Does high quality digital cables matter?

BlueFox

Good to see the discussion has evolved into something actually useful since jitter is common in digital audio, and it can be introduced at any point in the digital chain. While there is nothing that can be done about the jitter introduced in the recording process, the A/D portion, there are a lot of smart people working on understanding, and fixing, the jitter on the D/A side.

For the lurkers interested in learning more about the subject, here are some useful links to start with, and The Google will give you more if needed.

http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/jitter1_e.html

http://www.stereophile.com/reference/1093jitter/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitter

http://www.madronadigital.com/Library/DigitalAudioJitter.html


http://www.wolfsonmicro.com/documents/uploads/misc/en/Specifying_Jitter_Performance.pdf

Habanero Monk

headrott wrote: »

You are veering further from what was brought up in my post 2 responses prior to this one.

I have never talked about sample sizes in any response I have posted.

You said I was deflecting. I thought I would clear it up for you some.

I have spoken to sample size before, Myself, another enthusiast I know makes and N of 2, I said when I do this with ZLTFUL (before the date change from July 18th to sometime now in September) would make an N of 3.

No big deal in not catching that. There have been a lot of posts.

Habanero Monk

DarqueKnight wrote: »

Where in the system are you saying the -110 dB would be measured?

At the speaker. ArnyK lists out a method using a measurement mic. I have the Omni Mic V2. I'll mic it near field.

Although nothing leads me to believe Jitter is an issue of significance in my system.

Habanero Monk

An addendum to the above: No one knows what their system is doing, outside of their own listening, unless measured. I've measured FR and CSD of my system (and applied corrections) but not jitter.

DarqueKnight

Habanero Monk wrote: »

At the speaker. ArnyK lists out a method using a measurement mic. I have the Omni Mic V2. I'll mic it near field.

I remember ArnyK. My last interactions with him was him was a couple of years ago when he was complaining on the Polk and AVS forums about my stereo evaluation publications:

arny wrote:

You badmouthed my friends and claimed the authority to properly do that in public.

You have said, and not modified or retracted:

"ABX and blind testing proponents say that they want to apply a scientifically rigorous testing methodology to stereophonic audio in order to determine if the claimed differences in audio components actually exist. However, they ignore decades of scientifically and mathematically rigorous subjective listening techniques that were developed by the inventor and subsequent researchers in the field of stereophonic sound."

I am a blind testing proponent who you admit that you know is well known as such. That puts me on the injured party list as member of a class of people that you have publicly characterized as, for all reasonable intents and purposes, either a fool or a fraud."

I asked Arnold Krueger ("arny" on the Polk forum and "arnyK" on the avsforum) to specifically point out where I had "badmouthed" him and his friends. I also said that it was not necessary for him to engage me in the process. He could just write a strong rebuttal which would invalidate what I said. This is how he responded:

On the Polk forum:

arny wrote:

All I know is that a lot of errors were made, and I see zero interest in correcting them.

Many of the errors weren't anticipated by the papers he misinterpreted, so its not like one can just fine a reference in them that refutes his errors.

Link: A-Historical-Overview-of-Stereophonic-Blind-Testing post#133

On the AVS forum:

arnyk wrote:

My comments are based on and interestingly enough documented in the Affordable Audio article that is the topic of this discussion, which may be found at :

http://www.affordableaudio.org/aa2010-09.pdf

In this article there are many paraphrases of statements that were allegedly made by people with whom who I have had long personal and professional relationships with. Even people who don't know those people as well as well find DK.s paraphrases to be "curious" . The phrase "highly disingenuous" comes to mind.

The process of documenting the inaccuracy of really strange paraphrases is often a lengthy process because really strange paraphrases are likely to be composed of things that the authors never anticipated, simply because they are so strange. Therefore, the strange and highly disingenuous paraphrases may not clearly rebutted by anything that can be quoted.

Link: AVS Forum Thread: "2-channel-room-setup-and-listening-tests"

As for the "disingenuous paraphrases" Arnold mentioned, I wrote no such things. I specifically pointed out the direct quotations I used from the papers cited:

A-Historical-Overview-of-Stereophonic-Blind-Testing post #38

BlueFox

DarqueKnight wrote: »

I remember ArnyK.

Is he competent, or just another set in his "I know everything" ways, a la Roger Russell?

headrott

Habanero Monk wrote: »

You said I was deflecting. I thought I would clear it up for you some.

I have spoken to sample size before, Myself, another enthusiast I know makes and N of 2, I said when I do this with ZLTFUL (before the date change from July 18th to sometime now in September) would make an N of 3.

