Home Computer Audio Asylum

Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

RE: Thanks for the replies, all!

Thanks for the kind words about my website.

I always thought the entire point of digital audio is that it is more robust than analog audio and that tiny changes to the bits shouldn't matter as the intrinsic "bitness" or on/off nature of the signal would overwhelm all but the grossest changes.

Completely true.
The big difference between analog and digital is of course that both are analog signals (we don’t have digital electrons). In case of analog signal transmission we use the absolute value of the signal hence any distortion is one and no way to reconstruct the original signal.
In case of digital we use the rise and fall of the signal hence as long as we can detect the zero crossing properly we can reconstruct our block pulse.

This explains why when transmitting “values” digital is far more robust than analog.
This explains why our bits are in general de right ones, indeed bits are bits.

What happens if we start to do something silly like using the send rate of the signal as a piece of information (indeed SPDIF, it uses the send rate for sample rate).
Now all of a sudden we are back in the analog world.
Our sample rate is as accurate as the clock of the sender.
Any deviation (no clock is perfect) will be a change in sample rate
Any distortion of the transmitted signal will result in a small shift in time of the zero crossing.
Yep we are talking jitter, rare on audio forums :)

Basically, our bits are perfect and our timing imperfect by design.


Vincent
The Well Tempered Computer


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  McShane Design  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.