To muddle the analogy further, in the EU (where I presume Darko is filming), natural mineral waters are required by law to include measurements of their mineral composition on the label, which is precisely what gives the water its taste.
Of course ..are required by Law.. You cannot sell Mineral Water bottle without chemical and bacteriological Analysis in an Accreditated University.. This Is in Italy and i think in entire EU.. And those Analysis set the various Waters in different Categories..!!!
But who would want to measure water, those mineral measurements tell you *nothing* about how the water actually tastes like. And you can’t measure what I taste in my extra filtered and double mineralized balanced energy water. I can taste the sunshine and the love of the person bottling the water in every sip. There’s a night and day difference. Although, this one time I forgot I had filled one of my bottles with normal tap water, meaning to give it to my dog on a hot day (as no human would actually drink tap water, disgusting) and I ended up drinking it almost empty until my wife reminded me. Naturally, I had to go vomit it all out because I just then realized how bad it tasted. For some reason, before that I thought it was their best batch so far, but I think I had a heatstroke or something, as normally I would know the difference 100/100 times double blind. I just don’t have time to do that test, obviously.
@@alkestos Well...Analisys first of all assure that you are drinking a water that is authorized for Uman use, without any bacteris, poisons or heavy metals, and you don't die after drinking..! Seconds..mineral types and quantities defines "Water Type" and terapeutics indications 'cause Minerals Waters was in the Past ( an also now) First globalized medicines and here in EU Princeps and Kings turned around most famous sources of water to cure their ills. Thus mineral composition was fondamental. Third...different Minerals and quantities give to Waters different tasting in the same way 'cause H20 is tasteless.. And waters with similar mineral compositions and similar quantities will have similar tastes. This is certain and scientific. Then everyone 'll have their own personal taste and will prefer one type to another but this is an absolutely subjective choice. Analysis and Taste given't different response or deny each other .. They are complementary to each other .. and the same is regarding measurements and listening in Audio..
Biggest paradox of the purely subjectivist crowd for me that they said measurements are mostly irrelevant and taste is subjective. But their conclusion almost always is that more expensive equipment sounds better. So their logic is that objective measurements don't count but there is one objective parameter which determine sound quality: the price.
Beyond cognitive biases, I think the purely subjectivist crowd is entrenched in a level of neuroticism. At what point do they just say that they are happy and satisfied with the sound? At what point do they say "I don't want to delve in this new obscure tweak for my own sanity". I feel like a lot of their hobby is just an excuse to engage in rampant consumerism where the consumption of gear takes priority over the consumption of music.
@@ChildrenOfDesire I think you are actually spot on with this as I've had to start fighting the urge to want to upgrade my system on a constant basis. I've finally come to the realization that my current system sounds SO much better than my old one and that I'm satisfied with how it sounds just the way that it is configured and setup today. No more upgrades for me. Now on to the living room where I need to replace my old(ish) sound bar with a cheaper and better 2 channel system. The soundbar is a DefTech WStuio Micro, which uses DTS Playfi to create a "true" 5.1 system using some DefTech wireless cubes as the rear speakers. The problem is that DTS Playfi almost never works so after 5-6 years, I'm giving up on it. For movies and TV the soundbar does a really, really good job but for music it sounds incredibly thin. Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?
I’m a computer engineer & IT director and I never find fault in your reviews and assessments. Love the work you are doing debunking false conspiracies in audio marketing. Keep up the great work!
Funny. Both tap water and bottled water are continuously measured during production to ensure quality and the absence of biological organisms or other contaminents. Regular tasting is done by some companies, but never before measurements (sensor readings and lab testing of samples) confirm it is okay to drink.
Excellent point. In that regard me reviewing audio gear with measurements plays the same oversight role that government safety boards have. And sadly, doesn't exist much among typical audio reiewer.
Surprisingly the analogy is just complete opposite of the point he thinks he’s making. The irony is as delicious as the tastiest mineral water. (See what I did there? Mineral water is not very delicious at all, so I ended up making the opposite point I wanted to with my poor analogy, like the guy in the video and… okay I’ll show myself out.)
