IS EVERYTHING DEBATABLE, REALLY?

[beerandmusic]

how is the music stored on a hard drive....i believe it is binary.....

somehow, someone will suggest that is not part of the digital circuit and it is analog...

 

 

....funny people...what is the purpose of the debate anyway?

 

What is the goal in finding the true answer....what is it you are trying to solve?

 

[kumakuma]

 

15 minutes ago, GUTB said:

 

You’re confused on this subject. Binary code is just an abstraction based on a low vs high voltage state. Did you know that the 1-0 binary system is simply arbitrary? You can count as many voltage states as you want. For example, in Ethernet processing, it’s 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s and 0s! It’s called PAM5.

 

All of this talk about voltage levels and analog representations of digital data is irrelevant and has nothing to do with what I am talking about.

 

Read what Alex quoted:

 

Quote

Files EAC checked , zipped , sent to the uk on the net , unzipped , HDD filed , EAC checked, copied to USB stick , replayed via Naim UnitiServe HDD into an MSB Platinum Signature /Diamond Power Base ARC REF 5 Krell Evo 402e Wilson

 

What travelled from Alex's computer to the UK? 

 

Was it voltage levels or digital data?

 

Did the voltage levels of the data on the USB drive in the UK match the voltage levels of the files on Alex's computer?

 

Both Alex and I ripped different copies of the same Julie London CD. Both rips are bit-for-bit identical. Do you think that the voltage levels are the same? 

[opus101]

how is the music stored on a hard drive....i believe it is binary.

 

No, its stored in domains which can be magnetized in one direction or the other. Electronics reads out a signal from some kind of sensor floating over the platter and then interprets this as a logic '1' or logic '0'. The key word being 'interprets' here.

[beerandmusic]

magnetized in one direction or another certainly sounds like binary last time i went to school....and it's more than interpretation....it is a discrete binary value that can be checksummed.

[opus101]

Sure does sound like binary. But that's not the same thing as it being binary.

 

You cannot checksum the voltages which come off the sensor reading the platter.

[fas42]

22 minutes ago, sandyk said:

An old thread worth a look at by the Newbies of the forum.

It was one of the most popular threads of the time.

 

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/16174-where-is-audio-truth/

 

Takes me back ... a long time ago in a forum far, far away ... I talked about what I was trying to do, in a thread I started, entitled "A Search for Truth and Tonality" ...
 

[beerandmusic]

6 minutes ago, opus101 said:

Sure does sound like binary. But that's not the same thing as it being binary.

I think that is why they call it "digital"....

 

around and around we go...again what is the purpose of the debate..what is the objective?

Is there any purpose to this discussion?

What are we solving?

[beerandmusic]

I just want a dsd compatible network player with good fidelity, good clock, noise reduction (sd slot/usb slot would be appreciated) for under $2K that matches the fidelity of the current sotm ultra paired with a qx5-20 ayre dac.....not unreasonable.

[opus101]

9 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

around and around we go...again what is the purpose of the debate..what is the objective?

Is there any purpose to this discussion?

What are we solving?

 

I start out by assuming people on a thread want to learn something. If I see they misunderstand I'll post something in the hope that they'll see they're mistaken. For me that's fun and interesting - but only for a while. If they show no interest in updating their mental model(s) I'll just get bored and bow out. So the TL;DR answer is 'its fun, but not interminably'.

[beerandmusic]

4 minutes ago, opus101 said:

 

I start out by assuming people on a thread want to learn something. If I see they misunderstand I'll post something in the hope that they'll see they're mistaken. For me that's fun and interesting - but only for a while. If they show no interest in updating their mental model(s) I'll just get bored and bow out. So the TL;DR answer is 'its fun, but not interminably'.

 

when you find an article and send me a link that states that music files are not stored in binary on a hard drive, then i will take you seriously and admit I was wrong....these are factual statements, not objective like what dac sounds better.

 

I certainly am not going to take your word for it because "you" said so, no matter how many times you repeat it.

 

You can start your research here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=data+stored+hard+drive+binary&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

 

Please stop dragging me back into this thread. This stuff has been done to death already over the last 9 years or so.

I have already made additional info available to you via PM.

 

 

No need to respond if you don't want to be in this thread.

 

But, the additional info in your pm was merely anecdotal, not good evidence of anything as the chance of a correct guess is 50/50.

[opus101]

39 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

 How do chips store and more data around inside the chips? It's not with analog wave forms...

 

 

There are probably worse places to start than Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell

[sandyk]

15 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

You can start your research here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=data+stored+hard+drive+binary&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 

 It takes a lot of processing to convert the saved waveforms on  an HDD to actual 1s and 0s.

 

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1230839

[beerandmusic]

2 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 It takes a lot of processing to convert the saved waveforms on  an HDD to actual 1s and 0s.

 

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1230839

so you are in ageement, it is stored in 1's and 0's.....super!

 

I am a retired HP virtualization engineer with over 30 years of computer experience....I may not know much about audio (but I am learning), but i know a thing or two about digital...

