Jaywalk3 wrote:
…and what happens when?…
Hi Jaywalk3,
Please don't take my reply as snarky but, there’s more to the world than we know or can measure today…As a recovering audiophile, you tend to be a bit more skeptical than some of us and less so than those who have never heard a truly high fidelity, high performance system.
Assuming you still own such a system, or have a friend who does, you may want to actually listen to several of the audiophile-focused players out there rather than falling back on the “bits is bits” argument. All it takes is an assistant, a demo version of X, Y or Z player, a pencil and paper to keep score, and some high rez material (though it’s amazing what a good player can do for a lossy compressed file). Amarra happens to make this task very easy because, due to the unique nature of how it works under the hood, it has a bypass switch. Have your assistant stop playback for a moment, then pop it in or out of bypass while you say which is “better.”
Once you’ve done the test, hopefully several times, then you can say either, “I don’t hear any difference (with this gear and room). ” or “I hear a difference (but I can’t explain it with what I know).” At that point, at least your opinion will be based on experience rather than supposition.
Strictly speaking, if “bits are bits” is all there is to digital audio playback, then the DAC input (F05 vs AES-3ID vs IIS) wouldn't matter as long as the AES receiver wasn’t dropping samples. That said, most of us would agree that the PHY layer does matter, mostly depending on the DAC design. If you ask most mastering engineers (the majority of which are with you in the “bits are bits” camp and have decently resolving playback environments) if different DAWs sound different when playing the same file into the same DAC, they’d say, “Sure.” Yet, how can this be if “bits are bits”? It can’t which points to secondary and tertiary effects that are subtle but still influential.
In head-fi.org and elsewhere, there's quite a bit of OPT (other people's time) taken up explaining and postulating on why “bits is bits” alone is a slightly myopic and extremely convenient position. It allows the adherent to say, “It can’t” without putting in the time.
