Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Dedicated Source Components › why do transports sound different?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

why do transports sound different? - Page 3

post #31 of 177
2/14/10 at 3:24am
What is your transport sitting on??? When you switch between different Transports are they both on the same Isolation pads/cones/hunk of maple etc.etc.. I think you get my pt. I two believe it's Jitter... then again, IMO I never have liked optical connections...Maybe I "placeeeeeboed" my own ass! TRY A DIP! I know an audiophile who use to daisy chain at least 3 DIPs together in between his trans. and Dac.....It always sounded great to my ears, NO JOKE... R.I.P.RAY.....
Reply

Head-Fi's Best Sellers

post #32 of 177
2/14/10 at 4:48am
Jitter is commonly reported to influence sound in the Picosecond range. In one picosecond light only travels 0.299 7 mm. What about nanoseconds of jitter? Well in a nanosecond light travels .299 meters. Now can you imagine what sort of instrument and how expensive it would be that could measure how far light travels in .299 meters? Yet we are to believe that our ears can hear these differences? Maybe, but I think some transports are just better at reading the pits in the silvers, meaning what you are hearing is very faint slight skipping.
Reply
post #33 of 177
2/14/10 at 11:07am
I think some of you are mistaking the the influence the optical cable has with the source of the sound.

Yes if you have 2 different cd-players they can (and most likely will) sound different. This is because most cd-players will decode the data from the disc and will then recode it for spdif. There are only a few cd-players that can directly send it over spdif... i think they are the old phillips cd-players.

Anyway, that's the reason the difference in sound is audible. It's not because of the difference in cables.

btw. About jitter. Jitter is more audible with optical than coax spdif as optical/electric conversion takes a long time as opposed to direct electrical communication. However, optical does seperate electric potential differences. In other words. If you use optical, make damn sure the dac you are using has a internal clock
Reply
post #34 of 177
2/14/10 at 12:46pm
Could be different output levels. I know from trying a few different sources with optical (so there's no impedance silliness going on) that not all digital sources have the same output level even if they 'should.'
Reply
post #35 of 177
2/14/10 at 12:58pm
When they say 'because you're looking' they mean, of course, the added visual aspect produces inevitable placebo. If you can see what you're plugging in, you have expectations. This is why DBT is the only way to truly evaluate such things in audio.
Reply
post #36 of 177
2/14/10 at 1:46pm
How about jitter induced in the devices that transform electricity into light and vivce versa?
I read there are audiophiles who prefer co-ax to toslink because it sounds better, and their expalnation is exactly that: jitter is introduced during the transformation.
If this is truth (and I am not sure if it is) then is isn't unlikely different devices introduce different amounts of jitter.
Reply
post #37 of 177
2/14/10 at 3:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMan007 View Post
Could be different output levels. I know from trying a few different sources with optical (so there's no impedance silliness going on) that not all digital sources have the same output level even if they 'should.'
This is true, but usually will not cause errors. The only thing left is jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Reply
post #38 of 177
2/14/10 at 10:07pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by regal View Post
.. Maybe, but I think some transports are just better at reading the pits in the silvers, meaning what you are hearing is very faint slight skipping.
interesting, any idea which transport is skipping more, the softer sounding one or the sharper sounding one?
Reply
post #39 of 177
2/14/10 at 10:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMan007 View Post
Could be different output levels. I know from trying a few different sources with optical (so there's no impedance silliness going on) that not all digital sources have the same output level even if they 'should.'

ain't digital signal supposed to be immute to this output level problem? zero is zero, one is one....
Reply
post #40 of 177
2/14/10 at 10:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by AudioCats View Post
ain't digital signal supposed to be immute to this output level problem? zero is zero, one is one....
You have stumbled upon something that is now an old discussion. You are right that a one is a one, a zero a zero. It's not a matter of the information being transmitted, it's a matter of the timing and how that information is being transmitted and retrieved from the source(disk/hard drive/thumb drive) as well as the cable/fiber it is transmitted with. There are lots of other forums where this is discussed.
Reply
post #41 of 177
2/15/10 at 12:19pm
Funny how most people don't seem to realise, that, especially with ordinary cd's and cd players/transports, what you get in bits from the digital output is not the same as what's on the cd. The problem is, a cd player has to read a cd in real-time. No time for rechecks like a harddisk of cd-rom drive has and often (as in: a high number of times per second) it reads things wrong. Than error-correction steps in and there are two layers of error-correction information encoded on the cd along with the actual musical information to help with that. When the amount of read-errors reaches a certain level where the transport can't guess what the bits it couldn't read should have been it'll start interpolating the lost data from the data that it could read. But these are basically 'guesses' and just there to fill the gaps in the datastream (which would result in clicks and pops) and often they can be really different from the actual data that's on the cd. So the level to which data can be read accurately and error-correction can be avoided plays a huge part in the sound quality of a cd transport.
Reply
post #42 of 177
2/15/10 at 1:19pm
The 1's and 0's are meaningful only when they are sequenced in temporal domain, and therefore their integrity depends on timing. I guess that is why expensive CDPs and transports these days use better built clocks.
Reply
post #43 of 177
2/15/10 at 2:54pm
I'd say jitter, but mostly placebo..

Placebo: 90% and jitter: 10%.

Just my $.02 though
Reply
post #44 of 177
2/16/10 at 12:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by audioengr View Post
This is true, but usually will not cause errors. The only thing left is jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Ok, but I was going for the known fact that different volume levels give a different perception of sound quality rather than any type of error. If it's obvious one can tell there's different volume levels, but if it's small it might not be obvious but still enough to impact SQ.
Reply
post #45 of 177
2/16/10 at 11:26pm
So if what’s on a CD aren’t zeros and ones, what exactly does represent the analog waveform?
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Dedicated Source Components

Head-Fi's Best Sellers

Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Dedicated Source Components › why do transports sound different?