their best to create confusion and keep people deceived.

Mark....... say it isn't true !!!!!!! Next you'll be telling me there is no Santa Claus !

 

[timm]

So Adam and mark. You are saying the following statement in the article is false:

'Streamed music signals do not benefit from this resend function and therefore error correction systems cannot replace missing or corrupted data.'

This is a fairly large gap between what you are saying and the article. I'm not questioning .. however I find this to be a fairly important divergence in the article vs your statements.

 

[timm]

Couple more discussion pieces from PS Audio. The first a commentary. The second from ted smith and his impressions that external activities have on sound in a dac etc.

http://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/bits-is-is-bits-is-bunk/

http://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/bits-is-bits-again/