016 Connecting your DAC #2: how digital can go wrong
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2015
- How come some digital connections sound better then others. It's only ones and zeros, it either work or it doesn't according to some......
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Best explanation of jitter I have seen. I finally get it, and can explain it. Thank you!
So that's it! Jitter is a timing error and timing is crucial to reproduce waves in the D/A conversion with no distortion, finally someone explained it! Hans you are a legend!
I just found this Hans guy by accident. These little lessons and reviews are just awesome. It's like having coffee with a friend or listening to your favorite professor lecture you.
Thanks Hans!
🙏🙏
Thanks Hans - You are the Man! I've just discovered your videos and they've cleared up many of the questions I've had regarding digital audio, and the various approaches one can take for each section of the end-to-end audio path. I like your no nonsense, straight forward explanations, and am your newest fan.
Thank you for your very lucid explanations, and for destroying many of my ignorant presumptions….I think.
Your advice is perhaps free of charge, but my conclusions might cost me a penny or two.
Excellent channel, Hans.
Well, if you're dropping pennies anyway, you could have a look here: www.patreon.com/theHBchannel😃
I think I've still got a few guilders in a tin can; if I blow the lint and cobwebs off I might send you something. Wie wat bewaart, die heft wat.
I'm slowing catching up on your videos. Not only do you do an excellent job describing complex concepts in a clear and an easy to consume manner, you also emphasize the importance of hearing is believing and it's all about enjoying the music! Thanks for providing such a great resource.
My pleasure entirely
Hans, thanks for helping us to understand the analog and digital world. Great education,
Best video on digital audio I have ever seen! Thanks!
What a great insightful video. I am very thankful for that. A great dig into the digital realm
Incredibly informative video and very well explained! Thank you!!
Thanks for that. A good explanation for errors in cables. I would like to learn more about the earthing in power cables that you mentioned.
Hans!! This video was extremely helpful. Today I was able to determine that I in fact had a jitter issue and switched to analog. Big improvement in dynamics. Thank you sir.
My pleasure
Awesome information, Hans. Thanks!
+Beryl Green Thanks Beryl, spread the word
You are genius! Thank you! I'm so happy I found your videos.
Thanks Hans for the clear explanation!
As always, a new video with easy to understand knowledge. Thank you.
My pleasure!
nice Hans. your the best!!
hey Hans, Bravo!!
I gather lots of info through your straight forward, no-nonsense videos. The insights you share are so very helpful to understand whats, whys and hows of the audio world. Can't thank you enough.
I am so damn impressed that I'm going to ask all my techy and non-techy serious music listeners & music enthusiasts to see your videos to gain knowledge.
I wonder if you have or can do a video on how to connect a sub-woofer in a stereo set-up for best music experience considering the source is laptop (windows 7 based playingFLAC files) + DAC (NAD D1050) + Stereo Amplifier (Marantz PM 8003) + Tower speakers (Wharfedale Diamond 10.5) + Sub-woofer (Wharfedale SW 150).
Thanks! I will make a vide on the placing subs but that will be later this year.
Valuable informations! Thank you.
A great educational video. Thanks!
Excellent channel. Thank you!
Thank you too!
Cool explanation. Well done.
Thanks! Just diggin this audiophile heaven.
I learned a ton. Appreciate the video
Thank You for a wealth of information ..
Thank you Hans. Again great explanation 😎👍
Glad you enjoyed it
Most laptops just have poor quality connectors, like simple (and more expensive)audio cards and cables. I'm getting tired of buying cables.... 100euro is the max i pay for a cable. And luckily it's easy to put quality connectors in the hardware. But i'm glad you tell a very clear story, about how things work and you have a very pleasant 'teachervoice'.
+Paas de haas Thanks for the compliments. Laptops are bad music players anyway since the screen is very 'noisy' (a lot of high frequency interference).