@@alkestos I just watched the first 10 minutes of Darko's video. His analogy indeed fails, the water is about subjective comparison, what does one like the best. We could extend that to music, what style does one like the best. But towards audio gear, there is a demonstrable and measurable quality of reproduction that we can measure. We can objectively determine what gear has the best reproduction. Some might like the distortions created by certain equipment, like tube amps, and some might not. These distortions can be measured and demonstrated, it's not some magic ability of our auditory system that lets us differentiate between such systems and that supposedly cannot be measured.
Outstanding and essential explanation. So many are confused about the differences, pros and cons, and basics of analog vs. digital that it has opened yet another window for the sale of pseudo electronics like "audiophile ethernet cables" and anti-jitter devices that cost a lot but do nothing. Thanks again Amir for adding to the education of your audio enthusiast audience.
At this point people need to realise that channels like Darko are just salesmen pitching to you. A lot of channels are like that now unfortunately, We have been duped into watching long adverts.
Thanks for this Amir! It shocks the conscience that audiophile reviewers refuse to address all the cognitive biases and flaws of subjective reviews while listing so many reasons objective measurements are flawed.
Darko is a likeable salesman - to me anyway. He is also fun to watch. I don't take what he tries to sell seriously. Most of his review products are out of my price range. Production is very slick , so I think credit is due when earned. If I want real information beyond the subjective opinion I come to this channel . Thanks to ASR , I have learned a lot of good/useful information.
Right on all fronts. Can you imagine the positive effect he could have if he put those talents toward speaker the truth in audio technology? FYI I reached out to him prior to production of this video offering to get on his podcast. Sadly he turned me down.
@@AudioScienceReview I cannot imagine him giving deep solid scientific evidence based information. It's just not his thing and probably for most of his subscribers. He sells dreams...
@@AudioScienceReview I am disappointed he turned you down. We could really do with a coming together of subjectivist and objectivists trying to understand each others point of view. Or not, as the case may be
Great video Amir! My issue with Darko has always been that he takes money to advertise the same products he reviews which is a blatant conflict of interest not to mention money fueled confirmation bias. So no surprise that he always finds the most expensive brands to be the best performers.
@@AudioScienceReview it depends whether the relationship he has with the brand sustains a bad review and I suspect with him it does because he is clearly a people person. How would it be that he has given the dac magic 200m a bad review but is then receiving further product from them if that wasn’t the case? He operates in a market in which it is hard to say bad of products for which he is sponsored, but wouldn’t that be the case in every commercial market, and judging what he earns from UA-cam with his following, even with just a few long terms sponsors he will make a good living, so adding to a sense of credibility.
Excellent conference. Learned a lot! BTW, the other day I had to laugh at an extremely expensive DAC because the manufacturer said that its design helped avoid digital problems that are so subtle that they can’t be measured. I asked myself: If the problems are so subtle that they can’t be measured, how can your “hear” them? As you implied and mentioned, they, as many other manufacturers, rely on the “if it is very,very expensive, then it must be much better” mantra. Thanks for your excellent service.
Love the great debunking Amir. As they say... "hater's gonna hate!" So many of us love what you are doing, helping to educate the massively fragmented HiFi community.
Darko’s channel (and most the others) absolutely relies on support from the audio manufacturers, and maintaining the illusion of some kind of mysticism in hifi. Luckily for the UA-camrs and hifi manufacturers, there are still enough gullible people with money burning a hole in their pocket to sustain this bullshit.
True, and it’s quite obvious in Darko’s case with the promotions. He’s not hiding it as such - his channel is corporate advertising in its purest form and nothing much else. That is what pays the bills for him.
Just like ASR rely on people dumb enough to believe that human hearing can be modelized entirely on a frequency response graph. Everything that you hear and that cannot obviously be seen on the graph is an hallucination
I follow this kind of channels only for finding out the producers or new releases. Basically volunteering for ads lol. Not for a purchase decision though.
