Agreed, there is no differences in the files. The differences come in with the path it takes to the DAC. I would liken it more to same cars, but different drivers. Digital jitter/noise comes from latency, clock skews and power noise. Each digital chip you pass the information through has it's own clock speed, voltage draw and latency imparted on the signal. Basically, to get the best sound possible you would want the shortest, quickest path possible with the least amount of digital chips to make that path while keeping the power draw minimal. This is why WAV sounds better than Flac. Decoding through a processor is another digital step and it has serious power draw. The only perfect solution would be an all in one silicon storage/transport/processor like HMB on a graphics silicon chip but sharing the same powersupply. It can be done, but the silicon would be HUGE and yields would be low. Too low to make any profit as you would probably have to sell each unit for millions of dollars to recoup the FAB costs.
I found this out first hand, through my dealer and he gave me an Aurender NH-100 to try out and I had my CD player. Before this I had a Marantz NA7004, which I still have, but retired to the closet with my other 2 other CD players and other equipment. This is when I found out by using different USB Cables and the DACs can make a difference when compared to my CD Player. I have a Audio Research CD2, Cambridge Audio CD350 and a Yamaha CD-S2100 and the Aurender when run through my Audio Research Dac 8 with bridge, blew away my CD Players ran through the DAC or not. This information is out on the internet and I used a google search to find it. Jitter is real and the elimination of it can be dramatic for those that say it doesn't matter because it's just one and zero. It is a lot more to it than that. This is one of the reason why PC in and of themselves can be bad for audio because of all of the internal noise of the power supply, sound card and etc. Paul is right do the research (Paul gave us one source) and find a local dealer or online source with a good return policy and try for yourself. I stream from my PC in lossless through the Aurender Program, which has an excellent interface and I have a external 4 tb drive connected directly to the Aurender using a Audioquest Diamond. Audioquest also has tons of info on this as well on their website. As you go up the Aurender line the sound gets better and better, but I won't be paying for that privilege because I'm happy were I'm at.
Paul, so you are saying that if I have a massive 3D Max file on a DVD Disk and simultaneously the same on a SSD, opening the files from either onto its software for rendering, the results will be different. Right.
What about if you use a buffer in the DAC? If the data in the buffer is identical, then it would sound identical out of the buffer since any noise or jitter would be removed. If it wasn't identical, then there would have been a data error which wouldn't be caused by the playback medium itself.
i just use full size .wavs and stream them at native 44.1/16b over coaxial to my main dac. I have my hifi one connected over async 192/24 usb for the lols since my main hifi is in storage at the moment. to be honest the differences are mainly in the dacs not the signal at cd quality in my opinion. (i would prefer to run my cd transport directly over coaxial i love cds)
It interesting and I like it that you say about DACs in this video, "We haven't perfected it yet. We're working on it." I assume you also think we haven't perfected power amps or preamps yet either. We haven't, have we?
Well, if the whole FLAC is unpacked into RAM before playback you shouldn't have the power draw problem. (a 5 minute song should just take a 10:th of a second or less to unpack into RAM on a modern processor).
From my point of view the main problem with your website is that although the products are easy to find there are no prices mentioned! Can't you put the price with component?
I found CDs sound better than the digital rips even at full lossless quality. Somethin about the laser reading the CD does a lot better job than a computer reading the digital files.
Jitter, noise, interference, compression etc all play a factor, mainly in audio, but in other electronics as well. Once it travels from the original to the copy. Its picked up so much extra along the way it doesn't sound exactly the same.
Hi Paul, I just wanted to say thanks for becoming a RUclipsr. I think that even skeptical audiophiles can find your videos to be enjoyable and informative. I wonder if you are aware of Pierre Sprey and Mapleshade Records? I would be interested to hear your opinion.