No big deal in not catching that. There have been a lot of posts.

It seems you are still deflecting..... I am referring to this:

Habanero Monk wrote: »

Been trying to close the loop on their Etherenet cables:

DIRECTIONALITY: All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality. For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music. For example, NAS to Router, Router to Network Player.

1. Ethernet, transporting packet data, isn't an audio cable. It's a data cable. No matter if it's extremely low payload email, slightly higher payload 16/44.1 audio, median payload like streaming or mpeg4, or really high bit rate found typically in H.264 / VC1 etc.

headrott wrote: »

As DK said, it is an audio cable if it is transporting audio signal (including as "data"). I will re-re-post this reply I posted way back on page 2 since perhaps you forgot about it. It clearly demonstrates that transporting data as an audio signal is more difficult and is subject to more errors than the transfer of data as graphics on a screen and refutes your thoughts that it doesn't matter what the data being transferred is. The reply from page 2 is:

headrott wrote: »

Exactly Tony. transferring and viewing computer data as 1's and 0's is "easier" for a cable than for the same cable to transmit music as 1's and 0's.

As proof, I will offer up this: A couple years ago I bought some Belden solid copper core Cat 5e ethernet cable along with RJ45 ends to install onto the ends. I also bought some RJ45 crimpers costing $75.00 (NOT cheapies). I built the Ethernet cable and hooked it up to my router to transmit my online service to my compueter (I now use wireless). The cable worked fine. tranmitted data with no hiccups.

I then hooked the same DIY ethernet cable up to my modified Denon DVD-1920 DVD/SACD player, which I installed an RJ45 output jack into and the other end hooked up to my (at the time newly built) DAC, also with an RJ45 input jack to transmit thepure DSD signalbetween the two.

The result was that while the DIY ethernet cable worked between the my router and computer without hiccups, te same cable did not work between my modified DVD-1920 and DIY DAC. The data digital signal was not passed accurately enough between the Denon player and DAC (music). The digital data signal was passed between the router and computer with "seemingly" no problems.

So, if they are just 1's and 0's and "just a digital data signal" why would one digital data signal work (between the router and computer, but not work between the Denon DVD-1920 and my DIY DAC?

Answer: there's a lot more going on with 1's and 0's than what HabiMonk and other scoffers are admitting to and/or realise.

Edit: I should point out that the same RJ45 jacks I initially installed in the Denon DVD-1920 and the DIY DAC are the same ones I used with a different ethernet cable and worked perfectly. Meaning the RJ45 jacks on the player/DAC were NOT the problem. It was the ethernet cable that was the problem and went away after switching to this cable: http://www.acoustic-revive.com/engli...lan_cable.html

Although I now use a modified Denon DVD-5910 as my DSD output player to my DAC.

Habanero Monk wrote: »

2. Ethernet cables are full duplex. They can send and receive data in either direction, at the same time, at full speed.

headrott wrote: »

AQ never stated that the audio data could not be sent in either direction. They are saying that the audio quality is improved if the signal flow is in the direction of the arrows on the cable. That is pretty straight forward by their statement, that is what they are saying.

Habanero Monk wrote: »

It would be nice to see some actual data to support their marketing claim. I've sent an email to their rep covering my area.

headrott wrote: »

Do you feel data given to you by AQ will convince you that Ethernet cables sound different?

DarqueKnight

BlueFox wrote: »

Is he competent, or just another set in his "I know everything" ways, a la Roger Russell?

In case you are not being sarcastic, I would refer you to his comments on this, and other, forums and ask that you make your own judgment. You could also just google "Arnold B. Krueger".

BlueFox

Somehow, I seemed to have missed the AK phase, and either never heard of him, or just forgot anything I read. Like a broken clock, he is probably occasionally right, but anybody who is stubborn in their beliefs in this hobby will soon be in trash bin of knowledge.

Habanero Monk

headrott wrote: »

It seems you are still deflecting..... I am referring to this:

AQ has not responded to my request for data on the Vodka RJ/E cable as of yet. I will re-send the original tomorrow. It's going from a top 5 email service account so it should be getting through. I can always call.

Ok, I re-read all of that. How am I deflecting again?

Ethernet cables, as they pertain to being connected solely switches,computer,routers etc, pass data in both directions.

These are systems designed to be fully duplex in nature.

They aren't passing audio signals. They are passing packetized data that is re-assembled in buffer by the computer that requested that data.

