drewd
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- Apr 26, 2004
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Well, Dr. Gilmore aside, there should not be any square wave components in the music, especially on a compact disc - as you alluded, the CD format doesn't really have the resolution to capture a square wave.
Even at 44KHz, that's not sufficiently high to generate reflections in a three foot cable...the wavelength is over 30 times that!
So getting back to Kevin's post, I don't doubt that there is a difference in the sound. Consider that you are taking a wire (because at the frequencies we're dealing with, that coaxial cable really is a wire) and providing a path to ground through a 75 ohm resistor. So, sure, you've added 75 ohms in parallel with whatever the input impedance of the amplifier (assuming that it's DC coupled), meaning that you've gone from what is probably a very high input impedance to a very low one. So it's certainly going to change the character of the sound!
I guess it could sound better, but it certainly could sound worse. There's a synergy between components of an audio system that can't be overlooked. I guess what I'm ultimately getting at is that the classic idea of terminating a transmission line is applicable only when the frequencies and the length of the path combine to cause transmission line effects to occur. In the case of audio, it just doesn't happen.
By the way, I really am enjoying this thread. I work with high frequency digital signals all day and nobody at my office has much of a clue about low frequency analog stuff. This is really refreshing!
-Drew
Even at 44KHz, that's not sufficiently high to generate reflections in a three foot cable...the wavelength is over 30 times that!
So getting back to Kevin's post, I don't doubt that there is a difference in the sound. Consider that you are taking a wire (because at the frequencies we're dealing with, that coaxial cable really is a wire) and providing a path to ground through a 75 ohm resistor. So, sure, you've added 75 ohms in parallel with whatever the input impedance of the amplifier (assuming that it's DC coupled), meaning that you've gone from what is probably a very high input impedance to a very low one. So it's certainly going to change the character of the sound!
I guess it could sound better, but it certainly could sound worse. There's a synergy between components of an audio system that can't be overlooked. I guess what I'm ultimately getting at is that the classic idea of terminating a transmission line is applicable only when the frequencies and the length of the path combine to cause transmission line effects to occur. In the case of audio, it just doesn't happen.
By the way, I really am enjoying this thread. I work with high frequency digital signals all day and nobody at my office has much of a clue about low frequency analog stuff. This is really refreshing!
-Drew