Any difference in audio fidelity obviously has a natural explanation. If the CD isn't damaged and data can be read reliably without errors, the cause of any audible difference must be in the DAC process. If the playback is done without a "jitter causing PLL" but with buffered precise constant clocking of the PCM data and with identical DAC incl. analog output circuit, then perhaps someone could argue that the power supply ripple could be different, but keeping the Vcc ripple low enough on a DAC to be irrelevant isn't rocket science either. But perhaps the quality of the error correction algorithm is where there could be some sensible argument assuming the CD is not in a good shape.
Well, I'm sorry to mention a compeditor, but on a Burmester 111 or 151 the rip sounds remarkable better than the CD where its from! Why? Because its reading the CD a couple of times and its checking the correctness of the Data very extensively till its approaching perfect very close. Then the essense gets stored on HDDs. A CD player cannot do this. It must play on. you would not beleave how good 44.1x16 can sound!
Yep, I can vouch for EAC, it's free and finally can support later Windows OS's like Vista, of which it could not do for a long time, but just last year, found out I can use it with Vista 64 and downloaded it. It'll even rescue damaged CD's for the most part, but the caveat is if it's recoverable in any way, it'll likely do so.
I dont know what they use exactly, or how its called. Maybe it is that EAC, sure. However The RIP sounds better than the CD direct played! Of course the Data of the RIP file cannot be better or more exact than the Data on the CD where its from, thats not what I meant for sure. The File contains a reduced Proportion of read out failure due to its method. That must be the reason why it sounds better. So you must know the difference in Sound quality between direct play and the "Exact" RIP file, if you use the same method. Unfortunately I didnt hear your product yet, so I cannot evaluate this mentioned difference there to be honest. One Day I need to make up this leeway anyway! Thanks for answering! Appreciated!
jitter usually manifests as harshness in the treble, it causes listening fatigue. using linear or slow filters on dacs can make it worse, it's a really odd thing to explain. usb is quite rough sounding on the windows driver but async dacs over usb sound great. toslink can have it as well but nowhere near as bad as usb. this is just what i've noticed in my experience.
I thought I was going mad when changed to a different usb cable from phone/computer to a fiio olympus 2, the sound quality improved, but then i thought about video on RUclips how not all usb cables are equal, the amount of power they can carry and the loss of power do to the length of a cable can be drastic.
set up an ABX test paul, and lets see you pick out the NAS vs CD versions. bits are bits, except to audiophiles. then bits are fairy dust. taking money from audiophiles must be easier than picking up a $100 bill off the sidewalk. bring back the green pens!
I think I figured part of what might be happening. Every domestic CD player uses error correction technology which varies greatly. In the studio I have old'ish kit that tells me the error rate (which varies greatly from player to player and from CD to CD) I often used a Red Book standard studio quality burner to copy commercial CD's to special gold faced high longevity write once only CD's. The burner (old by today's standards) used 18 bit BURR BROWN processing and each copy had up to 80% less errors. Everyone agreed that the copies sounded so much better. Sometimes commercially produced CD's have glitches (big errors) yet the copies would iron all those out with no audible affect. There's no digital copyright protection on studio burners so you can make as many "clones" as you like. Of course, today's recording technology bit/sampling rates are mathematically handled to a far superior level. And I can hear the benefits of 24bit 96khz wav recording if its kept as such from recording to playback. My ears are not good enough to hear the transient/harmonic benefits of 192kHz though I can see on the mac that processing distortion is much lower and way outside the audible spectrum.
Do you have anyone managing your social media? I’ve tweeted numerous times, pointing out problems with your posts that go out. I never receive a response. I believe I emailed once from the contact form on the website, but I never got a response.
I again dont understand. If every input is the same you get the same output every time. Some input has to change of the output is different. Why cant you control these factors?
