[knownothing2]

I don’t know where on Earth you got this from but it’s pretty much the exact opposite of the actual facts! The whole history of music recording, editing, mixing and mastering from at least the early 1950’s has been based on experimentation, on trying different ways of doing things, of pushing equipment to or beyond it’s intended operating range or even it’s limits and/or employing it in ways never intended or even imagined by it’s designers. This is all in defiance of “settled theory and practice”, not relying on it! With the exception of client and distribution specs which must be met, “everything else” is MORE important than “settled theory and practice”!

First, I want to thank you for taking the time to reply to my post thoughtfully and thoroughly. As for the comment above. I am clearly confused based on a previous post (#660) of yours in this thread and perhaps others where you indicated a lot of this is old hat and settled.

“That’s perfect (!), because off the top of my head I can’t think of a better example of what I stated in the first paragraph of my previous post (post #587). Here you are thinking and making suppositions about questions that were asked by science roughly 170 years ago, heavily researched and completely answered/proved about a century and a half ago (starting around 1876), then demonstrated in practice to be correct ever since, literally countless billions of times. So, all done and dusted nearly a century before there even was an audiophile community! lol
You need to look up the work of Oliver Heaviside, for example his “Telegrapher’s Equations” and the “Transmission Line Model” (which are derived from Maxwell’s Laws), that mathematically defines cable geometry/signal behaviour/shielding, which incidentally led to him patenting coax cable in 1880.”

Clearly my mistake.

Obsessed to what degree? Obsessed to the degree of dedicating one’s entire working life to it, to competing with thousands/tens of thousands of graduates for a relative handful of jobs? Hobbyist is another term for someone who is very interested in something or maybe even has some amount of obsession but not enough to put it all on the line, study and practice assiduously and make a living from doing it professionally.

I see your point here. My family members think I am “obsessed”, and while I love my job, my hifi and music habits occupy a lot of my limited processing power.

kn

 

[The Jester]

watched a debate on AI that could play its part here,
With the advent of digital workstations with its plethora of automated “plug ins” how far away is AI from taking over the final arbitrator, the human part that is the engineers, even though they are trained to suppress as much as is possible their own individual perceptions and bias etc they are the only human, sentient being left in the chain, left to decide if a slight inaccuracy in vocals or instrument sound is actually inaccurate and not an individual way of expressing a note or an unconscious vocal inflection, their own personal opinion and feelings no matter how much they are consciously suppressed mixed with the artists opinion and the final arbitrator, whoever is paying the bills …
Then we could all dig out our copy of “American Pie” and recall the day the music died.

 

[psy472]

watched a debate on AI that could play its part here,
With the advent of digital workstations with its plethora of automated “plug ins” how far away is AI from taking over the final arbitrator, the human part that is the engineers, even though they are trained to suppress as much as is possible their own individual perceptions and bias etc they are the only human, sentient being left in the chain, left to decide if a slight inaccuracy in vocals or instrument sound is actually inaccurate and not an individual way of expressing a note or an unconscious vocal inflection, their own personal opinion and feelings no matter how much they are consciously suppressed mixed with the artists opinion and the final arbitrator, whoever is paying the bills …
Then we could all dig out our copy of “American Pie” and recall the day the music died.

AI isn’t as powerful as you think. How effective it can be is due to how much it learns correctly. If it learns faulty things then all subsequent conclusions are faulty too. In this case it can make an engineer’s job much more efficient but conversely have errors that’s harder to detect. For example, there was a news about a lawyers losing a case because they had AI help prepare their arguments. The quoted laws were a bunch of hogwash.

AI can make redundant things more efficient so you may have less jobs initially. But if the Printer and Computer was any indication, it’s only a matter of time before people adapt to it and we end up being overworked again.

 

[bigshot]

I found that the type of USB hard drive used for matters and can affect the sound of playback with my particular server. Everything matters

Now you’re just playing games.

 

[knownothing2]

Now you’re just playing games.