 

[sandyk]

1 minute ago, beerandmusic said:

so you are in ageement, it is stored in 1's and 0's.....super!

 

 A wee bit premature !!

Read the article at the attached link, (my previous post) and look at a typical saved waveform on a HDD.

[beerandmusic]

1 minute ago, sandyk said:

 

 A wee bit premature !!

Read the article at the attached link, and look at a typical saved waveform on a HDD.

it's digital, not analog,  no matter how you want to slice it.....

[opus101]

10 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 It takes a lot of processing to convert the saved waveforms on  an HDD to actual 1s and 0s.

 

https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1230839

 

Great article Alex, I see I'm quite out of date in regards to the internal mechanisms of HDDs. They're even a lot less 'binary' than I imagined they were!

 

Here's a bombshell for those who think its all digital inside :

 

MR asymmetry (MRA) correction and the continuous time filter (CTF) work to linearize the signal prior to the analog to digital converter (ADC).

 

Now if the signal that comes off disk is already digital why on earth would it need to go through an A/D converter? Answers on a postcard please...

[beerandmusic]

6 minutes ago, opus101 said:

 

Great article Alex, I see I'm quite out of date in regards to the internal mechanisms of HDDs. They're even a lot less 'binary' than I imagined they were!

even in "your" article it states:  "follows analog path to it's "FINAL DIGITAZATION"....

 

also: "A channel's chief function is to convert the analog signal presented at the input back into the digital data that has been stored on the disk",

 

But i didn't need to read this...this has been common knowledge to me for over 30 years.

 

Again, why the debate...who cares...what is the point of the conversation?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

 

Thx for clarifying.

But I don't see a mechanism that would alter SQ with a re-save of the file.

 

W/o a mechanism, I'd suggest fairly strong evidence would be needed to get engineers involved.  Say, 19 out of 20 guesses correctly distinguishing the files by several people.

 

Ralph, you can't even back your own claims with any evidence so maybe you should not lecture others ! Are you sure you are a scientist? What quals?

 

 

27 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

I think that is why they call it "digital"....

 

around and around we go...again what is the purpose of the debate..what is the objective?

Is there any purpose to this discussion?

What are we solving?

 

There are some people that just like to ridicule. Alex is the target for now.

 

Tell me something from your EE background. engineers have talked about there being no such thing as digital, just analog signals modulated by binary code.Is that not correct (I am not an EE, so asking not asserting?)

 

 

[opus101]

5 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

But i didn't need to read this...this has been common knowledge to me for over 30 years.

 

 

The innards of HDDs have changed quite a lot over 30 odd years.... Think back to 1987 - that's even 4 years before I bought my first PC which had I think something like an 80MB HDD.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

9 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

why the debate...who cares...what is the point of the conversation?

 

you and I and Alex, and various others are here to learn and/or share, help eg I referred you to Art Noxon and so on regarding imaging, However not everyone is here for those reasons

[beerandmusic]

1 minute ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

Ralph, you can't even back your own claims with any evidence so maybe you should not lecture others ! Are you sure you are a scientist? What quals?

 

 

 

There are some people that just like to ridicule. Alex is the target for now.

 

Tell me something from your EE background. engineers have talked about there being no such thing as digital, just analog signals modulated by binary code.Is that not correct (I am not an EE, so asking not asserting?)

 

 

My guess is that anyone that says there is no such thing as digital, must have read it on a forum and took it as gospel....that or they misinterpreted something.....clearly, they don't know what they are talking about....

I have been in computers all of my life, and retired as an HP virtualization engineer (blade systems, vmware, hyper-v), but it was a long journey....just to pause and look back, makes me feel old.

One of the most archaic pieces of equipment I ever worked on was an ECMU (extended core memory unit)...it was the size of a refrigerator, and held a whopping 64K of memory.  I also worked on disk drives that were run with hydraulics....i could go on and on...

[beerandmusic]

3 minutes ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

 

you and I and Alex, and various others are here to learn and/or share, help eg I referred you to Art Noxon and so on regarding imaging, However not everyone is here for those reasons

 

I thought there was a goal, like "based on the fact that music is stored on the hard drive in analog format" then this dac has this advantage...i really didn't know what i was walking into..i was just trying to figure out why the discussion....clearly this wasn't my intention when i started this thread (wink).

[beerandmusic]

You audiophiles would probably laugh at me if you knew the "real reason" i started this thread....maybe i will share that later.

I still don't consider myself an audiophile after 4 years of toying with this stuff.....maybe it is just my ears are too old....but i do continually seek to improve as much as possible within my ever increasing budget.

[fas42]

Just now, beerandmusic said:

One of the most archaic pieces of equipment I ever worked on was an ECMU (extended core memory unit)...it was the size of a refrigerator, and held a whopping 64K of memory.  I also worked on disk drives that were run with hydraulics....i could go on and on...

 

Been there, done that ... did you ever mount a calibration disk, and then with great trepidation manually guide the heads to the right position - and hope to God that the hydraulics didn't take off, because you allowed the assembly to move too fast?