Are you saying it's not possible to be psycholigcal? So if something is bit-for-bit, how is it possible for a difference in sound, this is where it is psycholigical, because if it's bit-for-bit, then it's impossible for a difference.
creative a wave file, putting it on a server and streaming it. in this video he says they should sound the same as the cd but they don't. it makes no sense, it's the same data
Darin Steele Let me give you an example of things that can happen even though " 1s and 0s" haven't changed. Robert Harley worked a a CD manufacturing plant and one day there was a complaint from a client about sound quality in a batch. When checked under a microscope the pits and landing edges were rounded. Now think about that. The information wasn't changed at all. "Bit for bit" the same. The leading and trailing edges transitioning from pit to landing were rounded. The client didn't imagine it and there was a cause found. Many many things can go wrong with getting digital to your speakers and new discoveries are made all the time. As Paul stated, they're working on It. Here's another one for you. All burners don't sound the same.
Your 400hp analogy is deeply flawed. The engine is not 100% of the car, but the data IS 100% of the music. Gotta love the audiophile world! One plus one SHOULD equal two, but I'm hearing 1.8. Hearing obviously trumps math. I'm still waiting for your engineer to produce the name of a CD player or DAC that produces audible jitter… hell, any recording or demonstration of audible jitter.
Richard Larson The data is not 100% of the component supplying the signal which is what was said in the video. You just didn't listen to the video. Paul is an engineer and isn't it funny how when it serves the "everything digital is perfect" crowd, engineers are cited but when it doesn't, the engineer becomes an audiophile.
Sean Stott You don't know how digital works in audio components. You must be of the ilk 1s and 0s go in and they come out. Old news but totally incorrect. I would wager you don't know why CDs don't sound alike either. Burners do not sound alike even and I will leave it to you to do some research and figure it out. SMH
Are there some measurements or any scientific research that supports all these claims? So far on my google searches all I see is some people believing this is a hoax or it really works but nothing concrete so far. If this has not been proven, we have to assume it is bogus.
Music compression formats, sound much better when the K.I.S.S. theory of linear audio reproduction is applied.. K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Stupid, don't overthink and over engineer the problem or the solution. Why go to a sophisticated FLAC file when a WAV is easier for your computer to decode and send to the speakers?
The Jitter you are mentioning is very unconcrete. What kind of Jitter, how is ist measured? It is definitely not to hear. But why still struggling. It sounds so logical what you say but it is not hearable and it is physically not possible. Compare it blindly.
In theory. Yes, in theory it "sounds" different. Buy in reality you will be hard pressed to find anyone who can actually tell the difference if you are using the same DAC.
How about trying it yourself. Buy a $5000 dac and compare to a $50 one. Just go borrow one if you can't afford it. I owned lots log DACs from $50 to $5000.
Agreed, there is no differences in the files. The differences come in with the path it takes to the DAC. I would liken it more to same cars, but different drivers. Digital jitter/noise comes from latency, clock skews and power noise. Each digital chip you pass the information through has it's own clock speed, voltage draw and latency imparted on the signal. Basically, to get the best sound possible you would want the shortest, quickest path possible with the least amount of digital chips to make that path while keeping the power draw minimal.
This is why WAV sounds better than Flac. Decoding through a processor is another digital step and it has serious power draw. The only perfect solution would be an all in one silicon storage/transport/processor like HMB on a graphics silicon chip but sharing the same powersupply. It can be done, but the silicon would be HUGE and yields would be low. Too low to make any profit as you would probably have to sell each unit for millions of dollars to recoup the FAB costs.
Anybody else notice those Skyrim desktop pictures? Their network guy must be a younger lad.
Leon thepro
Yes, I noticed. I am also not a 'young'un'. ; )
Yeah… Big Skyrim fan here. 50's the new 30's.
Or there just an older fella who enjoys them some skyrim
I found this out first hand, through my dealer and he gave me an Aurender NH-100 to try out and I had my CD player. Before this I had a Marantz NA7004, which I still have, but retired to the closet with my other 2 other CD players and other equipment. This is when I found out by using different USB Cables and the DACs can make a difference when compared to my CD Player. I have a Audio Research CD2, Cambridge Audio CD350 and a Yamaha CD-S2100 and the Aurender when run through my Audio Research Dac 8 with bridge, blew away my CD Players ran through the DAC or not. This information is out on the internet and I used a google search to find it.