GB Ethernet can support 3 full bit rate H.264 streams. Or it could support music streaming, email, web-browsing, etc all at the same time. Is it an e-mail cable? Web browsing cable, Video cable? FTP cable? SSH? Telnet

If you really want to see something that is time sensitive try establishing an HTTPS / SSL socket with 400ms delay.



DK's welcome point about transporting car parts via ship makes my point:

You have two different ships show up 4 hours apart, they could have even come by different routes. They all get parts offloaded next day, cars assembled, trucked to show room.

The consumer purchasing the car is none the wiser for knowing that the parts came by two different routes and 4 hours apart.

Habanero Monk

DarqueKnight wrote: »

I remember ArnyK. My last interactions with him was him was a couple of years ago when he was complaining on the Polk and AVS forums about my stereo evaluation publications:

1. Does this have anything to do with the method he suggested about getting a jitter measurement?

2. Also where you said "Arnold B. Krueger, don't even like stereo because they consider it inferior to monophonic sound."
can I ask where you came up with as a basis for that? You may want to redact that.

ZLTFUL

One quote from Arnold is enough for me to discount pretty much anything he says.

Your smartphone is pretending its a SPL meter. You've already found out why nobody who knows what they are doing trusts SPL meters for things like balancing speakers: There is too much variation in the readings.

The right way to match levels is to presume that the speakers are identical (which of course they usually are in general, but at some detailed level they aren't), play a test toneat say 400 Hz, and measure the AC voltage across the speaker terminals. A cheap digital meter that costs as little as $5 on eBay can do the job, but the $25 ones from a big box home store are actually pretty good.

Source

One compliments the other but neither is mutually exclusive and you shouldn't discount a quality SPL meter as having too much variation.
We don't hear voltage. We hear sound pressure. But obviously off the topic of the thread.

Point being, I would take anything the person above says with a grain of salt based on the blatant misinformation advised.

ZLTFUL

Stereophile Article

The crazy thing about this ongoing debate is that listening to music is not a rational, scientific phenomenon. Who knows where the music that a composer puts on paper actually comes from, let alone the source of the inspiration with which musicians bring those notes to life? Can you explain why one interpretation of a classic song moves you to tears and another leaves you cold? Can you scientifically explain what makes your heart skip a beat?

Habanero Monk

ZLTFUL wrote: »

One quote from Arnold is enough for me to discount pretty much anything he says.



Source

One compliments the other but neither is mutually exclusive and you shouldn't discount a quality SPL meter as having too much variation.
We don't hear voltage. We hear sound pressure. But obviously off the topic of the thread.

Point being, I would take anything the person above says with a grain of salt based on the blatant misinformation advised.

Thanks for linking to the thread in question.

I wouldn't trust a phone either. I don't know if he is lumping True RTA with a certified Mic or something like the Omni-Mic or speaking to apps that turn your phone into an SPL meter. He's at AVS and you could ask for clarification. These are voltage devices and as such it's power and frequency getting converted via pistonic excitement to SPL. SPL being the final product not precluding a measurement up stream that would track.

That is why speaker sensitivity is stated as: dB/2.83v/1M (where you can find it listed). Polk doesn't mention how they come to their numbers on their flagship speaker. They just list it at 88dB.


With that said:

He's 100% correct in taking a measurement of the voltage at the speaker with a test tone and multi-meter.

I'm also not sure what you linked to has to do with what I am doing. I'm not measuring SPL per se. Now I am measuring some level of audio, I mean that's how these things work, but I am primarily measuring for side band distortion of a fundamental frequency played through.

Habanero Monk

ZLTFUL wrote: »

Stereophile Article

I've read that write up before and also listened to the audio of the discussants.

There are some glaring omissions by Mr. Serinus. IMO a lot of detail in the 2nd half of his write up is devoid of any abstract as to how they tested to make his entire effort anecdotal 'data'.

I could point out another article were Dennis Murphy, and Jim Salk either had some MIT or AQ reps (forget which company) in a room on seriously high resolution gear and couldn't pick out their own speaker cables.

Due to the nature of data networks my testing is much more natural, much less prone to error, and as less error prone harder to shoot holes through it. I think my video of the setup speaks well for its self. The end user can be in control of the complete play back mechanism with the man behind the curtain doing what he does and never a break in the audio.

The 2nd way I am thinking about doing this is with an Audience Participation system. You have a remote (can even be your phone) that has A/B/C/D/E etc buttons on it.

End user gives me their hour long play list. The remote control or a phone with the requisite A/B or A/B/C button on it.

I would put the session at 1 hour, pre-roll the A/B/C change up prior and have an audience member pull from a bag a chit that determines the times that I would make the switch.

