As a great man once said:
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Well said @hmack - this seems to be the Roon version of trolling: anybody who doesnāt believe in something piles in with, effectively, abuse. Shame.
No, Iām just trying to stop the weird semi religious, flat earth style nonsense which is believing digital cables bear any significance to sound quality.
Iām sure back in the dark ages they were quite happy burning midwives and curing a missing Leg with leeches. They probably thought they were right too. But like the cable debate, thereās absolutely zero evidence that any cable which meets the required standard has any effect on sound quality whatsoever.
I think the trolling is more on the part of those happy to believe in myths, legends and subjective hearsay.
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This comment is brought up frequently, but while it is true it is not relevant.
This is about levels of abstraction.
If you want to look at the lower levels of abstraction, you could just as well say that the analog envelope is really transported at a grainy level by individual electrons, and it isnāt really grainy because quantum mechanics tells us that the electron is really a smeared-out probability wave. All true, but not relevant.
And between the signal and then align envelope you have the routing of the IP layer that does not guarantee that packets arrive in the proper order so the ordering has to be restored by the recipient network stack.
The system is designed so that the lower levels of abstraction do not matter, which is the reason we can transport the music over Ethernet and WiFi and cellular and across the Atlantic: with these different implementations at the lower levels, the higher levels stay the same.
So the analog envelope has no impact on the signal. It is invisible to the algorithms.
Now, you could make an argument that the physical implementations have side effects such as transmitting noise. That may or may not be true, and if true it could be mitigated by different techniques. But that is different from the analog envelope argument,
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No sir! You are trying to justify the fact that you cannot discern differences between digital cables. The reason for this might be one of several reasons, you are an inexperienced listener, the material might not be suitable for comparisons or perhaps that you are suffering from a nocebo effect since you cannot grasp the technical and/or physical reasons to why this might ne happening.
Whatever reason, you can stop lecturing now.
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LOL! That is all.
I admire your verve but I fear you are seriously wasting your time 
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Whoās lecturing whom, dude?
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I have always wondered why it is professional audio reviewers will say they can hear a noticeable difference between cable A and B, but when asked to do a Blind AB test, they instantly refuse to do it.
I wonder why?
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Because everyone hears differently despite what they might think.
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Maybe, but I am more likely to suspect that in a blind comparison, their accuracy to choose cables apart from each other ends up relying more on random chance than discernible differences.
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You are comparing apple to oranges.
I am not talking about networking here. I am talking directly connecting the Roon Core to the DAC via USB which is a much different animal. I have already commented in other places that using Ethernet with a Roon Core/Roon Endpoint model is a great way to isolate the DAC from a noisy Roon Core.
With the Roon Core directly connected to the DAC using USB, my comment is quite relevant, thank you.
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Maybe tangentially relevant, but not precise. I doubt that you have an electrical engineering level understanding of signals, Scott. Because as AndersVinberg points out, your terminology is off kilter.
āAnalog envelopeā refers to the bounds of an analog carrier (MHz, GHz), which in this case then is digitally modulated (FSK, QAM). If the analog carrier itself is the source of perceived noise after digital demodulation, then there is no hope for improvement. Filtering out the analog carrier concomitantly would remove the digitally modulated signal. Radio silence. No analog carrier, no digital signal.
So, what you really mean is electromagnetic interference. That is not part of the analog carrier. It is extraneous noise, and if that noise is out of band, then it likely can be filtered out with little effect on the analog carrier and digitally modulated signal. Whether significant electromagnetic interference is present or whether it needs to be filtered is debatable. But test bench measurements generally can answer that question.
AJ
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I was speaking about both because the analog envelope comment is often used for both.
And my objection stands.
The layers of abstraction apply.
This description applies to both:
They send packets of information: the sender takes a certain amount of information and puts it in a packet, which is equivalent to writing it on a slip of paper.
This packet is then sent over a transport stack, which differs between the two technologies, but at the bottom it is transmitted as bits, which are actually analog electrical signals, which are actually electrons, which are actually quantum wave.
At the receiving end, the network stack (hardware and software) collects these signals, decodes them, and when it has the complete packet it taps the application layer code on the shoulder and says āIāve got some information for you, give me a buffer to put it in, this sizeā. The app allocated a buffer which is also like a piece of paper and provides it. The OS copied the information from one piece of paper, and the application reads the numbers from its piece of paper, decodes them, and presents them to the DAC with appropriate timing information.
So how does the analog envelope of the USB signal have anything to do with this? Any more than the composition of the paper fibers, if we actually used paper?
The analog envelope, if it gets distorted, affects the timing of the signals that are transmitted at the bottom layers, but that has nothing to do with the timing or other attributes when the app reads the numbers out of its own buffer, or when it presents the numbers to the digital-to-analog circuitry.
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And the CDs I buy also are shipped in an analog envelope. You will say the envelope will make any difference in the SQ of the shipped CD? What envelope is the best for shipping CDs to have perfect SQ?
I tend to agree. I used to have a Mac holding my library and then bought a Nucleus which then went to my Rotel amp via a SPDIF converter - USB out to the Peachtree X-1 thence to the DAC in the Rotel which had a Coaxial digital input. All worked nicely. I bought decent cables but could not discern a difference between the cheap ones I started out with, much as I tried!
Now I just have a Nucleus connected by ethernet directly to my Kef LS 50 Wireless speakers. I connected them by WiFi originally but I experienced drop outs. There was no SQ difference when I connected by ethernet much as I tried to discern any but I no longer suffer drop outs. I only have CD quality music ripped on to the Nucleus from CDs. The Kefs improved my listening pleasure hugely.
Zeros and ones rule as far as I am concerned. A DAC does not seem to detect anything else, although some DACs are better than othersā¦whoa! that will start another conversation!
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I did an A/B test today using a Wireworld Silver Starlight 7 USB 2.0 and a Straight Wire USB 2.0. I was frankly hoping to sell the Wireworld USB cable and reallocate some assets. However, the system sounds obviously better with the Wireworld USB cable installed: more dynamics, more definition, more weight. I donāt know why this would be so. Perhaps itās confirmation bias. Perhaps not. Regardless, Iām not removing the Wireworld Silver Starlight 7 USB 2.0, and the Straight Wire USB is going back to standard computer duty.
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You are taking my verbiage way too literally. I was using common vernacular to describe something. Look here:
Here is a quote:
āDigital errors often have their roots in analog signal integrity problems. To track down the cause of the digital fault, itās often necessary to turn to an oscilloscope, which can display waveform details, edges and noise; can detect and display transients; and can help you precisely measure timing relationships such as setup and hold times. Modern oscilloscopes can help to simplify the troubleshooting process by triggering on specific patterns in serial data streams and displaying the analog signal that corresponds in time with a specified event.ā
My point was that USB uses analog signals to transmit digital information. So USB is not immune to analog issues especially at the receiver end because itās not just zeroes and onesā¦
Wouldnāt āUSB cables ā a fistful of dollarsā be a better title for this thread?
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Or Every Which Way But Loose?
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