I agree with you and Hans. However a robust asynchronous DAC will remove almost all of the "crap" for a computer's digital output. As long as it gets the bits in the correct order, it can re-draw the straight line Hans used in this video.
The Audio Science Review cult should watch this video.
Hi Hans, thank you for the great explanation. I can understand and interpret it very well with sources, that generate the clock signal. How about DACs connected via asynchronous USB, where the DAC is the master? Can a noisy source like a PC have the same effects also in this case? Thanks in advance for your reply.
Yes, and it appears to be even more critical.
hans what conditioner do you suggest, please without breaking the bank?
could be used for desktop setup (laptop to optional micro rendu to dac to powered speakers)
see my reviews
Hans, can you tell more about 10:41 "... Checking power chord polarity for minimal ground potential..." ?
I think I know about ground... but not sure about "chord polarity"
+gnupixello I will certainly, but not within a few weeks. I'm trying to find out if there are technical differences between grids on different continents.
Great video! Thanks.
Hubert - Germany
+hubert Ko (cillyede) Thanks Hubert, tell your friend...
As for connecting a digital source (like streamer or music server) via asynchronous USB to a DAC, I have this general question: Because the USB Input is ASYNCHRONOUS, it is not dependent on the clock or jitter of the source but the signal is totally re-clocked by the DACs internal clock (good DACs even buffer several seconds of the signal internally before re-clocking). Doesn't that mean that every source - from a small Aries Mini to the most expensive Aurender - will sound exactly the same, as long as the source is decent enough to deliver bit-perfect data? But bit-prefect data transport is totally normal in digital (otherwise many things like, e.g., online-banking simply wouldn't work). The only thing that makes audio more difficult than an online money transfer is that you not only have to deliver the correct data, but you also have to deliver them at the correct TIME. However, if that timing/clocking is taken away from the source and handled completely by the receiver (the DAC), doesn't that mean that the quality of the source is irrelevant as long as it delivers bit-perfect data? And if so, why do expensive digital sources costing thousands of dollars (as opposed to hundreds) even exist? Shouldn't they have become obsolete with the introduction of asynchronous USB?
If that were the case, I (and many others) would not hear a difference. I don't have the definitive answer, but buffers create noise when read, according to some people I take seriously. Anyway, when I owned a Chord QDB76 HDSD DAC converter, it had a 3 second buffer (@44,100Hz fs) but that could not solve jitter problems coming from the digital source.
That is exactly the case. All that is "heard" is undesired affects in a poorly designed (or isolated) input buffer for the asynchronous signal leaking into the analog circuit or the PCM bitstream being fed into the DAC circuit (ladder, FPGA, ...)
Rather than insist the DAC make fix his input buffers, people attempt to feed in more-prefect square waves. The logarithmic rise of the wave in this video are greatly exaggerated. Most measurements show overshoot and settle time.
@@jaydy71 thanks for this explanation.
Do I interpret you correctly that for instance AV-Receivers that allow music to be played from an attached USB-drive or disk, would fall into this category (explained by you)? And the same applies to NAS attached to the AVR?
Just asking, because that would mean, people could really focus on buying a high-quality AV-Receiver with a good DAC built in, and of course focus on providing high-quality (instead of poor mp3 or whatever) music - FLAC or the likes - via the attached storage. (Good speakers and all that matters 'afterwards' provided.)
Dear Hans, I am using the Fiio M15 as a dac for my laptop, into a dt1990 pro and sometimes my IEMs. Would that dac take care of the jitter enough or would you advise an ifi iusb nano in addition to that as well? Thanks for all your videos and reviews, they've really gotten me into the world of audio! It has opened up a terribly pleasant way of listening to music for me and I must say I enjoy and appreciate it more than before.
I have no hands on experience with the products you mention so I can’t say.
Thank you, information about jitter was really helpful
You're welcome.
For us old-timers, jitter acts like a weak over-the-air analog TV signal. It became much harder to maintain the vertical sync pulses, so the picture would "roll". The same thing can happen to audio.
thank you.