Jitter is real and the elimination of it can be dramatic for those that say it doesn't matter because it's just one and zero. It is a lot more to it than that. This is one of the reason why PC in and of themselves can be bad for audio because of all of the internal noise of the power supply, sound card and etc. Paul is right do the research (Paul gave us one source) and find a local dealer or online source with a good return policy and try for yourself. I stream from my PC in lossless through the Aurender Program, which has an excellent interface and I have a external 4 tb drive connected directly to the Aurender using a Audioquest Diamond. Audioquest also has tons of info on this as well on their website. As you go up the Aurender line the sound gets better and better, but I won't be paying for that privilege because I'm happy were I'm at.
Paul, so you are saying that if I have a massive 3D Max file on a DVD Disk and simultaneously the same on a SSD, opening the files from either onto its software for rendering, the results will be different. Right.
What about if you use a buffer in the DAC? If the data in the buffer is identical, then it would sound identical out of the buffer since any noise or jitter would be removed. If it wasn't identical, then there would have been a data error which wouldn't be caused by the playback medium itself.
So does the Digital Lens make the sources identical then (assuming no errors in the incoming data)?
Three screens for cool gaming! :)
Fun to see a ShoreTel phone in the background again - let me know if you need any help with your ShoreTel phone system - I will be glad to help.
i just use full size .wavs and stream them at native 44.1/16b over coaxial to my main dac. I have my hifi one connected over async 192/24 usb for the lols since my main hifi is in storage at the moment. to be honest the differences are mainly in the dacs not the signal at cd quality in my opinion. (i would prefer to run my cd transport directly over coaxial i love cds)
It interesting and I like it that you say about DACs in this video, "We haven't perfected it yet. We're working on it." I assume you also think we haven't perfected power amps or preamps yet either. We haven't, have we?
Andy B You are misquoting him. Listen to what he said again.
Well, if the whole FLAC is unpacked into RAM before playback you shouldn't have the power draw problem. (a 5 minute song should just take a 10:th of a second or less to unpack into RAM on a modern processor).
Good video I use a jitterbug by Audioquest and I connect it to my dragonfly or my other DAC I feel it works to my ears sometimes I can’t tell.
So convert all your music files into wav. before sending it to the network bridge of DSJ for best results?
yes
From my point of view the main problem with your website is that although the products are easy to find there are no prices mentioned! Can't you put the price with component?
I found CDs sound better than the digital rips even at full lossless quality. Somethin about the laser reading the CD does a lot better job than a computer reading the digital files.
Jitter, noise, interference, compression etc all play a factor, mainly in audio, but in other electronics as well. Once it travels from the original to the copy. Its picked up so much extra along the way it doesn't sound exactly the same.
You are wrong.
@@estusflask982 I know, thanks.
How about the problem with PC drives neglecting pre-emphasis?
What if you use a separated unit for converting the flac to wav? Then it wouldn't affect the power supply and should be the same.
I LOVE your honesty. Great job as usual. I am a dedicated subscriber.
Hi Paul,
I just wanted to say thanks for becoming a RUclipsr. I think that even skeptical audiophiles can find your videos to be enjoyable and informative.
I wonder if you are aware of Pierre Sprey and Mapleshade Records? I would be interested to hear your opinion.
Any difference in audio fidelity obviously has a natural explanation. If the CD isn't damaged and data can be read reliably without errors, the cause of any audible difference must be in the DAC process. If the playback is done without a "jitter causing PLL" but with buffered precise constant clocking of the PCM data and with identical DAC incl. analog output circuit, then perhaps someone could argue that the power supply ripple could be different, but keeping the Vcc ripple low enough on a DAC to be irrelevant isn't rocket science either. But perhaps the quality of the error correction algorithm is where there could be some sensible argument assuming the CD is not in a good shape.
Well,
I'm sorry to mention a compeditor, but on a Burmester 111 or 151 the rip sounds remarkable better than the CD where its from!
Why?
