Change from mac to pc = improved sound?

[Tui]

Originally Posted by kludge

(btw, this is what REAL logic looks like)

Aren't we lucky we've got you around.

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by pdiddy boy

Has any one heard of or used "Midi Cables By Dre" I've been told its a new range of midi cables he's got coming out specially, yes specially designed for MPC's !!! I've heard reports that when used producers have reported kicks and snare sound thicker and rounder with more defined swing ! I can't wait to get my hands on them. I've heard the gold tipped 30cm pair will retail for $149, I can't wait to get a pair to go with my MPC 2000XL !

Theres rumours also of "Midi Cables By Dre Keyboard Edition" for keyboardist coming out by spring next year !

I once saw a gold SCSI cable...surely the first dre-endorsed product?!

And rakkus is just too funny...a hi-di salesman's "dream". You owe it to yourself to learn how digital audio works.

All the discussions above, about checksums and packet loss - if there's a problem, you'll hear a click, a pop, a glitch or a dropout.

You won't get harsher highs, a loss of bass or signal level. It works or it doesn't, just like a bit is either on or off.

[kludge]

Clicks and pops are actually more symptomatic of large amounts of data simply getting lost. That's probably an i/o rate problem rather than a cable problem - buffers either not getting filled fast enough, or not getting emptied fast enough. Memory, not cable. Random bits flipping wouldn't break the stream.

(I should add that checksums exist but are not ENFORCED in S/PDIF. There's no way for the receiver to request re-transmission of a bad packet. What the receiver CAN do is error correction, attempting to reconstruct lost data based on the checksums. There are a zillion ways to skin that particular cat, so some digital gear should sound better than others in the face of incorrect data. For example, if a set of samples are lost, the error correction could replace them with silence, or try to draw a curve to continue the curve seen coming and going from the error zone. How good are the programmers? Packet enforcement is something like what we see in a hard drive protocol, where if the data fails checksum and it can't be error-corrected with certainty, the receiver will request that the data be re-sent. That's how you guarantee data integrity in the face of the pitfalls of the analog realm.)

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by kludge

Clicks and pops are actually more symptomatic of large amounts of data simply getting lost. That's probably an i/o rate problem rather than a cable problem - buffers either not getting filled fast enough, or not getting emptied fast enough. Memory, not cable. Random bits flipping wouldn't break the stream.

(I should add that checksums exist but are not ENFORCED in S/PDIF. There's no way for the receiver to request re-transmission of a bad packet. What the receiver CAN do is error correction, attempting to reconstruct lost data based on the checksums. There are a zillion ways to skin that particular cat, so some digital gear should sound better than others in the face of incorrect data. For example, if a set of samples are lost, the error correction could replace them with silence, or try to draw a curve to continue the curve seen coming and going from the error zone. How good are the programmers? Packet enforcement is something like what we see in a hard drive protocol, where if the data fails checksum and it can't be error-corrected with certainty, the receiver will request that the data be re-sent. That's how you guarantee data integrity in the face of the pitfalls of the analog realm.)

Fair enough.

The point remains - data problems don't "sound" like anything - it doesn't go thin, muddy or anything else analogue in description.

[Tui]

With threads such as this one, it's always the same story. The differences-hearers are too lazy to collect empirical data and present it to the community for analysis. For if they were to try to collect such data, they'd quickly realise they are chasing rainbows. No such data can exist, provided their gear isn't broken or improperly aligned.

Put yourself out of your misery and perform this test: Record a signal digitally from a device into your PC or Mac. Use different USB, SPDIF or optical leads from different manufacturers. Line up the recordings in your DAW, enable two, yet flip the phase between them, and listen - to absolute silence, since the signals cancel each other out. This proves they are identical.

[chk23]

Originally Posted by kludge

I'm not talking about packet losses (that's a pure TCP/IP term),

No it's not a pure TCP/IP term, not at all. It's a general term valid for every protocol based on data packets like USB and firewire are (and this is what we're talking about here, although you seem to have switched over to S/PDIF).

Originally Posted by kludge

but rather the occasional damaged bit.

Also the "occasional damaged bit" will result in a packet loss using Isochronos transfer mode with USB and firewire....

