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Originally Posted by tim3320070 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
We are talking digital domain here, not moving parts like speaker drivers.
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The terms "digital domain" and "analog domain" have really done us all a great disservice. In nature - the environment in which real-world electrical signals propagate - there are not separate domains; there's only one domain, and it's 100% analog. An electron participating in the operation of a digital circuit has no special properties relative to one in an analog circuit. Unfortunately, the exceptionally long-lived fallacy persists that digital is somehow perfect, and is therefore the same across any interface as long as the binary content remains identical. But what constitutes a "perfect" copy of a digital signal? Is it always the same in every respect? No, it can never be, although there may be a high probability of interpreting two sufficiently similar messages in the same fashion (think reading and re-reading a file from your computer's hard drive). I find it enlightening and liberating to realize that digital is merely a construct - an arbitrary (but useful) engineering fabrication which, by convention, chooses to interpret a particular voltage level as a one, and another as a zero on a discrete time basis. It must be interpreted by something in order to accomplish anything useful, and the key word here is "interpret." As with any form of communication or data transmission, an interpretive process is always imperfect to some degree.
Take, for instance, a data slicer receiving two "digital" signals over an RF interface, both of which contain identical and flawlessly-transmitted high-level content. If one has been whitened and the other has not, the whitened signal displays a consistently superior bit error ratio (meaning, a more accurate interpretation of the message). How, if the digital content is the same? The whitened signal has the decidedly analog characteristic of a more balanced spectral signature, resulting in more optimal operation in the data slicer. This is just one illustration of how an analog effect can sully our "perfect" digital interface. Digital is just a special subset of analog; the effects that distinguish "good" digital from "bad" digital are almost entirely analog in nature. Don't believe me? Go and read about things that plague digital systems like ground bounce, poor eye diagrams, or the effect of power supply noise on PLLs. Those represent analog problems, and must be dealt with in the "analog domain." There are some technical exceptions to that, but high speed digital engineering can be as much about dealing with analog problems as it is with Karnaugh maps and protocols.
And who said anything about speaker drivers?
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Originally Posted by tim3320070 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I linked to the Audio-gd Ref-3 earlier to show the components he incorporates like DSP, class A transisters and a big transformer, etc. for $550. There may be others like it out there, I don't know, but it's about value for the dollar to me and the Sonicweld piece does not feel like value.
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So then, by logical extension, the 27-ton ENIAC computer of yesteryear must be exponentially better than the ten pound Intel Penryn machine sitting on my desktop, right? No? Wait, what about the 10,000 capacitors and 70,000 resistors? The 17,468 tubes? What about the five million hand-soldered joints? What about all that
value?
I respect everyone's right to formulate their own definition of value. However, if I can achieve the same or a superior result
without the big transformer as with it, that will always be a more sophisticated and elegant method in my mind. I could have easily designed the Diverter to be several times larger merely by using through-hole parts instead of SMD ones that are the size of a grain of pepper. Would that have imparted greater value? It wouldn't have performed as well, I can say that with confidence. And it would have cost more, because the chassis would have been larger. I will always place a higher value on the quality of the result I obtain than the number, size, weight, or photogenic qualities of the parts I used to achieve that result.
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Originally Posted by tim3320070 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
If I want art, I buy art.
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And if someone wants some great audio gear, does that preclude him from buying art simultaneously? Is "art" limited to something you see in a gallery, hang on your wall, or display on your coffee table? Or can it be functional as well?