Because its reading the CD a couple of times and its checking the correctness of the Data very extensively till its approaching perfect very close. Then the essense gets stored on HDDs.
A CD player cannot do this. It must play on.
you would not beleave how good 44.1x16 can sound!
Yep, I can vouch for EAC, it's free and finally can support later Windows OS's like Vista, of which it could not do for a long time, but just last year, found out I can use it with Vista 64 and downloaded it. It'll even rescue damaged CD's for the most part, but the caveat is if it's recoverable in any way, it'll likely do so.
I dont know what they use exactly, or how its called.
Maybe it is that EAC, sure.
However The RIP sounds better than the CD direct played!
Of course the Data of the RIP file cannot be better or more exact than the Data on the CD where its from, thats not what I meant for sure.
The File contains a reduced Proportion of read out failure due to its method. That must be the reason why it sounds better.
So you must know the difference in Sound quality between direct play and the "Exact" RIP file, if you use the same method.
Unfortunately I didnt hear your product yet, so I cannot evaluate this mentioned difference there to be honest.
One Day I need to make up this leeway anyway!
Thanks for answering! Appreciated!
My CD Rainbow's Greatest Hits got a scratch on it. It would skip terribly, but somehow EAC fixed that. I was impressed.
In what possible way can jitter affect audio if it is so incredibly low on even graphics cards that it basically manifests as noise?
jitter usually manifests as harshness in the treble, it causes listening fatigue. using linear or slow filters on dacs can make it worse, it's a really odd thing to explain. usb is quite rough sounding on the windows driver but async dacs over usb sound great. toslink can have it as well but nowhere near as bad as usb. this is just what i've noticed in my experience.
I thought I was going mad when changed to a different usb cable from phone/computer to a fiio olympus 2, the sound quality improved, but then i thought about video on RUclips how not all usb cables are equal, the amount of power they can carry and the loss of power do to the length of a cable can be drastic.
set up an ABX test paul, and lets see you pick out the NAS vs CD versions. bits are bits, except to audiophiles. then bits are fairy dust. taking money from audiophiles must be easier than picking up a $100 bill off the sidewalk. bring back the green pens!
I think I figured part of what might be happening. Every domestic CD player uses error correction technology which varies greatly. In the studio I have old'ish kit that tells me the error rate (which varies greatly from player to player and from CD to CD)
I often used a Red Book standard studio quality burner to copy commercial CD's to special gold faced high longevity write once only CD's.
The burner (old by today's standards) used 18 bit BURR BROWN processing and each copy had up to 80% less errors. Everyone agreed that the copies sounded so much better. Sometimes commercially produced CD's have glitches (big errors) yet the copies would iron all those out with no audible affect. There's no digital copyright protection on studio burners so you can make as many "clones" as you like.
Of course, today's recording technology bit/sampling rates are mathematically handled to a far superior level. And I can hear the benefits of 24bit 96khz wav recording if its kept as such from recording to playback. My ears are not good enough to hear the transient/harmonic benefits of 192kHz though I can see on the mac that processing distortion is much lower and way outside the audible spectrum.
Chris Bishop Burners all sound different
SKYRIM!!!
IS FOR THE NORDS!
Big Skyrim fan here too!
Only a “little bit of the problem”. That was funny. I used uncompressed flac when I use flac
Do you have anyone managing your social media? I’ve tweeted numerous times, pointing out problems with your posts that go out. I never receive a response. I believe I emailed once from the contact form on the website, but I never got a response.
None of us are really entitled to a response so if you're just telling people they're wrong they might not wanna engage.
Is that a list of his login ID and passwords taped to the desk? :P
dBpoweramp with Accurate rip works well for me..
I again dont understand. If every input is the same you get the same output every time. Some input has to change of the output is different. Why cant you control these factors?
I have no desire to use FLAC. With 4tb hard drives costing as little as $60, I have no quelms with using EAC to rip my CDs in uncomressed WAV.
And how would you tag the files, genius?
All this stuff on paper might make sense, but how perfect are our ears that we will actually hear a difference, or is it simply psychological?
