3 ms·

Out of curiosity, how bad do your speakers need to be for a 1/64 input signal difference to be more similar than 1/64 in the output tone?

dehrmann 6y ago
I'd guess the DAC has more to do with it than the speakers because speakers should reproduces waves pretty reliably. But I'm just guessing.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  Most DACs are nearly perfect. There's an incredibly large number that will do better than 96dB of signal/noise, including the $9 Apple dongle. Electronics are highly consistent for this purpose. Speakers are up to 3 orders of magnitude worse.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    For reproducing a frequency, shouldn't speakers also be nearly perfect because of the physics involved? Yes, the frequency response might be all over the place, but does it matter when playing a tone?
    - dsr_ 6y ago
      I don't know what you mean by "because of the physics involved". Suppose you send a 440Hz square wave, amplitude -1 to +1 V, to a speaker, and use a top-quality microphone and a reasonable oscilloscope to look at the resulting wave in the air. Here are perfectly normal things that you can expect to observe: - the wave is no longer square - the beginning of each cycle (attack) is louder than the middle - the middle of the cycle is louder than the attack - the attack and decay are both ringing with new high frequencies that you didn't send in - integer multiples of the frequency are audible - the sympathetic vibration of the speaker enclosure is nearly as loud as the signal - it's very good as long as you hold the mic in exactly the right spot, but if you move it you get different distortions - the speaker catches on fire (this excludes plasma speakers, which are supposed to be on fire when active) All of these things are because of physics.
      - dehrmann 6y ago
        What I meant is that a sine wave drives the speaker at its frequency, so I'm not sure where frequency distortions would come from. Except for moving the mic and getting a doppler effect and maybe sympathetic vibration, all of those distortions retain the fundamental frequency. To the original question, I guess all these distortions might make it harder to to distinguish between similar tones. My point was that even shitty speakers should reproduce the frequency reliably.

dehrmann 6y ago

I'd guess the DAC has more to do with it than the speakers because speakers should reproduces waves pretty reliably. But I'm just guessing.

dsr_ 6y ago
Most DACs are nearly perfect. There's an incredibly large number that will do better than 96dB of signal/noise, including the $9 Apple dongle. Electronics are highly consistent for this purpose. Speakers are up to 3 orders of magnitude worse.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  For reproducing a frequency, shouldn't speakers also be nearly perfect because of the physics involved? Yes, the frequency response might be all over the place, but does it matter when playing a tone?
  - dsr_ 6y ago
    I don't know what you mean by "because of the physics involved". Suppose you send a 440Hz square wave, amplitude -1 to +1 V, to a speaker, and use a top-quality microphone and a reasonable oscilloscope to look at the resulting wave in the air. Here are perfectly normal things that you can expect to observe: - the wave is no longer square - the beginning of each cycle (attack) is louder than the middle - the middle of the cycle is louder than the attack - the attack and decay are both ringing with new high frequencies that you didn't send in - integer multiples of the frequency are audible - the sympathetic vibration of the speaker enclosure is nearly as loud as the signal - it's very good as long as you hold the mic in exactly the right spot, but if you move it you get different distortions - the speaker catches on fire (this excludes plasma speakers, which are supposed to be on fire when active) All of these things are because of physics.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      What I meant is that a sine wave drives the speaker at its frequency, so I'm not sure where frequency distortions would come from. Except for moving the mic and getting a doppler effect and maybe sympathetic vibration, all of those distortions retain the fundamental frequency. To the original question, I guess all these distortions might make it harder to to distinguish between similar tones. My point was that even shitty speakers should reproduce the frequency reliably.