Originally Posted by kludge

And it's a matter of requirements, and the problem the engineers are trying to solve. If you need absolute bit-for-bit perfection, then you use blocks and checksums and re-send algorithms. When engineers were designing S/PDIF, they were severely limited by clock speeds(...)

I know that - but since when are we talking about S/PDIF? the discussion was about USB and firewire cables...

Originally Posted by kludge

Now, I think if we're in a position where digital transmission loss is substantial enough to be heard without sync issues (which I don't think is a common situation), then the signal damage would be basically random, totally orthogonal to the musical content. I can see someone's brain interpreting the increased signal integrity of a better cable as "airy" or whatever audiophile terms, because it would suck less.

Yes, he may also name it "whooopywhoosh", but that doesn't make it a proper statement in an audiophile context.

Originally Posted by kludge

But what level would it take? A cd-quality signal is 705,600 bits/sec. So at five nines, we'd have seven bad bits per second, at four nines we'd have 70-ish. Put another way, we'd have .001-.01% digital distortion, completely nonlinear. That's arguably enough to be audible at the psychoacoustic level.

(btw, this is what REAL logic looks like)

No, that's what assumption looks like - although you provided some backgrounds, you offered no facts for the claim that expensive digital cable has a proven superior audible quality over less expensive digital cable. "Real logic" or better a more scientific approach would be:

- determine the rate of data loss that is actually caused by the choice of cable, and not any other component within the system.
- find prove and explanation for a direct relation between cable price/construction and data loss.
- prove that the difference between low cost and "high end" digital cable is in any way (and if for trained audio engineers only) audible.

Originally Posted by kludge

So yeah, digital transmission loss theoretically audible? Sure. Likely? Not really, because that's a LOT of signal loss to meet my numbers.

That's not the question. As you cannot exclude digital transmission loss by choice of cable, the question is: Is the difference between two cables audible. I would (scientific incorrectly) guess that, considering the length of USB/firewire cables usually used for audio interface/PC connections there is no difference in any way audible at all.

[chk23]

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

Fair enough.

The point remains - data problems don't "sound" like anything - it doesn't go thin, muddy or anything else analogue in description.

this

[Jon Hodgson]

Originally Posted by kludge

Clicks and pops are actually more symptomatic of large amounts of data simply getting lost. That's probably an i/o rate problem rather than a cable problem - buffers either not getting filled fast enough, or not getting emptied fast enough. Memory, not cable. Random bits flipping wouldn't break the stream.

Random bits flipping would almost certainly be very audible, assuming they happened with any frequency (which any phenomenon resulting in one cable sounding different to another would have to)

It has to be remembered that from a data reliability point of view no bit in a PCM word is superior to any other, so although one in 24 errors would be the lsb, and therefore not very noticable (or indeed noticable at all), one in 24 would be the msb, which would have a high probability of being audible. In fact we could expect one third of such errors to be less than 48dB below full scale, so not subtle.

The only way to avoid this would be if errors were detected and concealed through interpolation, this is how CDs and digital audio tape deal with those errors that correction can't deal with, but this works because the error detection is even better than the correction (Reed Solomon can detect twice as many errors as it can fix

But interpolation is basically low pass filtering, so if errors were happening consistently enough to give a cable a "sound" then the results would be fairly predictable and consistent (lots of little ticks without error concealment, loss of top end with it)... but if errors are being concealed then they must be being detected, and so at that point you'd expect the receiver to be telling you something was wrong, an error light or message or something.

(I should add that checksums exist but are not ENFORCED in S/PDIF.

SPDIF has no checksums for the audio data, it only has a parity bit, which is enough because the SPDIF format is a reliable one (the data rate is really quite low).

There's no way for the receiver to request re-transmission of a bad packet. What the receiver CAN do is error correction, attempting to reconstruct lost data based on the checksums.

No, the receiver can't do error correction, parity doesn't give you enough information for this. The best you can do is error concealment, which is interpolating a replacement sample for the one that failed parity

There are a zillion ways to skin that particular cat, so some digital gear should sound better than others in the face of incorrect data. For example, if a set of samples are lost, the error correction could replace them with silence, or try to draw a curve to continue the curve seen coming and going from the error zone.

There are not a zillion ways, you basically have two weapons at your disposal, zeroing and interpolation. Interpolation makes sense for small amounts of lost samples zeroing for larger blocks. Interpolation is a low pass filtering exercise and there really aren't that many options.