All participants do is listen and when they hear the change press either A or B. At the end: If they hit their 13/15 they take the final determining step and state if at $350 cable was A or B.

This way I could go to a show like Polk Fest and test 1-3 people concurrently. I may do that after coming out your way.

ZLTFUL

Habanero Monk wrote: »

That is why speaker sensitivity is stated as: dB/2.83v/1M (where you can find it listed). Polk doesn't mention how they come to their numbers on their flagship speaker. They just list it at 88dB.

Actually, the shift away from db being measured at 1watt/1meter is simple marketing. The reading at 2.83v/1m is ~3db higher. Pure marketing and in no way related to some miraculous new accuracy of measurement found.

As for not using an SPL meter (read other posts from Arnold...he abhors SPL meters of all forms), we will have to agree to disagree. You can measure voltage being put out by the amplifier as Arnold alludes to all day long and all that is going to do is exclude the speakers completely from the equation. It is not going to take into account the drivers used, the crossovers, the components in those crossovers or the efficiency of all those parts. Not to mention, you can take 2 drivers that are identical in every way on the spec sheet and they can sound nothing alike. So measuring voltage from the amplifier and excluding the speakers themselves and SPL measurements, you will be hard pressed to ever get anything more than vaguely close to "dialed in".
It is an asinine methodology.

DarqueKnight

Habanero Monk wrote: »

DK's welcome point about transporting car parts via ship makes my point:

No it doesn't.

My analogy concerned someone saying they were not shipping cars due to the fact that they were disassembling the cars prior to shipment and then claiming they were shipping car parts rather than cars. Since that example was too complicated, perhaps this will get the point across:

You can't bake a cake, cut it into slices, ship all the slices to be reassembled into a whole cake, and then claim you were just shipping flour, eggs, sugar, water, and flavoring.

Habanero Monk wrote: »

You have two different ships show up 4 hours apart, they could have even come by different routes. They all get parts offloaded next day, cars assembled, trucked to show room.

The consumer purchasing the car is none the wiser for knowing that the parts came by two different routes and 4 hours apart.

Disassembling a car, shipping it, and reassembling it is not likely to change the perceptible performance of the car. In other words, the transport environment is largely irrelevant. Conversely, it is possible that an electronic signal could be perceptibly changed by different transport media, interfaces, processing gear, and the noise conditions of the network elements.

Habanero Monk wrote: »

1. Does this have anything to do with the method he suggested about getting a jitter measurement?

No. No more that you telling me you are going to Jeffrey Dahmer's house for dinner and I tell you to "watch what you eat".

Habanero Monk wrote: »

2. Also where you said "Arnold B. Krueger, don't even like stereo because they consider it inferior to monophonic sound."
can I ask where you came up with as a basis for that?

Hmmmmmm .... let's see. Oh, I know ... how about his insistence that test methods devised for monophonic signals are appropriate for stereo?

or

His preference for a type of stereo that sounds like mono. In a thread on the Hydrogenaudio forum where the question was asked, "do you prefer mono or stereo", this was his reply:

Arnold B. Krueger wrote:

Stereo. Some say that the coincident mic recordings that I like are "like mono", but I am unimpressed by the ping-pong and razor-sharp imaging they seem to prefer because I never hear that in the good seats at a live performance. That's true even if your seat is at the edge of the stage, let alone in the middle letters of the alphabet.

Source: Hydrogenaudio Forum - Stereo or Mono?

Arnold was born in 1946 and his formative years were spent listening to monophonic AM radio and monophonic records. Stereo records and playback systems became commercially available in 1957 (when Arnold was 11), but they were not commonplace until after 1968 (when Arnold was 22). Stereo FM broadcasts began in 1961 (when Arnold was 15), but they were not commonplace until after the late 1960s.

"Arny Krueger approached the dais with a seven-year history of criticizing the high-end industry, and Stereophile in particular. An audiophile since the BS (before stereo) era, the frequent poster to the rec.audio.pro and rec.audio.opinion Internet newsgroups constructed his first tube and solid-state amplifiers in 1954, and built his first ABX comparator for conducting blind tests in 1977."

Source: The Great Debate...And Then Some

and

Arnold B. Krueger wrote:

When I was a boy AM radio was the mainstream broadcast method. FM existed but hardly anybody actually listened to it. By the time I was at the university, FM had become mainstream.

Source: AVS Forum - i-wonder-if-general-modern-ears-can-even-hear-stereo-anymore

Habanero Monk wrote: »

You may want to redact that.

Still think a redaction is in order?

ZLTFUL wrote: »

One quote from Arnold is enough for me to discount pretty much anything he says.

