5 ms·

Many years ago I knew an audiophile who got those crazy magazines and catalogues listing CD players for thousands of dollars and cables for hundreds. One CD pl

Many years ago I knew an audiophile who got those crazy magazines and catalogues listing CD players for thousands of dollars and cables for hundreds. One CD player that stood out had all sorts of sales-speak that was obviously bullpoop. For example, it said the CD player "bathes the underside of the CD in blue laser light" to make the data laser work better. There were plenty of other silly voodoo technologies this player offered. It took a while, but I explained to my friend that bits are bits. If a bit is a one, it's a one. There's no such thing as a "fancy", audiophiles-pay-more-and-get-a-better-version of one. Same with zero. I told him the bits could be written in crayon, sent across a desert on camelback, and reassembled a year later, and those same bits would still be the same bits If there are scratches and a player has to correct and guess, that's different, but if your CDs are clean and your clock is good, and you're sending bits digitally to your D/A & amp, there's literally no difference between one player and another. None. Zero. After an hour and a dozen examples, something clicked in his head and he finally understood. It was very interesting to hear how I blew his mind, and how he'd never see all the sales speak BS the same way again. As for SSDs, I can see how plenty of cheap computers have noisy electronics which can lead to noisy audio, and how power usage fluctuations can cause noise, but if putting caps on your SSD makes that better, then there are bigger problems.

polishdude20 5y ago
Yeah on the digital side, it doesn't matter much. It's when you get to the analogue side where quality matters. Although this is not mentioning the fact that past a certain point of quality, human ears can't discern the difference and it becomes more of a placebo.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  And money buys higher quality to a point, but when you get into boutique stuff you can end up fighting the fact that the volume simply isn't there to support a high-end engineering effort. That's why you can spend $2000 on a CD player and end up with something that has inferior audio quality to a launch-model PlayStation.
runnerup 5y ago
Sometimes the USB cable which connects my iPhone to my Honda Civic degrades. I have to replace it every 6 months or so. It doesn't kill the connection, but audio quality goes down very noticeably. Replacing it with a new one seems to fix it for the next half-year. Is this real? Whats the mechanism behind it?
- Matthias247 5y ago
  Likely the cable gets physically damaged, which degrades the signal integrity on the cable. Basically if the cable is cut there will not be any signal anymore, but there can also be states somewhere in between. With reduced integrity the chance of data loss or corruption during transmission increases. There are typically low level integrity checks and forward error correction used to compensate for some of that on serial links, but they can only do so much. If data is detected lost its pretty much up to the upper level protocol on what to do next: One could retransmit, do nothing, or just use the corrupted data. Since retransmission would not help audio protocols they likely will use the other options, and so you get degraded sound.
- zepolen 5y ago
  Cars are terrible environments for electronics, the temperatures in there range from freezing to sweltering and you can be sure that the tiny gauge wire in most cheap usb cables will pay the price from the constant expansion/contraction cycle day by day. This can cause resistance pockets in the wire itself especially when since it's probably continuously moved around every time you plug in the phone, further stressing the wires. Lastly condensation inside the car can corrode contacts slowly causing further signal degradation. Your best bet would be a thicker gauge wire usb cable with gold contacts.
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    Most "gold" contacts have thin gold plating (10 micrometres or thinner) which is wiped off with a few insertion/removal cycles. The gold is added by the manufacturer to prevent corrosion of the contacts during transport and storage of the cable/device prior to first use. Contacts corrode on exposure to oxidants. They can be re-made by disconnecting and reconnecting, which (if the contacts are properly designed) wipes their surfaces. I have never heard of "resistance pockets" in wire, but I suppose that could be one way of describing broken conductors inside the cable that only continue to work because the end pieces are still making contact. Until the ends corrode or the wire is flexed in a way that pulls the ends apart.

polishdude20 5y ago

Yeah on the digital side, it doesn't matter much. It's when you get to the analogue side where quality matters. Although this is not mentioning the fact that past a certain point of quality, human ears can't discern the difference and it becomes more of a placebo.

0xcde4c3db 5y ago
And money buys higher quality to a point, but when you get into boutique stuff you can end up fighting the fact that the volume simply isn't there to support a high-end engineering effort. That's why you can spend $2000 on a CD player and end up with something that has inferior audio quality to a launch-model PlayStation.

runnerup 5y ago

Sometimes the USB cable which connects my iPhone to my Honda Civic degrades. I have to replace it every 6 months or so. It doesn't kill the connection, but audio quality goes down very noticeably. Replacing it with a new one seems to fix it for the next half-year. Is this real? Whats the mechanism behind it?

Matthias247 5y ago
Likely the cable gets physically damaged, which degrades the signal integrity on the cable. Basically if the cable is cut there will not be any signal anymore, but there can also be states somewhere in between. With reduced integrity the chance of data loss or corruption during transmission increases. There are typically low level integrity checks and forward error correction used to compensate for some of that on serial links, but they can only do so much. If data is detected lost its pretty much up to the upper level protocol on what to do next: One could retransmit, do nothing, or just use the corrupted data. Since retransmission would not help audio protocols they likely will use the other options, and so you get degraded sound.
zepolen 5y ago
Cars are terrible environments for electronics, the temperatures in there range from freezing to sweltering and you can be sure that the tiny gauge wire in most cheap usb cables will pay the price from the constant expansion/contraction cycle day by day. This can cause resistance pockets in the wire itself especially when since it's probably continuously moved around every time you plug in the phone, further stressing the wires. Lastly condensation inside the car can corrode contacts slowly causing further signal degradation. Your best bet would be a thicker gauge wire usb cable with gold contacts.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  Most "gold" contacts have thin gold plating (10 micrometres or thinner) which is wiped off with a few insertion/removal cycles. The gold is added by the manufacturer to prevent corrosion of the contacts during transport and storage of the cable/device prior to first use. Contacts corrode on exposure to oxidants. They can be re-made by disconnecting and reconnecting, which (if the contacts are properly designed) wipes their surfaces. I have never heard of "resistance pockets" in wire, but I suppose that could be one way of describing broken conductors inside the cable that only continue to work because the end pieces are still making contact. Until the ends corrode or the wire is flexed in a way that pulls the ends apart.