How good are the programmers?

Good enough at least to read the freely available information on interpolation I would hope, programming it really isn't all that hard (optimizing it in SIMD assembler took me a little longer)

Packet enforcement is something like what we see in a hard drive protocol, where if the data fails checksum and it can't be error-corrected with certainty, the receiver will request that the data be re-sent. That's how you guarantee data integrity in the face of the pitfalls of the analog realm.)

For systems like USB all of this is handled at an interface hardware and firmware level, both the app and the DAC hardware can be developed from the point of view that the data will be correct, or they'll be told it isn't.

[willi1203]

Yeah ! I really appreciate the Windows sound...

[Tui]

Originally Posted by willi1203

Yeah ! I really appreciate the Windows sound...

I knew it! You Swiss are weird.



(I used to be a neighbour ).

[rakkaus]

ok, i'm the walrus. here's a rock.. throw it. i don't care, i'm not the asshole losing anything here. TRY AND SEE FOR YOURSELF, that's all i can say. digital is not a ghost living in the metaphysical world.

[phas3d]

I think I may try it with Linux. May sound even better!!!
And if that doesn't work I can take the Atari out of the closet for good measure...

[kludge]

Originally Posted by chk23

No, that's what assumption looks like - although you provided some backgrounds, you offered no facts for the claim that expensive digital cable has a proven superior audible quality over less expensive digital cable. "Real logic" or better a more scientific approach would be:

- determine the rate of data loss that is actually caused by the choice of cable, and not any other component within the system.
- find prove and explanation for a direct relation between cable price/construction and data loss.
- prove that the difference between low cost and "high end" digital cable is in any way (and if for trained audio engineers only) audible.

To be pedantic, what I did was logic (calculating feasible rates of data loss and what their impact might be in audio terms). Actually MEASURING the loss is engineering. Explaining the measurements is science.

I only brought up S/PDIF as an example of a true streaming protocol with limited error correction, to show that data loss without total breakdown is theoretically possible. Any robust, packet-driven protocol (like what would go on in a modern recording device over USB or Firewire) should be 100% accurate. Even if the data is streamed as S/PDIF, it can be wrapped in other mechanisms that guarantee its integrity. Sufficient bandwidth to send a cd-quality audio stream at all was really expensive 30 years ago. Today, it's trivial.

Any USB/Firewire device will need a device driver that is presumably more sophisticated than S/PDIF, and guarantees data integrity. But you still can't guarantee the bits themselves at long cable lengths or in noisy environments, because that's an analog problem. So how does the device behave when the cable starts dropping too much data? Does it shut down, or try to recover? That could be audible, although it's totally device-dependent.

I have an audio-related cable issue at home. I use a FW800 cable to my Macbook, and I like to edit on my lap. Since FW800 cables are basically horrible, the connection sometimes wiggles loose when I move. This can cause my audio interface (Focusrite) to drop off. Wiggling the cable again will cause it to reconnect. So how much data loss is going on? I dunno, but honestly, I can't hear any issues. (I'm going to try to address this with Apple's new Thunderbolt-to-FW cable so I can have a halfway competent connector at the computer, and use gaffer's tape to guarantee the connection between FW and the adapter)

I also use S/PDIF to connect from my audio interface to an old Audio Alchemy DAC for my monitors. Maybe I should try swapping cables around and see if I hear a difference? Nah.

[cinealta]

Impossible. Zeroes & ones only. Checksums.

Which interface are you using?

[ivansc]

Originally Posted by philip

XP uses oversampling as default in its internal mixer, it's known to sound horrible.

First I heard of this. could you point me in the direction of some further info?
I run one machine on win7 64 and another on win7 64, same RME interfaces and damned if I can hear anything wrong with the XP machine vs the Win7 one, but I am always willing to learn.

[phas3d]

Audio interfaces with dedicated drivers don't use the windows internal mixer

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by ivansc

First I heard of this. could you point me in the direction of some further info?
I run one machine on win7 64 and another on win7 64, same RME interfaces and damned if I can hear anything wrong with the XP machine vs the Win7 one, but I am always willing to learn.

Modern consumer oriented OS's (that would be OS X and Windows) have system audio drivers that can mix together signal streams in different sample rates. However, other drivers are available for audio production work that trade-off the ability to mix dissimilar streams, typically assigning one application as a source for the driver at a time. So, for instance, when I use the mobo chip system sound in my rig, it can combine audio at 44.1 kHz from my media player (or whatever) with audio at 48 kHz from Netflix.