I compared at least four different designs of USB powered HD, from USB stick, to solid state SSD drive to USB drives with a physical disk that must be powered with via the bus. My experience is that there is a difference in sound, with the physical disks sounding flat compared to solid state drives when used with a Bluesound Node functioning as music server. Try it for yourself. Seriously (OK, the Tuesday part was just playing, the rest is serious).

I discovered this because when I first got the Node, the only music I had on disk that wasn’t on my computer was on a small flash drive. I bought a cheap external USB bus powered hard drive and I was disappointed with the sound compared with the flash drive - same files, same format, same cuts. Just dull and flat sounding. Yuk. I tried a different bus powered hard drive, a little better. I tried a SSD drive, sounds much closer to the 16GB flash drive. Now I use the SSD drive for serving music and the hard drives for file backup. YMMV

kn

 

[Whazzzup]

Ok here's another example if folks can't compare gsx to wa33 EE, try a chord hugo versus Ak sp3000,2000,1000 now i suspect its more than chips, design etc that gives them a different sound. Chord Hugo uses upsampling ak uses oversampling. ak has a nice warm transparent sound. chord well its different. which you prefer is taste, imo

 

[bfreedma]

I compared at least four different designs of USB powered HD, from USB stick, to solid state SSD drive to USB drives with a physical disk that must be powered with via the bus. My experience is that there is a difference in sound, with the physical disks sounding flat compared to solid state drives when used with a Bluesound Node functioning as music server. Try it for yourself. Seriously (OK, the Tuesday part was just playing, the rest is serious).

I discovered this because when I first got the Node, the only music I had on disk that wasn’t on my computer was on a small flash drive. I bought a cheap external USB bus powered hard drive and I was disappointed with the sound compared with the flash drive - same files, same format, same cuts. Just dull and flat sounding. Yuk. I tried a different bus powered hard drive, a little better. I tried a SSD drive, sounds much closer to the 16GB flash drive. Now I use the SSD drive for serving music and the hard drives for file backup. YMMV

kn

How did you account for the numerous buffers that the data goes through after USB and before processing?

There is almost zero possibility that different USB and/or other connections "sound" different. The amount of data coming across from the disk to the PC is a tiny fraction of the capacity of event USB 2.0, so throughput is certainly not an issue. Any differences you hear are entirely placebo, as if there were a difference in the packets/data, error checking would identify that and request another copy. All of the data gets reassembled in buffering, then passes through many other memory and processing buffers (both real and virtual).

If the above wasn't correct, the entire digital model would fail.

 

[BS5711]

Expectation bias, placebo, mind trickery messing with your head, call it what you want, it doesn’t know what equipment you are comparing and it will just as happily alter your perception of sound regardless.

 

[knownothing2]

How did you account for the numerous buffers that the data goes through after USB and before processing?

They were the same because each of the different drives were plugged into the same USB bus on the Node, and the Node processed the data. The only variable in the entire system was the drive. I used the same cable to attach the SSD and hard drives to the Node. The cable came in the box with one of the drives. The flash drive did not utilize a cable and was plugged directly into the Node USB port. I used the same Windows Surface 4 to transfer the files to each drive.

 

[knownothing2]

There is almost zero possibility that different USB and/or other connections "sound" different. The amount of data coming across from the disk to the PC is a tiny fraction of the capacity of event USB 2.0, so throughput is certainly not an issue. Any differences you hear are entirely placebo, as if there were a difference in the packets/data, error checking would identify that and request another copy. All of the data gets reassembled in buffering, then passes through many other memory and processing buffers (both real and virtual)

I know, right? The only thing I can think of is that the hard drives draw more power from the bus than the SSD and flash drives, and that affected the performance of the Node, or the data transfer process, but not necessarily the drives themselves. Your guess about a possible mechanism for this difference is as good as mine. I know folks will go straight to the “it affected your psyche, not the actual performance”. Fair enough, but it was repeatable and it wasn’t subtle.

