Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

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tokenbrit
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by tokenbrit »

A checksum may not be invulnerable to a deliberate manipulation, but it's purpose is to catch accidental errors in copying. My sense is there's something more fundamental and less understood about clocking that affects the musical integrity, rather than in the 1s and 0s... it's not like a rounding error where you might be able to redirect those fractions of pennies into a private account to be able to afford the new Linn streamer in 17 yrs ;)
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by teatime »

Charlie1 wrote: 2021-04-16 22:46
ThomasOK wrote: 2021-04-16 19:53Yes, the 1s and 0s are all the same, some like to call the process "lossless" because of this, but the music is changed. It appears at this point that we just don't know enough about all the factors involved in the music recreated at the end of the chain to measure some of the important things involved. (Not that we have ever ben close to measuring what is important in making something musical. It still always requires ears to sort things out.)
When comparing copies, I suppose if you copy a file to a different machine then all sorts of factors are at play so you'd have to copy it to the same machine but then it will occupy different space, perhaps with increased fragmentation. But if that was the underlying issue here then you'd expect it to be 50/50 as to whether it's better or worse, whereas it sounds that the music is getting worse each time the file is copied. There must be folks here that understand these things in more depth...
File fragmentation was mainly an issue with old file systems used on spinning disk media in the last century, leading to on average worse disk performance over time. It's much less of a problem on modern file systems and a complete non-issue on SSD (and NVMe) drives, yet file fragmentation worries lives on in people's minds.

A file is copied multiple times on its way from your storage media to the DAC (and is even completely transformed, at least once, from FLAC/mp3/whathaveyou to PCM audio data - another "copy" if you will), that's just how things work.

What's more, if you play a file once, it's read from the disk media. If you play it again a second time, it is not. The second time it will (most likely) be picked up from the OS disk cache (RAM) or possibly from a HW cache on the disk (most modern spinning disks have this). So if you're comparing two files, the disk should be completely irrelevant (after the first play of each copy) because the data is served from RAM and the disk is in fact not in the "data path". (If the disk is still relevant, and some say it is, I would suggest "electro-mechanical interference".)
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by beck »

Read this through. There are some good points to be found. Just skip the sales talk.

https://upscaleaudio.com/pages/bits-is-bits
Playing cd’s…………
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by Whatsmynaim »

Here's my early morning thoughts on the subject ;)

Theory:
It seems that a bunch of data transfer problems gets added to a file each time it's moved or copied.
Like what happens to digital music transferred through a crap network, but frozen in time in the form of a data file.

Solution: Let the full music file pass through a good Netgear switch into a RAM drive, from there through the switch again
into a NAS. That way the file should be fully reconstructed and have the quality of the original file.
If this works perhaps the data reconstructing hardware could be built into the music streamer and do its job pretty much in real-time.

Sci-fi Theory:
I'm thinking the original data where it's stored has some kind of fingerprint type of pattern and whenever it's moved or copied the pattern gets broken. There's also no way to keep it unbroken because there's no information how it were originally.

Solution: Unfixable until something can copy/move then save the file without scrambling the data around.
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by John »

Sonos has several audio delay settings from 75 to 2000 ms which gives better performance when playing uncompressed source material to multiple rooms. There must be a technological advantage to this delay and it makes me wonder if the Linn Urika 2 has a delay as well.

Does anyone know if sound appears the moment the needle is dropped into the groove with a Urika 2?
Last edited by John on 2021-04-17 17:53, edited 2 times in total.
teatime
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by teatime »

John wrote: 2021-04-16 23:22 I would guess you’re listening to two different masters.
I agree. When talking about one specific comparison, this would be the simplest explanation. Certainly one to rule out before reaching for the "unexplained".
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by Charlie1 »

teatime wrote: 2021-04-17 01:04 File fragmentation was mainly an issue with old file systems used on spinning disk media in the last century, leading to on average worse disk performance over time. It's much less of a problem on modern file systems and a complete non-issue on SSD (and NVMe) drives, yet file fragmentation worries lives on in people's minds.

A file is copied multiple times on its way from your storage media to the DAC (and is even completely transformed, at least once, from FLAC/mp3/whathaveyou to PCM audio data - another "copy" if you will), that's just how things work.

What's more, if you play a file once, it's read from the disk media. If you play it again a second time, it is not. The second time it will (most likely) be picked up from the OS disk cache (RAM) or possibly from a HW cache on the disk (most modern spinning disks have this). So if you're comparing two files, the disk should be completely irrelevant (after the first play of each copy) because the data is served from RAM and the disk is in fact not in the "data path". (If the disk is still relevant, and some say it is, I would suggest "electro-mechanical interference".)
Thanks teatime.
Interesting to learn the file is played from RAM second time.
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by ThomasOK »

teatime wrote: 2021-04-17 15:29
John wrote: 2021-04-16 23:22 I would guess you’re listening to two different masters.
I agree. When talking about one specific comparison, this would be the simplest explanation. Certainly one to rule out before reaching for the "unexplained".
I would actually agree with this as the music on streaming services is likely to be a different master than what was used for the LP as indeed a CD master is generally done differently form an LP one. Each medium has it's limitations and distortions (as well as consumer expectations) and mastering engineers take these things into account. You'd be surprised how many different mixes there can be of a piece of music. I once heard a radio program that delved into this. I think the group involved was REM but I could be wrong. The program was about the different mixes that are made of a song and how sometimes people buy an album based on what they heard on the radio only to find out it sounds completely different. They mentioned that a track would be mixed differently for play on a Top 40 station than it would be for a mellow rock station, etc. It was very interesting. On one mix they might bring the drums forward but push the guitar back and emphasize the vocals, on another they would bring the guitar to the front. It sounded like there were sometimes several different mixes.

