Do you hear what I hear (bit perfect files sounding different)?

[idiot_savant]

Hi @manueljenkin - how’s it going?

 

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

@manueljenkin - getting anywhere?

 

 

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

2 hours ago, Archimago said:

 

I am curious though. If this "optimize" algorithm is supposedly able to change the sound of an otherwise identical file, how does it determine where best to copy out the disk sectors? How does it know to locate it at an appropriate location on a spinning hard drive that won't make it "sound bad"? Are we sure the file is not saved out to a poor SSD location which might be more "noisy" than another location on the drive? I don't think there's any reason to believe that the software is sophisticated enough to hit the hardware or overcome the OS's file system architecture, right?

@Archimago - it doesn’t do anything like this - I’ve decompiled it, and starts a thread writing random numbers to the page file, reads the file into memory, sits there for a bit doing it’s random number thing then writes the file back to the disk using fairly standard file IO. 
 

Apparently you should run this process on the player executable as well. 
 

I’ve checked the player code as well, and to make things worse for explaining it, that pretty much does the same thing, and reads the each song into memory completely before playing it back. 
 

As I’ve said before, I can see no plausible reason to think this will do anything apart from reduce the life of the disk with the page file on it, but I am an idiot, and @manueljenkin has been working on an explanation of this for a while now

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

Oh, and I should probably point out that no effort is made to determine *where* the optimised file lives - so it could be on a different physical drive from the page file, it could be on a NAS….

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

This is, indeed, unfortunate. But if you were to recover the data, would it still be optimised?

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

8 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

10 hours ago, idiot_savant said:

 

Unfortunately no, as the player at present doesn't support optimization for external usb drives

Why not?

 

as for wear, the “scintillate” process doesn’t write a huge amount of data

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

Erm,

we aren't talking about filtering or modulators - these demonstrably modify the bits ( because they actually do something ). The claim here was that by *not* changing *any* bits it sounds different

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

 

[idiot_savant]

49 minutes ago, Summit said:

 

Yes that is correct that *it* can sound different/better without flipping any bits. 

How?

 

digital electronics is an abstraction. If I tell you something costs you $11 or eleven dollars, are they different? 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

*sigh* so here we go again - right, for the “magnetic field” crowd - even if there was some very slight variation in how the data was stored or read ( magnetic fields, vibrations, ley lines ) how does this account for the fact the file is read, in its entirety *before* playback starts?

 

For the “digital is really analog” crowd, as I’ve tried to point out the whole point of digital electronics is its an abstraction - it doesn’t matter how those 1’s and 0’s are represented, as long as at the right time we can work out if it’s a 1 or a 0, and then we can even *guarantee* it’s the same. If you’re using windows, open a cmd shell and fc filea fileb /b and it will compare *all* the bits and in this case they are all identical. 
 

As I’ve said before, if the digital abstractions we’re talking about were in any way wrong, we wouldn’t be able to talk about it on an internet forum

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

Ok, final example of abstraction

12345678

12345678

12345678

12345678

12345678

12345678

One two three four five six seven eight

 

are these different? Or can we know what they mean? These are abstractions of numbers

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

[idiot_savant]

Nope - the example is it doesn’t matter how you store them, they are different representations of the same data. So sound the same as we can read them all and extract the same numbers at the same time

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot  

[idiot_savant]

So there’s a bit of cross purposes here - there was a problem in early Samsung SSDs where the flash cells if they weren’t touched for a while began to discharge, so the drive would slow down over time. Utilities were written to basically rewrite the whole drive to refresh it - so a genuine problem, with a genuine fix that unfortunately doesn’t make the refreshed drive sound better, as all disk activity has stopped if we read the whole file into RAM. 
 

the other stuff is nonsense

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

Now, I know I’m going to regret this, but…

are we now claiming that after making the file “easier to read”, we bypass a cooling/charge effect that coincidentally lasts the length of the track that’s just been read?

 

does this make sense to literally anybody?

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

 

[idiot_savant]

Erm, what?

 

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

The answer always is ... whatever you can do reduce electrical noise, or even just change its pattern

Whoah, getting a bit of ourselves here - who has ever said this does *anything*?

 

My argument is it *can’t*, and even if by the magic of really, really believing something *any* change would be microscopic and over before the track started. 
 

We have had zero sensible explanations of how this software works, only one person who claims to have heard it working ( who has now left ) and several people explaining how it can’t work. 
 

now, we can wave our hands as much as we like but I’d prefer to stick to facts

 

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

altering the SQ, depending upon how the SSDs are accessed.

But the SSD isn’t being accessed during playback, as has been pointed out many, many, times. And before anybody talks about the OS, background processes - it’s only the audio file that has been “optimised”

 

can *anybody* hear the difference?

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

Right, as entertaining as this topic has been, I think a prerequisite of “proving” something is having a supporter - I.e. someone that can hear the optimised file being better than the non-optimised file. 
 

since we have none, is it agreed that two files, with *identical* contents played back with *identical* software on the an *identical* system are, in fact indistinguishable from each other. 
 

if anyone disagrees with the above, please give us experiences *with this software*. I don’t really care you had wind in 1978 and could therefore hear previously hidden glockenspiels on an LP 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

OK, so I'll ask *again*

 

Can anybody hear the "improvement"?

 

 

As for the tedious repetitions about it doing "something" to the file, as has been stated ad nauseum, the file *is not being accessed whilst it is playing* it is read in it's *entirety* into RAM before playback starts. These are not conjectures or whatabouts. I have looked at the source code and that is what it does. The "optimising" involves reading the file into memory, then writing random numbers into the page file for 2 minutes, then writing it back to another file, with I'm guessing the (incorrect) assumption that there is "noise" in the data that is somehow reduced by magic.

 

As for the "failed science" opinions, I'm afraid my irony meter is off the scale with people stating that *on the internet*

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

 

 

[idiot_savant]

11 hours ago, fas42 said:

Perhaps you describe the "process of writing random numbers to a completely separate file" as "doing nothing " ... but I don't. Of course, we have the expertise of those present as being sufficient to guarantee ineffectiveness - but, personally I wouldn't get on a rocket that they had designed, to get me to the moon 😛.

 

This is an interesting point - who would you trust to design a rocket? People who do the sums, design, measure, test, repeat, looking into any anomalies - or people who iteratively do stuff because it "seems to make an improvement" without knowing why?

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot

[idiot_savant]

1 hour ago, Summit said:

Why do you think he did that?

Because he made ridiculous claims, vowed to prove them and couldn’t. 
 

look, an outrageous claim has been made and not one other person can hear it

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

 

[idiot_savant]

Hi,

just to clarify - there is no DSP here, and because it’s written in C# you can decompile it, not disassemble it which makes it much easier to read

 

 

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

[idiot_savant]

@opus101 I’d have thought a general “sounds better” is falsifiable?

 

ergo

 

doesnt improve *anything* - isn’t that easier to prove? “The bass was improved but not treble” “the treble was improved, bass not”
 

Serious question - when did becoming an audiophile equate to believing every piece of nonsense as a badge of honour?

 

I’d always equated it with *caring* about the sound? Audio Love and all that?

 

I’ll ask again - for subjectivist opinion, have you subjected yourself to this software? If not, why do you care?

 

 

Your friendly neighbourhood idiot