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question about analog vs digital signals

post #1 of 5
7/20/09 at 9:14am
Thread Starter 
Ok, so I have a question about interconnects that hopefully someone can answer for me:

-how come audio equipment does not use digital source to amp connections? why is it that analog equipment is used?

I know the difference, and I understand that its much easier to lose quality over an analog source (voltages drops over distance due to impurities in metal). All home theater equipment uses digital sources now, and due to interpretation of 1's and 0's it makes for "lossless" sound and picture. I get that analog equipment can color the sound produced (in a good way or a bad) and some people want that, but to me, to have lossless audio seems to be the best way to produce the music the way it was meant to be heard. Am I missing something here?
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post #2 of 5
7/20/09 at 10:31am
Old habit I guess.
From the time we all used analog sources, like turntables, cassette players, fm radios, ...

When the CD was introduced in the late -80s it probably was most practical to place the DAC inside the CD player instead of the amplifier. Since the customers then could buy just one new unit.
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post #3 of 5
7/20/09 at 10:41am
Thread Starter 
fair enough. I guess eventually the sound needs to be converted. might as well do it there (never though of it being cheaper back in the day)
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post #4 of 5
7/20/09 at 11:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by quikgp View Post
Ok, so I have a question about interconnects that hopefully someone can answer for me:

-how come audio equipment does not use digital source to amp connections? why is it that analog equipment is used?

I know the difference, and I understand that its much easier to lose quality over an analog source (voltages drops over distance due to impurities in metal). All home theater equipment uses digital sources now, and due to interpretation of 1's and 0's it makes for "lossless" sound and picture. I get that analog equipment can color the sound produced (in a good way or a bad) and some people want that, but to me, to have lossless audio seems to be the best way to produce the music the way it was meant to be heard. Am I missing something here?
You can't listen to a digital signal. All you'd hear is static. If you amplify it, you'll hear louder static.
Home theater equipment have D/A converters built in, and some headphone amplifiers also have DACs built in, but the better ones are usually separate.
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post #5 of 5
7/20/09 at 11:52am
Also, quality loss in a signal has NOTHING to do impurities in the metal. Think of a signal as energy, not a physical medium that travels through a physical tube.
Too many people rely on their natural intuitions to tell us how things should sound, regardless of what is real. Copper warm.. silver bright.. tin dull... teflon slippery.. cotton soft/tubey... high-technology quick/detailed.. vintage/tube equipment warm/relaxed... I swear if someone every made a interconnect out of honey, it'd sound thick and slow. Out of air, "airy".. a thin wire "thinned out", a thick wire "full and robust"

And think about it. High end equipment normally take up a lot of space. Put a balanced b22 with a power supply and a high-end dac in one case and it'd barely fit on your desk. How is a 50" wire inside your case any better than a 12" one connecting two cases?
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