But 'pro' audio drivers (like ASIO, various kernel-streaming Windows drivers like WDM-KS, etc) tend to only allow one application -- set at one sample rate -- to access the device at a time, allowing not just lower latency but, hopefully, 'pristine' sound uncompromised by on-the-fly conversion.


PS... I've resisted jumping into this thread because, well, it is certainly possible that some difference between OP's old rig and new does, indeed, produce better sonics -- but, me, I have never seen any evidence that there is a significant sonic difference between the OS platforms themselves.

[Lights]

I think this thread points out that you have to be very careful what you trust when it comes to people posting reviews, etc. on internet forums. While it's super-clear to most that changing a firewire cable won't result in any of this:

Originally Posted by rakkaus

... i plugged and it sounded Horrible! the highs had crazy snapness and the mids had no body, like if there was a hole somewhere. the music was also not conveying emotional connection. ...connected it and give some break in time (still breaking in). what i can say it's that the snapness is gone and the body is coming back to the mids. the normal balance i would expect is almost entirely back, but with some qualitys the normal cable do not have. The sound is cleaner, less woolly.. the stereo sensation is more present too. i could say that the general picture is more close to the reality because bad stuff is sounding bad as it is and the good, good. thats it.. the music now can convey emotion again, hope it gets even better with time. if i could mention a bad point of the cable would be that its sounding "dry" if this go away and the full body come back entirely (or even more) it will be awesome. soo a firewire or usb cable can indeed change the sound presentation. (and not on subtle ways.)

...and that this is clearly ridiculous.

However, we often believe this stuff all the time when random people we do not know on GS say this about a mic preamp, or audio interface mods, or a tube swap, or...

And how much of it is true versus confirmation bias or just someone wanting to feel like they have something to contribute to the forums for cred? Who knows...

Even professional audio engineers who don't have proper scientific training spread all sorts of lore and myths that probably aren't true. There are similar threads about analog cables but I have to believe that there is more hype than reality there too. People waste a lot of money chasing myths and fooling themselves.

So if we've learned one things it's that we should all break in our FireWire cables. No, wait... I mean, if we've learned anything it's that there is probably more BS on GS than we know up here and we should all look for clear evidence before spending our hard-earned cash on some expensive upgrade, mod, cable, etc.

[abechap024]

Everyone knows pre 1980's digital is the best sounding. All those carbon resistors really "smooth out" the harshness of the 1's and 0's.... X(

But I heard some bigname producer has had a custom all tube computer built that runs pro tools 3 but sounds abosolutley refreshing. The warmth of vintage gear with the ease and snappyness of digital. Fills about 3 blocks and costs about a millions dolllars a day to run. Also the heat it generates....the reason for the drought west in the us.

Sent from my LG-VS700 using Gearslutz App

[dwpthe3rd]

After 4+ years lurking gearslutz, this is the first time I've ventured into the music computers forum.. One word....... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA











You guys are a riot!

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by abechap024

Everyone knows pre 1980's digital is the best sounding. All those carbon resistors really "smooth out" the harshness of the 1's and 0's.... X(

[...]

Like the carbon filters on cigarettes filtered out all those nasty carcinogens.

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by rakkaus

ok, i'm the walrus. here's a rock.. throw it. i don't care, i'm not the asshole losing anything here. TRY AND SEE FOR YOURSELF, that's all i can say. digital is not a ghost living in the metaphysical world.

<DELETED BY MODERATOR>

Sometimes proper testing is worth it to ascertain what you're hearing and what you think you're hearing.

[theblue1]

What drives some folks maybe a little nuts is that there is something of a swelling current of people -- many of whom do not seem to have long or deep experience but sometimes appear to adopt the attitude of someone who believes he does -- drawing conclusions from anecdotal experiences that are not supported by the claimed evidence or which are predicated on reported experiences which appear to be extremely unlikely or impossible.

[rakkaus]

Originally Posted by Lights

I think this thread points out that you have to be very careful what you trust when it comes to people posting reviews, etc. on internet forums. While it's super-clear to most that changing a firewire cable won't result in any of this:



...and that this is clearly ridiculous.