As someone who's been sending digital data back and fore as my job since I left school, often over hundreds of metres of 20+ year old unshelded cable wrapped around 400 volt unshielded power cable buried in asbestos cladding that would make your grandmother cry, this video is a masterclass. Luckily for me I am still within the 30 day amazon prime return window on the 0.5metre £7543 Cat9dd ethernet cable so I think I will be sending that back for a no quibble prime refund. Thanks Amir if I ever meet you I would like to buy you a pint (and let you measure my 30+ year old Wadia DAC though I know I am not gonna like the measurement results!!) :D
Amir certainly makes enemies from all other UA-cam influencers that have a vested interest in propagating BS marketing nonsense that goes contrary to basic measurement. Critical ears certainly help, but there is so much hype in high end audio products that it is super valuable to have objective measurement. Can there be rare circumstances where Amir might miss the mark? Sure, but that is science and he would probably be the first to admit a flawed test. That said, I wish there were more Amirs that really tickle my early electrical engineering training when I were a young pup. Solid vetted science usually wins the day. We need a handful more Amirs in this space to measure spectrums and 1's and 0's. Keep up the good fight, Amir!
I once argued with darko in the comments about expensive usb cables... This guy seriously believes that 1k usb cables sound better than normal ones lol
I just bought a $170 USB cable that arrived today. (To compare against my freebie I've been using for a while.) They both sound musical when I play music through them. Other than that, I will be doing some more AB testing, and afterwards may gouge my eyes out with sharpened spoons. But hey, it's helping me pass the time through some tough life situations going on right now lol
@@AudioScienceReview that's disappointing as he recently had GoldenSound on talking about measurements. I would very much like to hear a constructive discussion between you and John.
@@1SourceAudio That's because GoldenSound is an even bigger shiller. You can replace all products he reviews with an apple dongle and I'm 100 percent sure he wouldn't be able to differentiate it in a blind test.
Amazing introductory masterclass on digital audio Amir! You address all the important issues and questions that today's audio consumer will come accross when designing their digital audio sub-system in a very clear, concise and structured manner. All that along with a couple of slap downs at John Darko that naturally arise from the nonsense that he usually blabbers. Your video is a must watch. Furthermore, the analogy that Darko makes about bottled water is more pure nonsense and the analogy with which Darko shoots himself in the foot. Water wells and spring water sources can become contaminated over time with dangerous toxins, which is why such sources are constantly tested and analyzed by governmental environmental agencies, i.e. MEASUREMENTS! Your subjective taste buds won't be able to tell in many cases when the water has become unsafe to drink.
About the Great analogy, Also wines have to be controlled. I would not make my choice based on the lab report though. Not shure Darko shoots himself in the foot 😜, are you?
These videos and explanations are absolutely great. You perfectly describe and demonstrate concepts I’ve internally understood but have been unable to communicate to others for years. Sharing your videos is my new go-to solution for dispelling audio woo and my new tool for reinforcing the concepts you discuss. Thanks!
I went the rounds with Darko over Ethernet cabling. His solution wasn't to provide better information, it was to delete the information I was providing. He's 1/3 of the holy trinity of bullschiit artistry with Hans Beekhuyzen and Alex Crespi that prompted me to make my own series of videos debunking their claims about data networking as it relates to audio reproduction.
It is disappointing that he doesn't accept new information/counter points. I offered to go on his podcast to explain these things but he turned me down.
Darko is toe-curlingly embarrassing. The water analogy was, in fact, one of his better attempts to pour scorn on anyone who thinks audio manufacturers should back up their claims. If Darko, or his sponsors, decide something isn't worth it, it's USELESS or DEAD (see hi res audio). If Darko, or his sponsors, have a new product to debut, then it's The Future of Hi-Fi TM. His highly polished, uber-professional videos are all gloss and preen, but if you dare to disagree, or even raise a query, it's like the Eye of Sauron has turned its wrath on you.
Amir, Your educational videos are truly on target. Ethan Winer has also debunked much of the hoopla about jitter by simulating jitter in audio files to determine if you can actually hear it. He has posted the audio files on his website. Winer also wrote a recent article in AudioXpress on the topic. BTW, although timing errors seem to not matter much in terms of audibility, what about the DAC's interpretation of audio levels? The reason for R2R DACs is supposedly to eliminate this problem, which is probably also a non-problem in terms of audibility. Anyway, thanks for a very clear and technically accurate video!