My favorite is his often repeated claim that he "invented" ABX:

arnyk wrote:

Frog, the answer has been around for over 30 years since I invented ABX, why don't you know it?

Source: Stereophile Forum - Measurement-vs-Hearing

Arnold B. Krueger wrote:

I dumped vinyl in 1984 which was about 7 years after 1977 when I invented ABX.

Source: Hydrogenaudio Forum - ABX'ing Vinyl Transfer

Arnold did not "invent ABX". He invented a switchbox that used the ABX protocol.

DarqueKnight

Habanero Monk wrote: »

I could point out another article were Dennis Murphy, and Jim Salk either had some MIT or AQ reps (forget which company) in a room on seriously high resolution gear and couldn't pick out their own speaker cables.

Did they get fired for bringing such ill repute on their employer?

On the other hand, I thought it was common knowledge that there are lots of sales people who are not intimately knowledgeable about, and don't give a gnat's **** about, the performance details of the products they represent and sell. Often, a sales person of high end, high performance items (cars, houses, shoes, clothing, etc.) cannot even afford to buy what they are selling. They cannot relate any personal experience with what they are selling. All they can do is regurgitate a sales script.

You should post a link to the article so that we can properly critique it.

headrott

Habanero Monk wrote: »

AQ has not responded to my request for data on the Vodka RJ/E cable as of yet. I will re-send the original tomorrow. It's going from a top 5 email service account so it should be getting through. I can always call.

Ok, I re-read all of that. How am I deflecting again?

You were refering (if you remember) to it not making a difference what type of signal being sent through an ethernet cable made on the outcome of the signal. I responsed with this re-re-re-post (this is at least the 3rd time posting it ):

headrott wrote: »

Exactly Tony. transferring and viewing computer data as 1's and 0's is "easier" for a cable than for the same cable to transmit music as 1's and 0's.

As proof, I will offer up this: A couple years ago I bought some Belden solid copper core Cat 5e ethernet cable along with RJ45 ends to install onto the ends. I also bought some RJ45 crimpers costing $75.00 (NOT cheapies). I built the Ethernet cable and hooked it up to my router to transmit my online service to my compueter (I now use wireless). The cable worked fine. tranmitted data with no hiccups.

I then hooked the same DIY ethernet cable up to my modified Denon DVD-1920 DVD/SACD player, which I installed an RJ45 output jack into and the other end hooked up to my (at the time newly built) DAC, also with an RJ45 input jack to transmit thepure DSD signalbetween the two.

The result was that while the DIY ethernet cable worked between the my router and computer without hiccups, te same cable did not work between my modified DVD-1920 and DIY DAC. The data digital signal was not passed accurately enough between the Denon player and DAC (music). The digital data signal was passed between the router and computer with "seemingly" no problems.

So, if they are just 1's and 0's and "just a digital data signal" why would one digital data signal work (between the router and computer, but not work between the Denon DVD-1920 and my DIY DAC?

Answer: there's a lot more going on with 1's and 0's than what HabiMonk and other scoffers are admitting to and/or realise.

Edit: I should point out that the same RJ45 jacks I initially installed in the Denon DVD-1920 and the DIY DAC are the same ones I used with a different ethernet cable and worked perfectly. Meaning the RJ45 jacks on the player/DAC were NOT the problem. It was the ethernet cable that was the problem and went away after switching to this cable: http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/pcaudio/lan_cable.html

Although I now use a modified Denon DVD-5910 as my DSD output player to my DAC.

If you read this above reply, you will have noticed that I used the same self built ethernet cable to send :

1) a "data" signal comprised of images and colors to a computer screen through a router

2) a "data" signal comprised of digital data (a DSD signal to be exact) through two RJ45 jacks from a modified Denon DVD-1920 player to my self- built DAC.

In the first case, (the computer) the signal was sent "seemingly" unaffected by the transfer through the ethernet cable. In the second case (the modified Denon DVD-1920 SACD player) the digital signal was sent through the same ethernet cable and did not make it to the DAC to be converted to analog correctly.

this was using the exact same cable. Obviously, this clearly demonstrates that the TYPE of digital signal that is passed through the ethernet cable will make a difference on whether it makes it to the D/A conversion or not. Also, it clearly deomonstrates that NOT ALL DIGITAL "DATA" IS THE SAME. It clearly shows that depending on what digital "data" is sent through the cable, thiswill determin how precisely the "data" needs to be sent. It also shows that the cable has an effect on the transfer process, and that the cable can affect the resulting digital "data packet" you are referring to.