Returning to the original question in this thread, I did not notice any effect on soundstage. The tempo or timing just sounded off to me.

kn

 

[bfreedma]

They were the same because each of the different drives were plugged into the same USB bus on the Node, and the Node processed the data. The only variable in the entire system was the drive. I used the same cable to attach the SSD and hard drives to the Node. The cable came in the box with one of the drives. The flash drive did not utilize a cable and was plugged directly into the Node USB port. I used the same Windows Surface 4 to transfer the files to each drive.

All of the data from all of those drives follows an error correction model that entirely precludes your conclusions.

You are making a claim that would literally force the redefinition of how digital data is stored and recovered. I say with a great deal of confidence that any and all differences you believe you heard did not actually exist.

If you have any hard evidence (or anything beyond subjective hearing assessment), please post if for discussion.

I'm also curious about your claim that all of these devices used the same cable to connect to your computer. It's been a very long time since a few early SSDs used a standard USB cable. and it's even less likely that an end user would have one For a while, some used eSATA/PCI, but nearly every modern SSD connects to it's bus via m.2 - certainly not using a USB cable to connect those. For clarity, the "box" housing the SSD may use a USB connector to your computer, but the SSD is not connected directly to that USB endpoint.

To be succinct, I don't think you understand the technologies in discussion here.

 

[bfreedma]

I know, right? The only thing I can think of is that the hard drives draw more power from the bus than the SSD and flash drives, and that affected the performance of the Node, or the data transfer process, but not necessarily the drives themselves. Your guess about a possible mechanism for this difference is as good as mine. I know folks will go straight to the “it affected your psyche, not the actual performance”. Fair enough, but it was repeatable and it wasn’t subtle.

Returning to the original question in this thread, I did not notice any effect on soundstage. The tempo or timing just sounded off to me.

kn

I don't have to guess. There is a specific model these technologies must follow and that model doesn't allow for the variability you claim.

So we either believe you have a unique scenario that violates 4 decades plus of known digital processing standards, or the differences don't actually exist. Which seems more likely to you?

 

[bigshot]

I compared at least four different designs of USB powered HD, from USB stick, to solid state SSD drive to USB drives with a physical disk that must be powered with via the bus. My experience is that there is a difference in sound, with the physical disks sounding flat compared to solid state drives when used with a Bluesound Node functioning as music server.

OK. I think there isn't much reason to argue this one. A file is a file and a music file plays back the way it's encoded. You'd no more get Mozart out of a Beethoven file as you would a song that sounds "flat" as opposed to "full figured". If a hard drive has problems playing a file, it will skip and click and generally not play well at all. There is no way it could possibly change the timbre of the sound. Zilch.

If you are serious and aren't intending to troll us, I think it's safe to say that you have a particular weakness when it comes to expectation bias. Over and over you hear differences where there's no reason to expect a difference, and you never use the tools to eliminate bias and perceptual error. I think it's pretty obvious that those two things are related. You're clearly hearing with something other than your ears.

I am going to move to the next level with my reaction to this... I'm not going to have any doubt any more that bias could be responsible for what you claim to hear. Now I'm going to begin to doubt that when you said you tested various storage formats, you actually did do a comparison. I think you may be making up "evidence" that doesn't exist to support your argument. I'm not sure about that yet. You may be honestly profoundly oblivious to reality instead.

 

[psy472]

There is also chemical bias as well. Whether you just smoked some herb, drank a shot of whiskey, or sniffed some glue. All of these will affect your sonic perception. Some who smoked much herb like dabs may hear music playing when the electricity is turned off. Talk about sound quality!

 

[BS5711]

There is also chemical bias as well. Whether you just smoked some herb, drank a shot of whiskey, or sniffed some glue. All of these will affect your sonic perception. Some who smoked much herb like dabs may hear music playing when the electricity is turned off. Talk about sound quality!

That was touched on with another person that has dipped in and out of this thread where pot was mentioned but folks were polite enough to leave that out of the conversation. Or they just didn't see it I am not sure.

But of course you are right, music sounds better after a couple of beers but sounds worse after a couple of beers to many.