Hi Hans, can you please come back to Hans-Peter's point below regarding asynchronous USB? I've also been wondering about this for a long time
Sorry, I sometimes lose track on what to answer, it's a lot of work. I have answered now.
See the question by Hans-Peter
What if we could stuck a number crushing cpu inside a modern CD player to do error corrections just in time,maybe that sound jitter can be avoided.
If only
Please use the Audio Precision in the background to measure and show a jitter measurement.
I do measure all equipment but I will not publish them since it will scare those people of I try to reach out to. My colleagues of Stereophile, Hifi+ and TAS do publish measurements, you might go there. BTW jitter measurements still say little about the impact of that specific jitter pattern on the sound quality.
My SONY SACD in service mode says Jitter too high, what does that mean and how do I fix it?
It might be that the laser is getting bad. Or that there is a mechanical problem. Not much you can do yourself, I'm afraid.
what causes bad stereo crosstalk on USB Powered Sound Card ? - 22db / should be over -100 db by the specification. / Stereo image is very bad and sounds more like mono ..
A bad design or a fault? I am not clairvoyant so I can't tell. Sorry.
Bravo! Thank you.
Thank you too!
Great dissertation on Jitter. One point however. It is stated there is error correction in the digital audio stream going to the D-A converter. This is not true. There is only parity checking, but no error recovery. On the other hand there is amazing error recovery within a CD player to reconstruct corrupted data.
A D-A converter can reject the incoming data if the parity code is incorrect, but nothing can be fixed if it is really bad.
You are correct. Thanks for correcting
Is this at the input of the DAC chip receiving I2S that is being discussed here? I mean error in decoding I2S data correctly?
No, but I am working on a video that explains that better. Due soon.
At 1:37 you show some manchester like encoded signal, which I believe is the data communicated to the DAC chip from some other chip. So I was wondering whether you're telling about the ISI that can create bit error in the recovered data that has been forwarded that can happen due to board trace channel loss at relatively high frequencies of 1-2MHz.
What about "jitter" on the first steps of the recording process? Analog to Digital ... What happend with that "jitter" on that clock that it's recording the data? how then we can make it guilt of "jitter" to all the decoding process (D-A) to the DAC, cables, etc. and don't know if it was "jitter" already recorded as bad timming data of the original source?
When during recording a poor clock signal is used causing jitter, this is not repairable. But even the earliest recordings, done with Sony PCM1600's or even PCM601's mostly sound fine. This might be partly because the setup was simple. In current studio setups, where digital equipment, like mixing console and ADC's, need to be connected digitally, the risk is higher. But I'm under the impression that generally good care is taken to clock correctly. This is certainly the case in professional recording studios.
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel Thanks for your response, and yeah it's rare that recordings sound mostly very good, may be it's "easier" to avoid jitter on recording process, don't know. You have a great channel BTW! keep your nice work on it. Thanks!
Hello!…
Can any one get Data USB noise problem
even after cutting the red wire on the cable.
I plan to buy the: iFi iPurifier3 USB Audio and Data Signal Filter…
will it be a good investment for a 179$ Canadian…?
Hard to say if that will bring better sounds quality. The iFi is fine but it depends on your situation if it is sufficient.
Hello Mr. Hans, many of your videos seem excellent to me, but many others leave me with reasonable doubts (I think that is very good). What happens then with the optical signals? the light is on or off, but has no intermediate. are you suggesting that my usb cable may introduce errors? are you suggesting that my motherboard may introduce errors? are you suggesting that cpu introduce errors? You are suggesting that my digital copy of a file is lower just because there is no infinite band limit. As I think of a digital signal it is like a switch, when it is on and sending voltage it is the reference, it is 0 when it is turned off it is 1. There are also control mechanisms that rectify that the information arrives or not. in my experience the digital signal arrives well or simply does not arrive, without intermediaries. When you send a file to the cloud, it travels thousands and thousands of kilometers, but it does not degrade a bit, why would it degrade a couple of meters in your house? my most sincere greetings from Colombia
I’m working on a video explaining just that. Please be patient, it will some more time.