Can you please address this point (you seem to be deflecting from)?? We can then move on from there. Thank you.

Habanero Monk wrote: »

Ethernet cables, as they pertain to being connected solely switches,computer,routers etc, pass data in both directions.

These are systems designed to be fully duplex in nature.

They aren't passing audio signals. They are passing packetized data that is re-assembled in buffer by the computer that requested that data.

GB Ethernet can support 3 full bit rate H.264 streams. Or it could support music streaming, email, web-browsing, etc all at the same time. Is it an e-mail cable? Web browsing cable, Video cable? FTP cable? SSH? Telnet

If you really want to see something that is time sensitive try establishing an HTTPS / SSL socket with 400ms delay.



DK's welcome point about transporting car parts via ship makes my point:

You have two different ships show up 4 hours apart, they could have even come by different routes. They all get parts offloaded next day, cars assembled, trucked to show room.

The consumer purchasing the car is none the wiser for knowing that the parts came by two different routes and 4 hours apart.

DarqueKnight wrote: »

No it doesn't.

My analogy concerned someone saying they were not shipping cars due to the fact that they were disassembling the cars prior to shipment and then claiming they were shipping car parts rather than cars. Since that example was too complicated, perhaps this will get the point across:

You can't bake a cake, cut it into slices, ship all the slices to be reassembled into a whole cake, and then claim you were just shipping flour, eggs, sugar, water, and flavoring.

Disassembling a car, shipping it, and reassembling it is not likely to change the perceptible performance of the car. In other words, the transport environment is largely irrelevant. Conversely, it is possible that an electronic signal could be perceptibly changed by different transport media, interfaces, processing gear, and the noise conditions of the network elements.

Damn, that's a great response Ray.....

Habanero Monk

ZLTFUL wrote: »

Actually, the shift away from db being measured at 1watt/1meter is simple marketing. The reading at 2.83v/1m is ~3db higher. Pure marketing and in no way related to some miraculous new accuracy of measurement found.

As for not using an SPL meter (read other posts from Arnold...he abhors SPL meters of all forms), we will have to agree to disagree. You can measure voltage being put out by the amplifier as Arnold alludes to all day long and all that is going to do is exclude the speakers completely from the equation. It is not going to take into account the drivers used, the crossovers, the components in those crossovers or the efficiency of all those parts. Not to mention, you can take 2 drivers that are identical in every way on the spec sheet and they can sound nothing alike. So measuring voltage from the amplifier and excluding the speakers themselves and SPL measurements, you will be hard pressed to ever get anything more than vaguely close to "dialed in".
It is an asinine methodology.

It's not in the instance quoted because the speakers stay the same. It's the amplification that is being level matched. I'll ask Arny instead of relying on conjecture.

Habanero Monk

DarqueKnight wrote: »

No it doesn't.

My analogy concerned someone saying they were not shipping cars due to the fact that they were disassembling the cars prior to shipment and then claiming they were shipping car parts rather than cars. Since that example was too complicated, perhaps this will get the point across:

You can't bake a cake, cut it into slices, ship all the slices to be reassembled into a whole cake, and then claim you were just shipping flour, eggs, sugar, water, and flavoring.


Disassembling a car, shipping it, and reassembling it is not likely to change the perceptible performance of the car. In other words, the transport environment is largely irrelevant. Conversely, it is possible that an electronic signal could be perceptibly changed by different transport media, interfaces, processing gear, and the noise conditions of the network elements.

You are the one that use the car and ship analogy. Not me. I can't help it if people have to resort to analogies (even cake recipes which is even worse and makes ZERO sense) that show their lack of a full understanding of what is going on.

Cars and Data have the ability to be broken down into it's constituent parts and then fully reassembled. Baking a cake is an irreversible chemical process.

If you see container after container of parts, you are shipping parts. It doesn't matter. Packet data is data that is disassembled, transmitted, reassembled on the other end.

You are flat earthing this and thrashing about so wildly about data transport it's funny.

You let me know when you find there is more 'noise', directionally speaking, on a BJC vs Audioquest cable that is at a threshold of human hearing.

DarqueKnight wrote: »

Hmmmmmm .... let's see. Oh, I know ... how about his insistence that test methods devised for monophonic signals are appropriate for stereo?

or

His preference for a type of stereo that sounds like mono. In a thread on the Hydrogenaudio forum where the question was asked, "do you prefer mono or stereo", this was his reply:



Source: Hydrogenaudio Forum - Stereo or Mono?