Darin Steele None of it is psychological.
Are you saying it's not possible to be psycholigcal?
So if something is bit-for-bit, how is it possible for a difference in sound, this is where it is psycholigical,
because if it's bit-for-bit, then it's impossible for a difference.
Darin Steele What does bit for bit mean to you and in what context exactly?
creative a wave file, putting it on a server and streaming it. in this video he says they should sound the same as the cd but they don't. it makes no sense, it's the same data
Darin Steele Let me give you an example of things that can happen even though " 1s and 0s" haven't changed. Robert Harley worked a a CD manufacturing plant and one day there was a complaint from a client about sound quality in a batch. When checked under a microscope the pits and landing edges were rounded. Now think about that. The information wasn't changed at all. "Bit for bit" the same. The leading and trailing edges transitioning from pit to landing were rounded. The client didn't imagine it and there was a cause found. Many many things can go wrong with getting digital to your speakers and new discoveries are made all the time. As Paul stated, they're working on It. Here's another one for you. All burners don't sound the same.
Do you ever sleep? Thanks for the late night forums cuz apparently I do not.
Ripped music in loseless format sounds better, just because CD makes noise when reading things.
And because there are no errors in reading, since the ripping is accuretly done in the computer (with the right program for this)
Ths is why I am waiting to buy a streamer/dac. Eventually these problems will no longer exist and my huge flac library will sound as good as my CD's.
Paul , Could it be that with some source transfers we are getting further away from the analogue source? So a disk that was mastered AAD becomes AADD
Your 400hp analogy is deeply flawed. The engine is not 100% of the car, but the data IS 100% of the music.
Gotta love the audiophile world! One plus one SHOULD equal two, but I'm hearing 1.8. Hearing obviously trumps math.
I'm still waiting for your engineer to produce the name of a CD player or DAC that produces audible jitter… hell, any recording or demonstration of audible jitter.
Richard Larson The data is not 100% of the component supplying the signal which is what was said in the video. You just didn't listen to the video. Paul is an engineer and isn't it funny how when it serves the "everything digital is perfect" crowd, engineers are cited but when it doesn't, the engineer becomes an audiophile.
It can be 100% if you check. You can literally hash the transferred file and compare it to the hashed source. This is ancient digital technology.
Sean Stott You don't know how digital works in audio components. You must be of the ilk 1s and 0s go in and they come out. Old news but totally incorrect. I would wager you don't know why CDs don't sound alike either.
Burners do not sound alike even and I will leave it to you to do some research and figure it out. SMH
Sorry, but wrong.
Are there some measurements or any scientific research that supports all these claims?
So far on my google searches all I see is some people believing this is a hoax or it really works but nothing concrete so far.
If this has not been proven, we have to assume it is bogus.
Just a little bit lol, pun intended?
Music compression formats, sound much better when the K.I.S.S. theory of linear audio reproduction is applied.. K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Stupid, don't overthink and over engineer the problem or the solution. Why go to a sophisticated FLAC file when a WAV is easier for your computer to decode and send to the speakers?
The Jitter you are mentioning is very unconcrete. What kind of Jitter, how is ist measured? It is definitely not to hear. But why still struggling. It sounds so logical what you say but it is not hearable and it is physically not possible. Compare it blindly.
Do CDs and ripped music sound the same .... yes they do the ear can't tell the difference and would like to see a test on it ... bet they can't tell
They sound exactly the same and if you say otherwise you're trying to sell something.
In theory. Yes, in theory it "sounds" different. Buy in reality you will be hard pressed to find anyone who can actually tell the difference if you are using the same DAC.
Duck with hair! 😂
Most dacs in streaming are junk, period
Lets take a $50 DAC chip, put in a fancy enclosure, claim it makes everything sound BETTER then sell it for $5,000. Boo-Yah!
How about trying it yourself. Buy a $5000 dac and compare to a $50 one. Just go borrow one if you can't afford it. I owned lots log DACs from $50 to $5000.