You've explained how a DAC can go wrong and how it can produce average to great sound, but I'm curious when playing music through a computer does the internal soundcard on the computer effect the quality of sound traveling to the DAC then out through to the amp? I mean can an average internal sound card of your laptop be sufficient enough for audiophile music if your DAC is good quality?
Anything audio inside a computer sounds awful. The best way to hook up a DAC directly to a computer is using USB.
My DAC is connected to my computer with USB. So then would the internal sound card not be important?
correct.
The Hans Beekhuyzen Channel Is it better to use TosLink in a computer?
Hans, thanks for the explanation. Your words and the graphics give a very good explanation of things like "jitter", which is often not well understood. The big question for me is: "Is it audible?" You mentioned training the ears to hear audible effects of such things as jitter, but don't really mention what those effects are (although you did list a number of musical effects, it was unclear if they were effects of jitter or some other noise source). The graphic you showed indicates what looks like an ultrasonic ripple on a ramping audio signal waveform. If that ripple is above 20 kHz, which it appears to be, I'm very unlikely to hear it, since I can no longer hear above 12 KHz, and you probably can't either. Even more so if it's 20 dB or more below the signal level, which it also appears to be. So why should I agonize over something I can't hear?
Some remarks first. I'm not very skilled in drawing distorted square waves so don't take them to literally. The audible effects I mentioned as a result of jitter are jest that. About hearing loss at age, watch ruclips.net/video/JxFCnZ5pBp4/видео.html. Most people will hear the effects of jitter on the sound but will not identify it as jitter. The most obvious is sibilance. Does your stereo accentuate 'S-ses'? that's most likely due to jitter (although there can of course be other causes). So it's not if you can hear it, it's whether you can identify it as jitter. Replacing for instance a jittery digital source with a better one - without changing anything else - establishes the impact of jitter. That has nothing to do with the frequency response of your hearing. Jitter is a time domain phenomenon so you have to look at how our auditory system handles time information. Recent research has shown that our hearing has far better time resolution than the frequency response would suggest. But then again hour auditory system isn't linear device in the way electronic equipment is.
I've now been watching this three times, and now understand the importance of a stabile clock to avoid jitter. However, there is something I do not understand. You say that the source might deliver a poor clock, so why would a DAC unit rely on the source from another device? If I stream e.g. TIDAL from my computer to a device with a build-in hard drive, and if I would accept a delay of some seconds from pressing play on TIDAL to the music begins to play, then the whole song could to transferred to an internal storage in the DAC unit, before playback. This way the information feed to the DAC would not be affected by the clock from the source, since the source simple copied the track (as a digital file) to the DAC unit. This is just a though, and I might be wrong. Your thoughts would be much appreciated, Hans. Thank you!
I'll get back to that soon in a video.
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel Glad to hear! I am looking forward to it!
clear and understandeble video. +1
+Zo Falu Kösz, a hírt (Google Translate;-)
köszönöm
nice video, I like your style... subscribed
+gnupixello Tnx! Tell it to the world:-)
ok I try !
... I am starting to show this stuff to my girlfriend... but she does not seem very attracted :\
+gnupixello don't challenge me now.....
:)
+gnupixello Tnx!
Firewire? Why is it missing?
Well, Firewire is terminal. It is a nicer interface than USB 2 since the bus is locally controlled. That als caused incompatibility from time to time but never the less, it was a fine interface for music. Unfortunately it is being replaced by Thunderbolt and DAC manufacturers are abandoning Firewire. DAC's with Firewire were niche products anyway. Sorry.