Arnold was born in 1946 and his formative years were spent listening to monophonic AM radio and monophonic records. Stereo records and playback systems became commercially available in 1957 (when Arnold was 11), but they were not commonplace until after 1968 (when Arnold was 22). Stereo FM broadcasts began in 1961 (when Arnold was 15), but they were not commonplace until after the late 1960s.

"Arny Krueger approached the dais with a seven-year history of criticizing the high-end industry, and Stereophile in particular. An audiophile since the BS (before stereo) era, the frequent poster to the rec.audio.pro and rec.audio.opinion Internet newsgroups constructed his first tube and solid-state amplifiers in 1954, and built his first ABX comparator for conducting blind tests in 1977."

Source: The Great Debate...And Then Some

and



Source: AVS Forum - i-wonder-if-general-modern-ears-can-even-hear-stereo-anymore



Still think a redaction is in order?

I believe he has a stereo system. So yes. I've read your linked posts of his and believe your interpretation of them is as far off that mark as your understanding of packet data.

DarqueKnight wrote: »

My favorite is his often repeated claim that he "invented" ABX:



Source: Stereophile Forum - Measurement-vs-Hearing



Source: Hydrogenaudio Forum - ABX'ing Vinyl Transfer

Arnold did not "invent ABX". He invented a switchbox that used the ABX protocol.

Arny came up with a method of AB/X for audio. You are cherry picking.

Habanero Monk

headrott wrote: »

You were refering (if you remember) to it not making a difference what type of signal being sent through an ethernet cable made on the outcome of the signal. I responsed with this re-re-re-post (this is at least the 3rd time posting it ):



If you read this above reply, you will have noticed that I used the same self built ethernet cable to send :

1) a "data" signal comprised of images and colors to a computer screen through a router

2) a "data" signal comprised of digital data (a DSD signal to be exact) through two RJ45 jacks from a modified Denon DVD-1920 player to my self- built DAC.

In the first case, (the computer) the signal was sent "seemingly" unaffected by the transfer through the ethernet cable. In the second case (the modified Denon DVD-1920 SACD player) the digital signal was sent through the same ethernet cable and did not make it to the DAC to be converted to analog correctly.

this was using the exact same cable. Obviously, this clearly demonstrates that the TYPE of digital signal that is passed through the ethernet cable will make a difference on whether it makes it to the D/A conversion or not. Also, it clearly deomonstrates that NOT ALL DIGITAL "DATA" IS THE SAME. It clearly shows that depending on what digital "data" is sent through the cable, thiswill determin how precisely the "data" needs to be sent. It also shows that the cable has an effect on the transfer process, and that the cable can affect the resulting digital "data packet" you are referring to.

Can you please address this point (you seem to be deflecting from)?? We can then move on from there. Thank you.





Damn, that's a great response Ray.....

Ok, how do I know you don't suck at terminating data cable? Was the cable used for Ethernet data or other?

ZLTFUL

Conjecture? Conjecture is made up speculation from a third party. If you read his posts as you claim, you will see my "conjecture" is not speculation but direct references of his words.
More to the point, he says you don't have to actually hear the sound coming from the speakers to be able to match the output of those speakers. If you can't see how absolutely impotent that methodology is, I have little hope for your objectivity when it comes to our experiment.

As an aside, when was your last hearing test? Full frequency range identification, etc.
You tend to discount anyone else's ability to hear differences while not acknowledging that your basis may be rooted in a flawed auditory perception of your own.

Habanero Monk

ZLTFUL wrote: »

Conjecture? Conjecture is made up speculation from a third party. If you read his posts as you claim, you will see my "conjecture" is not speculation but direct references of his words.
More to the point, he says you don't have to actually hear the sound coming from the speakers to be able to match the output of those speakers. If you can't see how absolutely impotent that methodology is, I have little hope for your objectivity when it comes to our experiment.

As an aside, when was your last hearing test? Full frequency range identification, etc.
You tend to discount anyone else's ability to hear differences while not acknowledging that your basis may be rooted in a flawed auditory perception of your own.

Try as you might I'm using a measurement Mic to record a fundamental and record the distortion side bands. Arny isn't the only one that has recommended this method.

I'm looking at another where you output from the audiocard you want to measure into the input of another audio-card. I've been through both the Phillips challenge and the Harman testing. My high frequency hearing follows the predictive mean of the curve for someone that is 41 years old. So my HF loss is 17,200 and 16,800 Right/Left.

I'm not discounting your ability to hear. I'm counting on it actually.

I'm also very much open to other testing methodologies that I can implement.