However, we often believe this stuff all the time when random people we do not know on GS say this about a mic preamp, or audio interface mods, or a tube swap, or...

And how much of it is true versus confirmation bias or just someone wanting to feel like they have something to contribute to the forums for cred? Who knows...

Even professional audio engineers who don't have proper scientific training spread all sorts of lore and myths that probably aren't true. There are similar threads about analog cables but I have to believe that there is more hype than reality there too. People waste a lot of money chasing myths and fooling themselves.

So if we've learned one things it's that we should all break in our FireWire cables. No, wait... I mean, if we've learned anything it's that there is probably more BS on GS than we know up here and we should all look for clear evidence before spending our hard-earned cash on some expensive upgrade, mod, cable, etc.

u did not know if what i say is true simply because u did not try for yourself, soo u cant say i am wrong or that what i found out is ridiculous. if i said it sounded horrible its because it really sounded that way at first, i know my rig very well. also, i must say, that i don't give a **** about who i am, but do you.................?

[rakkaus]

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

No, you're the asshole (your words not mine, I'm not actually calling you an asshole!) believing in fairies!

Sometimes proper testing is worth it to ascertain what you're hearing and what you think you're hearing.

man, obvious hearing is not thinking i'm hearing.

[kaboom75]

Maybe it has a better sound chip or the PSU is cleaner.

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by rakkaus

man, obvious hearing is not thinking i'm hearing.

Go ahead, believe and be ignorant

In the long run, it helps if you understand why what you believe you hear is impossible.

I'm not even going you're not hearing a difference. I'm just saying your fw cable isn't making things "horrible". Fw cables either work or they don't. Price should reflect build quality, but that's about it. If something changed in the sound, it wasn't to do with the fw cable, it must have been something else. Maybe a plugin was playing up and something was playing back out of phase or not passing audio (every now and then ik's ampeg plugin doesn't pass audio and my bass sounds really thin cos I'm only hearing the DI, for example). Maybe you were sitting in a bass null, and at the next listen your head was 2" further back. Did you calibrate your head position (of course not).

If you understand digital audio, you'll understand why this is the case. If you don't...face palm away, you're the one believing in fairies.

Alternately - please find me one digital audio expert who agrees with you.

[rakkaus]

to rejet this subject, and label it impossible it's completly useless in a scientific approach. it's the kind of skepticism that hold things inert in the past. anyway if i was anyone with a name u would not be acting like this, and would be must possibly believing that indeed a digital cable can affect sound. btw, how could u know i dont have a measure for my head position? i measure it by the borders of the monitors, i can't handle a random environment.

[Jon Hodgson]

Originally Posted by rakkaus

to rejet this subject, and label it impossible it's completly useless in a scientific approach. it's the kind of skepticism that hold things inert in the past. anyway if i was anyone with a name u would not be acting like this, and would be must possibly believing that indeed a digital cable can affect sound. btw, how could u know i dont have a measure for my head position? i measure it by the borders of the monitors, i can't handle a random environment.

A scientific approach does not mean giving very wild idea equal validity.

In this circumstance, we KNOW (from previous research, the application of mathematics etc)

1) Firewire is a robust format, in that error correction will deal with most issues, error detection will detect any remaining ones (and require a resend). If that fails then you'll be told about it, in short the data either gets to the end correctly, or it's known to be wrong and dealt with accordingly (and since detection is done at a block level, the only real choice is to mute).

2) Undetected bad data in an audio stream is not going to result in anything subtle, this isn't analogue were you get a little more noise or a loss of treble, this is digital where a single bad bit is as likely to be a half full scale error as it is to be down in the noise floor. Roughly speaking you can probably expect one in three bad bits to result in an audible tick (and that's when stuff is full scale, more so in quite parts)

3) It is well established that all human beings, no matter what their ability, training or experience, are subject to perception bias, and it can result in seemingly big differences.

So, we have very strong reasons why what you are describing isn't going to happen, and a well established explanation for your observation.

(And even if the obvious explanation is wrong, this doesn't make your hypothesis of the explanation of your observation correct, or even likely, audio is just not going to degrade down the cable in the way you perceived it as doing)

[rakkaus]

..still denying the possibility of all of this be true auiehuiahaeiu but i may say.. the top of the line should be something like 799,99 dollars overpriced.