Thank you for your very quick answer. I use the Mytek Stereo 192 DAC thru Firewire with a 2010 iMac and roon and it sounds better than with any other connection. Of course you are right about Firewire but I won't change a sounding system :-) i very much enjoy your teachings! Do you like melodic progressiv Rock? Take a look at my band superdrama.de. I'd be glad to send you a copy of the album as a little Thank U. One more Tip: Check out these Speakers: www.ksaudio.com. They are patented computerised "impuls-optimised" - I never heard "faster" transients. Hans: keep up the good work and find fun & love on all your ways!
Fantastic explanation that every snake oil sceptic should watch.
We agree!
French cauliflower... :D I'll remember that one!
It really happened though.
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel no doubt! I just love that term :)
how can critical and large software files/images be downloaded from the internet, copied multiple times over potentially noisy usb connections, end up a bit-for-bit lossless copy of the original image? if streaming is fraught with perilousness, how about we call it file transfer, utilize a simple minimum-buffer-required-to-play on receiving end, and bob is your uncle? honestly not trolling here; rather, i'm truly trying to understand the problem, for which (among others) digital was invented to solve.
There are two ways of doing digital audio: good and bad. In this video I explained what happens when it is done badly. The advantage is digital audio is that it can be played infinitely without loss, can have exactly the same information there was in the studio, is far less easy damaged, can be backed-up without any loss and can at least sound the same if not better than analog.
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel To rephrase my question, why is streaming so much different than file transfer over a medium, with a buffer on the receiving end? If I have a high quality DAC built into my amp, why do I need an expensive component to break a digital file up into packets, put it into a pipe, and send it to my DAC for decoding? Shouldn't a $10 USB cable suffice? I honestly feel like there is something big I'm missing. Please help me understand why I'm oversimplifying things and/or comparing apples to oranges. I am new to your channel and to hifi streaming, and I am digging your channel!
👍
🙏🏻
Ears over measurement I remember that one thanks Hans
Dear Hans, thanks for this great explanation! I really enjoy watching your videos. However, (as usual ;) you lost me when stating "our ears are far more discerning than the best audio measurement equipment available". I doubt that very much, especially when being stated in such absolute terms. For instances, when you want to show that an audio system has jitter issues, I am sure you will be able to measure (and _maybe_ hear) it. And in turn, if the measurements show you that there are no such jitters, I am sure your ears will not tell you otherwise. That doesn't mean that I will _not_ use my ears to make a final decision over what sound and hifi system I like and which not. After all, audio is about listening not comparing measurement graphs! Yet, it may well be that _I_ actually like the "distortion" brought in by the errors explained in your video. Same way, some (many?) people like the "rich" and "full" sound of tube amplifiers, which others my say is a serious distortion of the frequency curve and hence not pure sound at all.
The working principle of your auditory system differs greatly form electronics. This is one of the reasons it is so hard to judge measurements on the audibility of a given artifact. Jitter measurements is a very good example thereof. I hear jitter quite easily, ever since the mid 80's when we - my colleague at that time Peter van Willenswaard en I - first heard it. It was even not accepted by many that we heard a difference between digital interlinks since 'bits are bits'. It was only after five years that simple measurements became available in measuring devices like the Audio Precision that stands behind me in the videos. And then those measurements hardly give any clue on the audibility, unless they show offending poor figures. Ergo, I don't agree with your opinion. Sorry.
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel No worries - we can disagree. :)
At some point you said "train your ears!". Wouldn't that make an excellent video, where you set up a system that produces the jitters that _you_ can easily hear, and try to explain to us what it is that allows you to identify these? I know, this will be difficult to convey thru RUclips and the multiple audio conversion on the way, but still, I would find this very helpful ... if it goes beyond glossy descriptions such as "rich", "full", "revealing", etc. You could play for example a cymbal, a flute or something as simple as a triangle sound, and try to explain where the jitter manifests itself.
@@rolf_reichts Like this one: ruclips.net/video/_ysiTgPFKWs/видео.html