Interesting interview with someone who knows their stuff.
Cable stuff is just past the halfway mark.https://www.davidgilmour.com/press/2005/march/TapeOp_March05.pdf
1 Like
Disregarding the good points, some of the bad points are that it is almost impossible to do a digital to digital copy and retain the resolution; it is far more susceptible to the sound changing from many different reasons ā RF, A/C mains, harmonic distortion and fluctuation, physical vibrations, etc., than most people realize.
Dave [Gilmour], my mind is going.
1 Like
Maybe he knows his stuff. But his stuff is definitly not an understanding how digital data transmission works 
5 Likes
Or was he correct back in 2005?
Look at the work Antipodes Audio do around noise on the digital signal. Everyone seems to agree that there servers sound awesome.
1 Like
AJ
2 Likes
Iām pretty sure I was using computers back in 2005, copying all sorts of data around. I never lost āresolutionā, only entire disks/cards.
4 Likes
Might not be that historical, as people still think thereās something magical in between bits.
Noise on a digital signal is like dust on a word file. It does not exist.
Sorry, but not everyone agrees! A server did not sound.
That is what I mean. All these claim only shows the lack of understanding how digital tansmission works.
Did such a server improve the poetry in my word files? The figures in my Excel sheets? The brightness of my photos? Or my banking account if I use them for online banking? Most people would agree, that such claims are absurd. Why are they absurd for every type of data but not for audio data?
If this would be true, tax office would not allow digital transmission of your fiscal reports 
5 Likes
Unless itās acceptable to round to full dollars, due to lost numerical resolution.
1 Like
And we keep getting told that science is pure facts!
Science isnāt the issue, itās the human perception/bias of science (or any other subject) thatās the problem. Throughout History we have managed to convince ourselves that we are 100% correct on our factual knowledge (at that point in time) only for that to change as we learn and discover. Some might call it progress.
We have been told for ages that data is data, bits are bits. Itās a nice marketing line for computer companies.
Digital audio was launched as perfect sound forever. Anyone remember how long after that it took to discover jitter?
One of my favourite sayings from F1 designers is āThere are known unknowns, and there are unknown unknownsā.
Any chance we can apply this to digital data and not assume we know everything at this point in history?
The cabling part of the interview is the thing I was more interested in. I keep reading that it is only audiophiles who think cables make a difference, pros just use whatever is lying around, but that clearly isnāt the case. I currently use stock Mogami XLR cables but I am open minded enough to believe that other cables can sound different (not necessarily better). Can cables with different electrical properties sound the same? For example, there seems to be quite a difference in capacitance ratings on various brands of cables out there. Does the varying level output impedance from preamps not make a difference? If two products, say interconnects, are made to a different set of electrical properties, and they sound the same, would that not disprove electrical theory? Is it not more logical that they would sound different to each other?
Is it possible to have a civilised discussion on this topic without any personal abuse, without people being dismissed as golden eared audiophiles? Or deaf naysayers? Can we accept that there are people out there with better hearing and/or higher resolution systems? Just because I canāt hear it on my system, doesnāt mean it isnāt there, I just havenāt been able to hear it.
2 Likes
Tell me one thing: what is the magical component in audio that makes audio so different from the thousand other types of data and why are only audiophiles in panic mode about the faults of digital transmissions and stock exchanges and banks and all the others there the smallest error can break down whole economies instead of only hearing a small portion of noise are so cool about digital transmissions and have so much trust in the pure facts of science?
It makes no sense! If there is only a slight chance that you are right, our government should immediatly shut down the internet to reduce the risk for all of our lives. So, why are audiophiles the only people how donāt trust science and the accuracy of digital transmissions? Is it a big conspirancy?
3 Likes
No, that would not ādisprove electrical theory.ā Two interconnects can have different electrical properties but sound the same. Because as long as they fall within certain tolerances, their signal transmission properties may not be affected to any significant extent. This is true for analog interconnects to some degree and for digital interconnects to an immense degree.
AJ
2 Likes
You have moved the goalposts on this one. If you are looking for Word or Excel to improve your poetry or finances then you are in trouble! That is absurd. This is like trying to ask a server to improve a bad song. Only the delete button can do that!
Resolution of photo files is constantly improving due to lens and software advances.
The article discusses resolution, not artistic value.
Is there no noise (electrical analog) associated with digital signals?
Unfortunately, this is a straw man. It applies only to fools. True scientists know that new data comes in continually, and update their evaluations of the probabilities of various hypotheses as it does so. One of the key tenets of experimental science is the repetition of experiments of others, to verify the putative data they produced.
Sure. Itās just very very unlikely. Many different people have collected boatloads of data over decades, and it all seems to support the hypothesis that thereās no āghost in the machine.ā Never say never, but itās not something Iād spend much time thinking about. Nobody seems to produce replicable reviewable data that points to anything new. Itās all just anecdotal stories.
Only if their differences are important, in the acoustic rendering of the sound. Most differences are not.
Sure, if both sides can refrain from setting up straw men to knock down.
Digital signals are transmitted in protocols which involve a series of levels. The lowest level is analog, and can have noise. But the levels above that in the protocol are designed to filter our that noise. The result is the digital signal, freed of any noise in the analog level. Those signals can be correct or incorrect, but thatās it. Thereās no extra bits, or missing bits. No noise.
2 Likes
There is, but since itās analog, itās inconsequential for digital, as long as itās not at a level to cause uncorrectable errors.
Can the digital sine wave be affected by noise before conversion?
No, because a digital sine wave is a sequence of numbers, just like any other waveform - or document, or spreadsheet.
Iām not disputing the sequence of numbers, but as I wrote earlier, jitter was discovered sometime after perfect digital audio was launched. Is jitter real?
Yes, because when you calculate the impedance change of the cable with frequency relative to the output and input impedances of the connected devices, there may well be differences in response, but the differences are of the order of 0.01 dB which is far less than the human ear is capable of discerning. So yes, they can measure differently, but sound the same.
1 Like