In Reply to: I didn't know performance was so necessary posted by fmak on January 15, 2016 at 02:23:24:
The best is the enemy of the good.
Your definition (corresponding to the dictionary definition) implies selection of the best possible among a set of alternatives. The problem is that the set of alternatives is not known or fixed in advance. Thus it is entirely possible that one product optimizes by choosing the best of the alternatives know by its designer, while another product choses the best of the alternatives known by its designer. Hence the possibility that the combination is better than any of the originals. All of this, without even considering an engineering optimum, which takes into effect cost as well as performance.
If all of the known factors had been enumerated, then your argument by definition would be relevant to the real world. However, I suspect that if this were the case, one vendor would have already built the equivalent of the "ULTIMATE REGEN" or "ULTIMATE ISOLATING DAC" that removed all of these issues entirely from consideration by rendering them as irrelevant as the quality of Ethernet cable at HDtracks.com's data center.
Until then, it's best to stick with the practical and not the theoretical.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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Follow Ups
- RE: I didn't know performance was so necessary - Tony Lauck 01/15/1608:14:11 01/15/16 (2)
- RE: "the quality of Ethernet cable at HDtracks.com's data center" - Ivan303 08:49:30 01/15/16 (1)
- RE: "the quality of Ethernet cable at HDtracks.com's data center" - Tony Lauck 12:13:29 01/15/16 (0)