By the way, in my lengthy earlier post I wasn't trying to say that streaming is no good. We use streaming to demo often in the store and I know many who are quite happy with the musical quality of much of the music they stream (of course with the standard variability among tracks). I was just trying to point out that the signal path to your system is more complex than it seems and it might be introducing other variables. Although I have worked with computers since the days of the Apple II I am not a programmer nor computer scientist. So I really don't know what is making the changes we hear from different SSDs, RAM modules, cables, etc. I also don't know if these changes we hear also happen in the transfer of data from one server to another, etc. or if there is some immunity at that level. I think our understanding is still quite lacking on digital storage, transport and decoding of music. Considering we still don't fully understand analog reproduction after over a century, that is no surprise. But the breakthroughs will come, as always, by trying everything you can think of and listening for what works, whether it makes sense or not.
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by springwood64 »

The transfer of 1s and 0s can be tested for exact match or approximate match.

The former is the most computationally expensive and generally requires a byte by byte comparison. The latter can be achieved less computationally expensively by performing an efficient calculation on the data and comparing the results. This is what a checksum does. Checksums may not detect all data corruption: it depends on the algorithm used and the number of bits on which the calculation is performed.

However, the protocols for transmission, storage and retrieval of data at the disk and network layers are very robust. So these layers won't corrupt the data without flagging it to the higher layers.

That doesn't prevent changes to the 1s and 0s happening elsewhere in the chain, especially if processes do not check for corruption.

In nearly 40 years of working with computers and software I have never seen solid evidence of data being randomly corrupted in the RAM or CPU of a processor.

I have experienced invalid memory overwrites, that subsequently result in bugs. But this is very very rare, and either occurs systematically (because of an underlying problem) or not at all.

Data changes by repeatable errors in software are common, but they tend to get found quickly because they are destructive and rarely subtle
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by Matteo »

beck wrote: 2021-04-17 05:36 Read this through. There are some good points to be found. Just skip the sales talk.

https://upscaleaudio.com/pages/bits-is-bits
Thanks

Interesting
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by teatime »

ThomasOK wrote: 2021-04-17 16:39 You'd be surprised how many different mixes there can be of a piece of music. I once heard a radio program that delved into this. I think the group involved was REM but I could be wrong. The program was about the different mixes that are made of a song and how sometimes people buy an album based on what they heard on the radio only to find out it sounds completely different. They mentioned that a track would be mixed differently for play on a Top 40 station than it would be for a mellow rock station, etc. It was very interesting. On one mix they might bring the drums forward but push the guitar back and emphasize the vocals, on another they would bring the guitar to the front. It sounded like there were sometimes several different mixes.
We're getting off topic, but this is very interesting! I had no idea it was that common. I know you sometimes see "(Radio Edit)" on 7" singles tipping you off there is something different from the album version (and I commonly think when hearing a piece of a song in a film that they have at the very least remixed it, because of how different voice/instrumentation is balanced to how I'm used to hearing it). Still.. to hear that different mixes might exist for different types of radio play.. wow.
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by Lego »

springwood64 wrote: 2021-04-16 10:25
matthias wrote: 2021-04-16 09:51
springwood64 wrote: 2021-04-16 09:03 I don't think I will renew my Qobuz hi res account - it just doesn't seem worth it.
Waiting for Spotify HiFi?

Matt
I will definitely give it a go.

Anyone else listening to Radio Paradise FLAC streams and comparing to other services? If I had to keep either Qobuz or RP, it would be a no-brainer: Radio Paradise is my main listening source for digital, and to my ears its quality is more reliable.
Is that not similar to it tastes so much better when somebody else cooks it 🙂
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Re: Digital Sources: Is the LP the best digital source?

Post by ThomasOK »

I just noticed the comment here in regards to Radio Paradise so I decided to throw this notice here. Bluesound, which we carry at the store, has just announced that Radio Paradise "is now providing MQA-encoded audio on all four of its mix channels, utilizing high-resolution 24-bit masters where available." I don't know if Radio Paradise will still be offering these channels in the normal resolution but since MQA people believe that is is backward compatible with normal resolution I'm not too hopeful. Seeing as Tidal appears to be converting everything to MQA and has certainly met with disdain here for musical quality, it would be a shame to see Radio Paradise, which many here enjoy, going the same way. Maybe you might want to let them know that you are not a fan of MQA.
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