SD card transports

This nonsense helps no one.

Over the course of this reviewed I was shocked to hear that everything from the make and model of computer, CPU, RAM, hard drive, operating system, music playback program, file format— FLAC, WAC—plus the myriads of system and program settings all affected the sound to some degree. I suspect that storing music files on an external hard drive or on one of the new SSD drives just hitting the market would have exerted their own further variables. If you are coming into this with the belief that bits are bits, prepare for an ice-old shower. Computer audio is just as tweaky and unpredictable as traditional hifi was.
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Would two identical word documents, one stored on an SSD and one on a HHD, be different?
 
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Basil said:
This nonsense helps no one.



Would two identical word documents, one stored on an SSD and one on a HHD, be different?
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He's talking about computers and all the things happening inside generally, not just hard drives.
 
Basil said:
And?


If any part of a computer altered data, the machine would simply not work.
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Well of course it still works it just sounds different according to him. So many variables in computers obviously to change the sound characteristics.
 
Jimbo said:
Well of course it still works it just sounds different according to him. So many variables in computers obviously to change the sound characteristics.
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I again remind you of the word documents, to a computer there is no difference between a word .doc and a .wav file, it is just data, robustly error checked data.
 
Again remind you we are talking about sound and the effects the computers internals like fans and hard drives spinning but to name a few are contributing. I myself have not experimented with computer music so i don't have authority on the subject. I am just observing what the 6 Moons findings were. I suggest you take it up with them if it is griping you as my interest is with the SD card transport which i started the thread with.
 
Basil said:
This nonsense helps no one.



Would two identical word documents, one stored on an SSD and one on a HHD, be different?
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Jimbo said:
Again remind you we are talking about sound and the effects the computers internals like fans and hard drives spinning but to name a few are contributing. I myself have not experimented with computer music so i don't have authority on the subject. I am just observing what the 6 Moons findings were. I suggest you take it up with them if it is griping you as my interest is with the SD card transport which i started the thread with.
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This news just in 'two different computers sound slightly different'!!! and in other news 2 different cd players were also found to sound slightly different.

I don't think the reviewer tried very hard to figure out why different components sound different, but then that wasn't the aim of the review.
 
lAmBoY said:
This news just in 'two different computers sound slightly different'!!! and in other news 2 different cd players were also found to sound slightly different.

I don't think the reviewer tried very hard to figure out why different components sound different, but then that wasn't the aim of the review.
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Well exactly, all things can't be exactly the same, its just whether we can hear it. Perhaps some people have better hearing than others. Thats why i posted the link as it was interesting what the reviewer found.
 
interesting, but gob smackingly blindly obvious. There should be no mystique about computer audio, if there is you start to get companies making money out of foo foo. None of us want that.
 
Jimbo said:
Again remind you we are talking about sound and the effects the computers internals like fans and hard drives spinning but to name a few are contributing. I myself have not experimented with computer music so i don't have authority on the subject. I am just observing what the 6 Moons findings were. I suggest you take it up with them if it is griping you as my interest is with the SD card transport which i started the thread with.
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We aren't talking about sound, we're talking about digital files being stored and transferred within a computer. Digital files are immune to analogue noise, such as fans and HDD motors, if they weren't, every digital file on a computer would be corrupted and fail.

Before you jump on the audiophool computer bandwagon, I'd suggest you do some reading and find out how computers actually work, I'd be happy to help as I've been building the things for 10 years.
 
Basil said:
Before you jump on the audiophool computer bandwagon ....
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Don't be too hasty to dismiss all computer audiophiles. There are some that have a profound understanding of how computers work. For certain there are those who imagine that even the color of their shoes changes the sound, but many step beyond this and some have considerable depths of knowledge.

Computer audio is not just concerned with the storage of digital data where bits are very largely bits (although of course they can become corrupted). It concerns also the transitions between the digital and analogue domains where there is a lot of possibility for variation. A quick glance at the various different up-sampling algorithms and clock reconstruction methods should be enough to indicate that all is not yet set into stone.
 
HvD said:
Don't be too hasty to dismiss all computer audiophiles. There are some that have a profound understanding of how computers work. For certain there are those who imagine that even the color of their shoes changes the sound, but many step beyond this and some have considerable depths of knowledge.
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I wasn't dismissing all computer audiophiles, just the nonsense that Jimbo linked to and things like it, such as this, http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=83093&hl=Cables
 
Jimbo said:
How can you say the link was nonsense when you talk nonsense. The reviewer is a professional and you aren't.
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Because you don't need to take my word for it, simply read the replies about the SATA cables nonsense at the PC pro site that was linked in the Hydrogen thread.
 
Jimbo said:
But how do i know if thats nonsense as well.
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If you'd spent as much time as I have working with computers, you might have a clue.

It's so simple to prove without any doubt if one computer is changing data, rip the same track from a CD on two different PCs and compare them with foobar.
 
Basil said:
If you'd spent as much time as I have working with computers, you might have a clue.

It's so simple to prove without any doubt if one computer is changing data, rip the same track from a CD on two different PCs and compare them with foobar.
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Put both files into something like Audacity, invert one and combine them.
Admire the flat line and the silence.
 
Something that occurred to me in relation to SD card transports is the possibility for data corruption to introduce sound changes. When a CD is ripped to a hard disk the data is very robust. If the data becomes corrupt after it has been written, the system will not be able to access it because the disk will have detected the errors at the physical level. You will know that something is wrong because there will be glitches in your playback, and, perhaps, your computer might even crash. Assuming that your rip has been a good one ââ'¬â€œ and there are plenty of easy ways to verify that ââ'¬â€œ the data that you put onto your hard disk should be an exact replica of the data on your CD because at this point you are doing nothing except writing 0s and 1s. It is when you come to convert this data into the analogue domain that the fun starts and you have some possibilities for variations.

If you rip your CD to something like an SD card transport, I think that you will not have the benefit of Reed-Solomon code data checking which you have with a hard disk. Your data could become corrupted and could still be accessed. Your rip could, perhaps, sound different from a rip to a hard disk. You might like it better, of course, because there is nothing in the rulebook that says that you must prefer the sound of the original to the sound of a slightly corrupted copy!

These are just some thoughts and they should not be taken as statements of fact. I might be wrong and I'd be interested to hear what other people think.
 
Basil said:
If you'd spent as much time as I have working with computers, you might have a clue.

It's so simple to prove without any doubt if one computer is changing data, rip the same track from a CD on two different PCs and compare them with foobar.
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I am afraid you are wrong as i do have considerable knowledge with computers as i have built many myself so get your facts right first please before making assumptions. Computers are jack of all trades but master of none. As far as computers not changing things i only have to look at pictures i have rndered in different software to see the change.
 

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