Sonic differences between NAS drives: Can audiophile claims prevail in the computer age?

[PeterSt]

Hi daglesj,

 

Not that I want ban voodoo from your head (I won't be good at it :-) but I think it is just the other way around !

 

For a few buck only nowadays we are able to "construct" means of playback formed around computers which wasn't available before. At all !

Take for example the price of harddisks. Not counting in the MP3 stuff, you do realize what this brings us, just because of a stupid price of $80 or so for 1TB of music ?

Or the usually free players to manage this all ? (or a few bucks when doing it a real audiophile way ?)

You do realize that we're comparing these few bucks (72 to name something hehehe) with thousands and thousands not being able to match the software player from any angle ??

 

The SSD was not made for audio. I bought it explicitly to try it out, and it occurred to me things sound way better because of it. Tomorrow I might try a 2TB SD card (yes, the're coming) and who knows that beats all.

 

Until you tried it yourself you may think it is voodoo, or you might even think PC is voodoo right from the start. That's ok with everybody I think. But to kind of state that now the high "hifi" prices rolled into the PC-audio area ... no, I have to disagree with that. No sign of it, as ong as (e.g.) SSDs were not made for audio. And they weren't. The really only think that is subject to this (subject, not *is) is a soundcard.

And USB DACs if you like.

 

Anyway, please don't think that people are shouting around a bit and throwing SSDs at you. That wouldn't be honest. I don't recognize it (and watch closely !) and I don't do that myself. I just love this world. Voodoo or not. :-)

 

Peter

 

[Tog]

It is not that people distrust traditional high end manufacturers it's just that they seem to be lagging a long way behind CA and in some cases

don't get it at all! I have been a fan of Cyrus equipment since I was a cub over twenty years ago and happily use their excellent dacx as part of my rig. However, their new amp platform is almost apologetic about including USB and theygo to some length about pointing out that many people will be quite happy with the lower sound quality provided by attaching a laptop with lossless files. Lukewarm? positively tepid!

 

Yours, disappointed tog

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Tog - CA and all the readers here are helping drag the Hi-End manufacturers and dealers (kicking and screaming) into this century. They are paying attention. I know this because they read the site and send me emails. Keep up the good work everyone!

 

[darrenwm]

Any guess about which company said this?

 

[glt]

I was comparing the analog output of an old CDROM (BAD in everybody's mind, even my own) with a fairly high end wolfson-based DAC (Good in most people's mind). I used a good headphone amp (ibasso D2) and a fairly good headphones: Senn HD580. The source for the DAC was the I2S output of the CDROM which I pulled from the controller chip, and the CDROM was controlled with one of those kits you find in DIYAUDIO. I wanted to hear BIG differences between the two set up

 

Well, every time I thought I heard something in the DAC, I went back and played the same song using the analog output and those details were there. Focused on different things, and everytime the analog output seem to have everything the DAC had. So out of frustration I made a selector switch for A/B comparison. The result: virtually identical. The DAC was not optimized to do its best (no output stage), but it was "supposed" to run circles around the old CDROM I pulled from the computer junkyard.

 

Subjective differences exist in our heads and everyone is entitled to believe/like/want them, and some people may have more sensitive hearing, but some of us want to focus on engineering/measurable differences. An SDD is an appealing upgrade for a computer, and it can make a subjective difference, but whether or not that difference is objective, it will have to be determined (at least to my ears) with an A/B setup which is practically impossible (for me) to do.

 

To a large extend, I enjoy music because of the music, much more than because how good is sounds (well, I guess this is true for everyone), and I get pretty tired doing equipment comparisons. Yet I continue to upgrade the equipment to get better sound not based on how much better it would sound to me (because it takes a lot of effort to do it objectively) but because of good engineering principles: If something measures lower in jitter and the price is right, I would probably go for it. If an opamp has good measurements and the community has good consensus about it (opamps are cheap), then I would probably go for it. I like ultra low noise regulators, but I won't claim it makes a difference in sound (why? because those supplies typically feed opamps and opamps have a supply rejection ratio of 100db and I can only hear to -50db from loudest). I also like top loading CD players (why? because they are cool)

 

So you have to believe on what you believe. Try setting up a few A/B tests and then decide what works for you and what doesn't work for you.

 

[tfarney]

I'll probably remain unconvinced of the "sound" of computer hardware and softwere (except for high levels of jitter, of course), but 500 GB SS drives? Oh yeah, give me the end of moving parts...

 

Tim

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Tim - I think most people around here are in your camp until further notice.

 

[jeffca]

The saddest fact of modern audio is that people ascribe analog attributes to digital media and hardware that do not exist. CD transports, digital interconnects and any digital storage media have no affect on the quality of the analog audio signal output as long as they pass all the data intact to the DAC. Plain and simple. Data has no sound and, thus, it's sound quality cannot be effected.

 

Even jitter, prior to the DAC's input buffer is of no consequence so long as the checksums on the incoming data stream are contiguous & in order and the buffer doesn't underrun. Jitter in the DAC itself is important and can be audible.

 

Data corruption or loss will cause error correction to kick in and that certainly can be audible.

 

This is why we switched to digital in the first place. The only thing that matters is data integrity, not how it's stored or transmitted. The method used to convert the data to an analog signal and the electronics used in doing that are where sound quality is introduced into the equation.

 

Of course, you still have morons who think that degaussing a CD, which has no magnetic substance in it's composition, improves it's sound (perhaps if I degauss my bedroom mirror, my reflection will be more handsome). Keeping it clean and scratch free is the only real concern with an optical disc.

 

I absolutely can't wait until these ignorant, tweako fools run green magic marker around the edges of there hard drives and regularly zap them with a degausser! Even better, take the discs out of the drive and clean them.

 

So, is this engineer a deluded imbecile or a liar? Maybe he's both.

 

jeff