If your bios supports it try adjusting your RAM speeds to match the speeds of the RAM sticks.
My suggestion is that RAM adjustment involves matching the frequency with the bus, north bridge and CPU. It is not that the faster the RAM speed and the smaller the delay, the better the sound. The rational state is: the bus, north bridge, CPU and RAM all work at the same frequency to minimize intermodulation distortion. For new motherboards in recent years, you also need to consider the frequency of PCIE. This is similar to the emphasis I placed on the same model of solid-state capacitors on each component of the computer. The frequency matching under the default setting may not be the best, but it is one of the most stable states, which is one of the conditions for satisfying good sound. If you do not hear a very obvious improvement with your own ears, do not adjust the RAM for the time being. Let the RAM default.
Sound does not have a far field, a near field or an outline, it is simply a varying pressure wave through a medium (air). And, neither your computer nor it’s bios is dealing with varying pressure waves in air (sound), it’s only dealing with digital data.
PCIe 2 (4 lane) had a throughput of 20Gbps, while stereo 44/16 (CD) requires a throughput of just over 0.001Gbps and a high bit rate stereo MP3 has a throughput of about 0.0003Gbps. So PCIe 2 has about 20,000 times more throughput than CD format uses and you think PCIe 3, with 40,000 times more throughput will somehow provide an improvement?
There is no delay, both RAM and PCIe can deliver the data tens of thousands of times faster than it can be used.
Intermodulation Distortion (IMD) is an amplitude modulation/distortion of a waveform (EG. An analogue audio signal or acoustic sound wave) caused by a non-linear process, such as dynamic range compression or tape saturation for example. Neither RAM nor PCIe are non-linear processes and obviously neither are dealing with analogue audio signals or sound waves, they only deal with digital data. So there cannot be any Intermodulation distortion and obviously you cannot “minimise” something that doesn’t exist to start with!
You are right, This is a very interesting and complex question, involving the interaction between hardware, signal processing, and subjective auditory perception. While science can explain many hardware operations in computers, it struggles to fully explain how changes in hardware frequency impact sound quality, especially in the subjective experience.
Thank you for your explanation. Indeed, Strictly speaking, digital circuits themselves do not produce traditional intermodulation distortion (IMD), as IMD is caused by nonlinear processes, whereas signal transmission in digital circuits is linear (switching between logical 0 and 1).
It is not a particularly complex question, in fact it’s not a question at all. We know how digital audio and signal processing works because we invented it, there is no digital audio in nature. Also, it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with “subjective auditory perception”; computers, RAM, PCIe busses, DACs and other hardware do not have any auditory perception and certainly not any subjective auditory perception. Auditory perception only occurs in a brain with an auditory cortex and obviously hardware does not have either a human brain or an auditory cortex.
Science can obviously explain all hardware operations in computers (not just “many”), if it couldn’t there wouldn’t be any computers, except possibly a few being experimented on in research labs. Also, science does not struggle to explain how changes in hardware affect sound, it’s easy to measure sound and detect and correlate differences. If science did struggle to fully explain it, there would not be a telecoms industry but obviously there has been a telecoms industry for well over a century! Lastly and again, science obviously does not struggle to explain “subjective experience” (let alone “especially”), in fact it could not be easier to explain because again, neither hardware nor sound has any “subjective experience”, that again is a function of an animal/human brain, which hardware does not have.
There’s no such thing as “traditional intermodulation distortion”, there is just IMD which is the same thing it’s always been.
I don’t know what phenomena you’re talking about in digital circuits that cause discrepancies between the audio signal and the original signal that affect sound? Maybe you’re referring to jitter but then jitter in a typical digital circuit/DAC does not affect the sound!
Intermodulation distortion is the distortion that occurs when two or more different audio/sound frequencies occur simultaneously within a signal and through a non-linear process, modulate to create other, harmonically unrelated frequencies. Digital audio is just digital data, there are no different frequencies within a digital data signal to modulate and therefore there cannot be any “intermodulation like effects”.
Simply put, can I ask a small question? If you hear no difference in sound when the RAM has XMP turned on or off, then you are indeed correct.
Your small question makes no sense and is irrelevant, so I can’t answer it. Can I ask you a question? How does what I hear affect the performance of RAM, a bios, a DAC or any other hardware, do you think there’s some sort of telepathic feedback signal from my brain/hearing to audio hardware or a computer’s bios?
The reason why changes in RAM frequency affect sound quality but are difficult to explain scientifically lies in the complex interactions between hardware components, electrical interference, timing issues, and subjective auditory perception. While these factors are challenging to quantify, they undoubtedly influence the overall audio experience. Ultimately, audio quality is a subjective experience, and hardware settings that work well for one person may not necessarily work for another.
Changes in sound quality due to RAM frequency adjustments often fall outside the scope of traditional scientific measurements. Standard tests typically focus on objective parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), total harmonic distortion (THD), etc., which do not fully capture the nuances of audio experience.
The impact of RAM frequency on sound quality is not directly a traditional form of distortion (like intermodulation distortion). Instead, it affects the overall system stability, timing accuracy, and power noise, which indirectly changes sound quality. This change is subtle and typically noticeable only in high-fidelity systems or high-resolution audio.
