[VNandor]

Now you're the one making stuff up. A sample is a like a photo of audio. It doesn't include time. Snapshots are strung together so that it seems like they move, just like video has always been.

I am not making any of this up. The reason I am saying there are no stairsteps is because digital audio signals are discrete in time. Because of that, they look more like lollipops or just simply discrete points, not stairsteps.

Recording and playing back are not the same. The ADC does not string the samples together, it records samples, and sends the discrete time signal for the DAC to decode (eventually). It is the DAC's job to string the discrete signal together. The way it strings it together is not to produce stairsteps, it outputs a smooth signal, the one you could see in both the top and the bottom picture (marked as orange) if you looked closely.

Audio and video playback differ in a key way. Video is not played back by audio DACs. An audio DAC doesnt just go silent between the samples, it doesnt just randomly connect the samples either. It recreates the continous, analog voltage signal the ADC originally sampled. The wiki does not claim perfect reconstruction, the reconstruction only works if the nyquist theorem was met during sampling. It's also mentioned the reconstructed signal will have some noise added as a direct consequence of sampling. However, there's a distinct lack of mentioning jagged edges or stairsteps.

Admittedly, video playback does not work that way. I think the old way to play back videos was to hold every frame until the next frame showed up. The DAC doesnt do the audio equivalent of that. Obviously the video playback got more sophisticated as times moved on but video playback will always be fundamentally different than audio playback.

Why is the jagged one the higher bitrate one.

I already explained it under the pictures, read it again. The sample points are erroneously being connected (white line) on the bottom picture which causes the jagged look. The signal the samples represent is the orange line which is not jagged, and also it's just like the orange line in the top picture. If you dont see it just zoom in, it is there. Notice how there's less samples (again pictured as white) on the top picture than on the bottom one. The samples in the top picture are not connected by the white line. The sampling is 4 times as dense on the bottom picture, you can count it if you want. Despite that, the signal they represent (shown in orange on both pictures) are the same.

 

[bigshot]

A sample is a like a photo of audio. It doesn't include time. Snapshots are strung together so that it seems like they move, just like video has always been.

A sample represents a point in time. The samples are played back in perfect time in a continuous stream.

The chip on the transport decodes the flac, that's what causes the extra noise of flac. You probably don't want to hear that there's noise from that.

You are wrong. Bit perfect is bit perfect. FLAC becomes the PCM file upon playback. No noise is added.

According to what you're saying, playing it twice at double speed should break it, because halfway through playing it perfectly, it has to start over and play it perfectly again.

Where did I say that? I have no idea what you're talking about here. What I said is upsampling adds no more resolution or data to a file. All it adds are samples and file size. Upsampled or not, a two minute song still plays back at two minutes.

Maxell XLII-S.

It's obsolete technology now. I was going through my garage and found a case of Maxell XLS-II unopened. It went straight to the trash. I can do better with digital.

VNandor is correct. There are no stair steps in the sound wave of digital audio. The wave is continuous. It was a mistake of him to post an image of a sound app with a low res display. It gave the wrong impression.

 

[VNandor]

It was a mistake of him to post an image of a sound app with a low res display. It gave the wrong impression.

Is the actual wave really that hard to see in either of the pictures? Both pictures honestly look fine on my monitor...

 

[gregorio]

I'm still waiting until I can hear guitars strum at 100k per second,

As the fastest guitar player can strum about 13 times per second, my guess is you’ll be waiting for at least another 50,000 years, until guitar players have evolved into something other than human beings.

after which I can say, ok, now I want to hear each string individually.

Ah, then at least another 50,000 years until your ears have evolved. The good news is that after more than a 100,000 years of evolution, you’d still be able to use 16/44 to capture 100,000 strums per second!

You’re not going to post everyday for 100,000 years that you’re still waiting though are you?

Yeah, the stairsteps still need clearing up, that's what I expected.

And would you still expect to have to clear up the fur on a pink unicorn? Why not? There’s no difference, neither stairsteps nor pink unicorns exist.

That top wave does look nice, doesn't it. … The bottom one looks like crap.

So, because there’s graphic images of stairsteps, then stairsteps must be real. Here’s a graphic image of a pink unicorn, they must be real too!

The adc does not encode, there is no encoding in simple pcm,

So you’re saying an Analogue to Digital Converter doesn’t convert? What does it do then and why is it called a converter? Or are you saying it does convert but to something other than digital audio? What do you think it converts to, pink unicorns? And why is it called an ADC rather than APUC (Analogue to Pink Unicorn Converter)?

The rest is just more of the same utter nonsense. Good job being careful not to look stupid btw!

G

 

[71 dB]

I won't interact with Audiophiliac anymore.
Arguing with a flat earth believer would probably be more fruitful!
I have better things to do.

 

[bigshot]

They both represent the waveform well, but the bottom one is a lower quality display that gives the impression that the waveform has stair steps when it actually doesn't.

 

[old tech]

Digital audio was not invented to be better than analogue, only to be able to use them for audio at all.

Well try telling that to the true audiophiles of the classical genre. They have for decades prior to that been looking for a better format than analogue tapes and records, something that is actually capable of capturing the full dynamic range of an orchestra and something that more realistically records/playbacks instruments and with proper separation. Why is it that these audiophiles have never looked back?

Also try telling that to the directors of Sony and Phillips who gambled a huge amount of money with refining digital audio and developing the CD, particularly when the industry initially wanted no part of it as they believed the future was cassette tape. One of the bars the directors of both companies set before proceeding past the proof stage was that the CD had to have superior fidelity to LP records and equal the best reel to reel studio recorders at that time. As the financial stakes were high, they commissioned an independent panel of audio/studio experts to do the testing. The result was under double blind testing non of the panel members could distinguish the CD from the reel to reel studio tape from which they made the CD - and this was back in 1981!

This is all well documented btw.

 

[bigshot]

Well, according to the article I posted yesterday, the earliest digital audio from the 1930s was originally intended for voice.

 

[old tech]

It's obsolete technology now. I was going through my garage and found a case of Maxell XLS-II unopened. It went straight to the trash. I can do better with digital.

I would have sold them rather than throwing them away, they are worth good money these days to hobbyists and collectors.

 

[bigshot]

More trouble to find a buyer than to get $20 bucks for the box. There's a sweet spot for selling stuff online. It needs to be around $100 so the time, postage, eBay fees and PayPal fees are all worth it. A $20 box of cassettes wouldn't be worth it.

Also, I think people who are interested in obsolete audio technology are interested in playing back old tapes that were recorded in the past. There really isn't any reason to record new things now. There are better options for that.

 

[old tech]

More trouble to find a buyer than to get $20 bucks for the box. There's a sweet spot for selling stuff online. It needs to be around $100 so the time, postage, eBay fees and PayPal fees are all worth it. A $20 box of cassettes wouldn't be worth it.

Also, I think people who are interested in obsolete audio technology are interested in playing back old tapes that were recorded in the past. There really isn't any reason to record new things now. There are better options for that.

I sold a box of blank TDK SA 90s for $120 a couple years ago and yours would have been worth more. It's not just about the money though, it is nice that these things are going to someone who may have use for them rather than throwing it out with the garbage.