Being so certain of what’s factual and what isn’t can produce intellectual inertia. Ask Copernicus, right?
Why, what’s the parallel, where’s the analogy with Copernicus? There wasn’t factual certainty in Copernicus’ day, there was Ptolemy’s geocentric model for which there was no proof, it just happened to be a more believable explanation than any other known model at the time and was therefore widely accepted in Europe even though it was known to have serious problems; not only did it predict the position of the planets relatively inaccurately but it required them to stop and change direction, for which there was no explanation. There were additional problems besides, for which hypotheses were devised but these hypotheses didn’t even have any reliable supporting evidence, forget actual proof, they’d just been invented to make the hypothesis (loosely) fit the observations. So, those “
so certain” at the time, was due to their ignorance of competing hypotheses and a “certainty” based on faith, NOT certainty based on facts! Copernicus was not initially widely believed because he did not have any proof either, it was not until Galileo‘s invention of the telescope and far more accurate observations that Copernicus’ hypothesis gained ground and eventually replaced geocentrism with further supporting evidence from Kepler, Newton and others. Additionally, the certainty in the geocentric model obviously did not “
produce intellectual inertia”, if it had then we would still believe in the geocentric model and you would never have heard of Copernicus, Galileo or Kepler.
However, none of this is relevant because it’s not analogous with digital audio anyway. Digital audio is NOT a hypothesis created to explain a set of observations of nature, the solar system or the universe. There is no digital audio in nature and therefore, there were obviously couldn’t be any observations of it. This makes digital audio completely different to the heliocentric model, the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics or relativity for example, which are all theories to explain our observations of the universe. Digital audio is a completely man-made phenomena. Additionally, it was a published theory nearly a century ago but that ended in 1948 when Shannon published the proof of Nyquist’s 1927 theory. So this also makes it significantly different to the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics, etc, which have not been categorically proven (although the supporting evidence maybe overwhelming).
The problem we face if we want that proof is that IP concerns will prevent true advancements from being proven with publishing and peer review. So where does that lead us?
But there is proof, we’ve had it since 1948. So if “
we want that proof” there is no problem, we just have to go and read Shannon’s 1948 paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”. However, there can be no “
true advancements”, it’s indisputably proven, just like there can be and is not any “true advancements” in “1+1=2” for example. 1+1=2 was invented thousands of years ago, it’s amongst our earliest science, there have never been any true advancements of it, 1+1 still equals 2 today. Of course the field of mathematics has advanced enormously but 1+1=2 itself has never changed/advanced.
However, this is only true of the science of digital audio, it is not necessarily true of the technology that tries to implement that science, nor of other areas of science, such as psychoacoustics. However, I’m not sure how IP concerns will prevent true advancements from being proven with publishing peer reviewed papers. “IP concerns” just stops you bringing products to market which infringe that IP, it doesn’t preclude research into that IP.
Take DACs for example; I clearly and repeatably hear the difference between a Chord Mojo2 and a Denafrips Ares 2. Easily discernible. Then also with products within each company’s range (Ares vs Terminator, Mojo2 vs TT2).
Without looking them up, there probably is an audible difference between at least some of those models, if not all of them. They probably have different output voltage levels which are significant enough to be audible, it’s therefore not surprising that you may clearly and repeatably hear differences between them.
To me it seems clear that DACs aren’t a solved technology in terms of everyone can build one that’s essentially audibly transparent.
So, I keep looking for explanation and keep an open mind.
Sure, that will seem clear to you (or anyone else) if you don’t precisely volume match the DACs you listed! There are a few exceptions to the rule, those few DACs which deliberately do not apply the proven science (filterless NOS DACs for example) or those few which deliberately avoid “audibly transparent”, by adding audible amounts of distortion through the use of an overdriven Tube for example. However, even very cheap consumer DACs from more than 25 years ago were typically audibly transparent, it was a solved technology in the 1990’s and some DACs managed it in the late 1980’s! So how could it not be a solved technology in current and significantly more expensive DACs?
Audiophile marketing relies on you to keep an open mind, for example to keep an open mind that 1+1 might not always equal 2, and actively tries to keep your mind open through the use of fallacies (science doesn’t know everything, incorrect analogies, etc.). Obviously that tactic is effective, because you have used those same fallacies above!
The more I learn (through forums like this) the more the impression grows that we’re a long way from knowing (perhaps I just mean a long way from proving?) all there is to know in the suite of measurements available to us. I’d like to see evidence. Maybe one day more will happen in that field.
Exactly, because Head-Fi and forums like it are driven by audiophile marketing and as I just mentioned, it is designed to give you a growing impression that we don’t know everything (and therefore we don’t know enough), that nothing has been proved and therefore you should keep an open mind about any nonsense marketing claim they care to make-up!
The nature of sound (it being sound waves traveling through a medium) was proposed around 500 years ago and with all the advancements in science since then, there’s no reliable evidence that it’s anything other than just that variation in air pressure (which of course we can measure). This does not absolutely prove there isn’t something else that we don’t know about, that we can’t measure and that we’ve never even had any hint of, it just makes it extremely unlikely. However, this is completely irrelevant! Let’s say hypothetically that there is something out there we don’t know about, it still doesn’t make any difference because digital audio only responds to one thing, voltage variations over time (which analogously represent the air pressure variations of sound waves). So if there is something else, it cannot be recorded with digital audio and therefore you obviously could not hear it when reproducing digital audio recordings. Of course though, this only pertains to the audio/sound itself, not to how we perceive it and we currently have no objective measurement for the entirely of perception.
G