So you are telling me that if I have two amps on my speakers. I play a 1Khz tone and record 10 Volts AC, that my SPL is going to be or not be the same?

villian

BlueFox wrote: »

Back in the good old days I went from plastic fiber to glass fiber, and the glass certainly sounded better. However, I do not remember the brands, and only know they were meeting whatever was required to pass musical data. Of course, at this point, this is just a piece of anecdotal data. The result could have been from the terminations, and not the plastic/glass difference.

So then the question becomes...

What is the sound of light?

villian

headrott wrote: »

Since you seem to be a "digital cable expert", you must realise that ethernet (and most digital cables) are made of wire. That is, aluminum, copper, silver, gold, or an amalgam of them. These wires (found in most digtal cables) have imperfections in them (to a greater or lesser degree based upon the type of wire used) that are caused by the milling and pulling of the wire. These imperfections are reduced in the direction it is pulled from and going to. When the imperfections are reduced, the digital signal errors are reduced when travelling the same direction as the wire is milled and pulled from. Obviously, since ethernet cables are duplex and travel in both directions, a cable manufacturer can have the wire travel in both directions that the wire is milled and pulled from to reduce the amount of introduced error in the signal. Since the amount of error is reduced in the audio signal, there is improvement in the fidelity of the audio signal. That is common sense, isn't it?

You must have already known this since you are such a "digital cable expert", however. I'm sorry to have been a bore.....

Please carry on.

Your entire post is made on the assumption of error (And a lot of it at that). Can you please explain to me how many digital signal errors are generally observed in a Cat6 cable meeting spec?

I think that what you'll find is the error rate is far less than anything that can cause a discernible difference in performance. It would take an insane amount of error to justify directional digital cables. This whole notion of "certain signals are easier for cables to transport than others" is a bunch of hogwash. A cable doesn't care about strain. It either transports the signal or it doesn't. Sure, hundreds of variables impact that ability to transport a data signal, but, none make it "Easier" or "Harder" for that cable to transport said signal. It either does or it doesn't. With the same error rate regardless.

villian

ZLTFUL wrote: »

One quote from Arnold is enough for me to discount pretty much anything he says.

Your smartphone is pretending its a SPL meter. You've already found out why nobody who knows what they are doing trusts SPL meters for things like balancing speakers: There is too much variation in the readings.

The right way to match levels is to presume that the speakers are identical (which of course they usually are in general, but at some detailed level they aren't), play a test toneat say 400 Hz, and measure the AC voltage across the speaker terminals. A cheap digital meter that costs as little as $5 on eBay can do the job, but the $25 ones from a big box home store are actually pretty good.

Source

One compliments the other but neither is mutually exclusive and you shouldn't discount a quality SPL meter as having too much variation.
We don't hear voltage. We hear sound pressure. But obviously off the topic of the thread.

Point being, I would take anything the person above says with a grain of salt based on the blatant misinformation advised.

You obviously are unable to interpret what he was talking about, because his method is actually the 100% correct method for properly balancing speakers. You measure voltage to get a true balance level. Sure, the speakers could always have an inherent non-perfectly matching output level once they are connected again where you had disconnected them to meter the voltage, BUT, the signal to that point is 100% balanced and that IS the last point before the actual conversion from electrical signal to the sound the speaker outputs. Any difference after that point is due to a variation within the speaker itself, which if present, is immeasurable and most likely minute.

And you surely never should trust an SPL meter app on a phone, that's ridiculous. I think you've just misinterpreted what he meant by "Variation". I take it as variation between readings from the same phone in the same place metering the same thing. Let's say you have phone A, and B. Same exact phone, set to meter same thing at the same time. A says it's 75db, B says it's 67db. Why? Because you're metering off a .005c USD microphone inside a cell set. IE: A total piece of ****. Most phones spec sheets list the mic's as only being sensitive up to the 80db with +- 8db of variance. No sense in metering anything you want metered properly with a mic that can't properly pick it up, let alone one that's that horrifically inaccurate.

EndersShadow

I believe Ryan was more talking about trusting say the Analog or Digital Radio Shack SPL meter rather than a phones.....

villian

The real question is:

How much Jitter exists in the Pink Floyd SACD files saved on my hard disk, right now, while my computer is off..?

When transferred from my server to my HTPC would there be more or less Jitter, once turned off again?

villian

EndersShadow wrote: »

I believe Ryan was more talking about trusting say the Analog or Digital Radio Shack SPL meter rather than a phones.....

Still garbage. Not professional level. Read the package. Total garbage (The ones from RadioShack). They meter something in the 5k to 10k range and only to 85db. +- 5db. Good luck with that.