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Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

RE: That doesn't exactly represent real-world listening scenario, where it's the same file in all cases.

There is nothing artificial about adding noise that's inaudible when the added noise doesn't go through the DAC, but audible when it does. This proves that the DAC is amplifying the audibility of the noise, which comes from a defect of the DAC and not a difference between two files. The DAC is exaggerating a difference that would not otherwise be audible.

Take the case where added zero samples are put at the beginning of a digital file. Here something is going wrong in the playback chain if the resulting sound is audibly different, apart from a slightly different time delay from pushing "Play" and the beginning of the music. Unlike my earlier examples where the differences were likely to have been caused by the DAC, this example is also likely to be caused by differences in the computer system similar to those one hears when changing buffer sizes, i.e. the time relationship between the computer activity and the music has altered. To the extent that these differences come from the computer system they are likely to be reduced when applying the usual audio computer hardware and software tweaks.

I agree that one doesn't learn much by producing files that have inaudible differences. I'm not talking about that. I am talking about producing files that are supposed (according to some theory) to have inaudible differences that actually have audible differences. Now one can begin a program of experimentation to isolate the likely cause of these differences and possibly learn something useful. I will give you one example. I look at the sensitivity of my computer system when playing WAV and FLAC files. When I play bit perfect PCM through the computer to my DAC there is a distinct difference. When I use the processor to upsample and convert the PCM to DSD128 not only do both formats sound much better, but the differences that I was previously hearing are largely missing. Now one can argue that's because I've lost resolution somehow in the process, but if that's some resolution that I lost I'm all for it. The "resolution" that I've lost is part of the difference between the earlier versions and what live music sounds like.

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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  • RE: That doesn't exactly represent real-world listening scenario, where it's the same file in all cases. - Tony Lauck 10/8/1418:26:18 10/8/14 (0)


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