Another very very interesting and full of enlightenment session. Bravo Amir!!! I am using the chance to raise a topic. Recently, I got an iFi Pro iDSD - it is a wonderful device, a superb dac, and has upscaling capabilities. I cannot decide if I should do upscaling or not. For example PCM audio file - is it good (better) to upscale to DSD512 or even DSD1024; what is the value of doing that if I am not sending the signal to another dac and I am listening with headphones from the iDSD? I can understand the upscaling of 'old audio files' that are just 16 or 20 khz but should I upscale 44.1 or 96 khz to DSD512/1024. Frankly, sometimes upscaling makes changes that are audible - smooths the sound or makes some tones more full of body or sharper. I think lots greenhorns will appreciate if you do a review on that?
Thank you for such an excellent overview and explanation. Clear, understandable, valuable information that addresses and corrects most of the misinformation being spread by audio component reviewers and bloggers.
That MOMENT at around 4:22~ ... instant realization of " WHY " Digital ... 0 and 1 ...on and off ... resilience LOL Amir i am certain you don't even realize how good you are at simply explaining things ... I seriously just realized WHY Digital is so good, simply watching you explain stuff that is probably very basic and low level for you . ( ok i'm late commenting sorry ..watched it the day it got out forgot to comment ) Again another superb video, with plenty of learning spread through it all. Thanks for taking time of making this !! Much appreciated !!! 👍👍👍
👍. Good stuff as usual bud. One of the best parts of all your videos is that you truly don't make your particular perspective and/or critique personal. 👍 Moreover, your articulation of the subject matter is superb. 🏆 Thanks for your efforts.
John Darkos channel is useful to view when considering buying equipment, alongside other reviews on UA-cam and in the specialist press etc. On the one hand he does have a valid point with the water in that its what the gear sounds like that matters rather than how it measures, but on the other hand there is far more difference in audio gear than in mineral water and, fundamentally, the water is most definitely measured. It has to be analysed for content before being allowed to be sold! You are at odds with him because your channels validity is based on measurement. Nothing wrong with that of course. There are similarities with buying a new car. You check out the specs then drive it and if you like it, try to get a good deal. You don't rely of specs alone.
One additional point on where not all "bits are bits" is that streaming SERVICES usually have an automatic feature to throttle the data throughput on slow connections. And the client/server connection is often finicky: if there's some small hiccup or sudden burst of other network traffic between your device, router, or ISP and the service's cloud storage, it may to automatically switch, mid-stream, to sending you a worse-quality, smaller audio file (albeit still a bit-perfect copy of it). The same reason Netflix, Prime Video, and (especially) HBOMax go all blurry sometimes. This might be user-defeatable, like on Spotify's phone and desktop apps there are multiple things to turn off in the settings, but you have to look for it. With some streamers, e.g. my AVR with Spotify Connect, there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it from throttling if something triggers the internal software to think it has a slow internet connection. So, -sometimes- people are hearing legitimate-yet-subtle differences between streamers, but not for any reasons that the manufacturers advertise. And the real problem is probably that cheap little wifi router that Comcast gives you that's sitting on the floor on the far side of the house.
The best analogy I can come up with is imagine someone reading you a math problem. It doesn't matter if I tell you to add 10+4 or James Earl Jones asks you. You're still going to come up with 14. And at some point if the speaking is so distorted that you cannot understand it, you're not going to come up with 14.00001 or 13.9999, you're just not going to have an answer at all. That's VERY similar to how digital audio works. Sure, the voice itself is analog, but the answer isn't dependent on the precision of the analog signal until it becomes completely unrecognizable.
@@Fl3xo2d and yet it's still amazingly reliable. And as amir says if there are issues you'll hear them and then you'll just get equipment that isn't broken and it will go away.
Love your passionate and competent work Amir, is a fortune there are competent and trusted people like you (and other moderators) and fora like ASR who can educate us in choosing the best gears (or simply learn how to evaluate the performance of our gears). Keep going on this way please. Best regards from Italy !
In the 70's we could find deep measurements in magazines, until shareholders stopped it. As long as Amir has no shareholders he is helping tons of people learn to not believe in b.sh.t marketing
Thank you Amir. Yet another great presentation. In engineering we have simple paradigm : knowledge->methodology->discipline-> verification. You show expertise across all. Others sell voodoo based on subjective opinions, especially in HIFI.
Thanks so much for educating us lay people on digital audio. It's amazing when one's experiences at simply listening to music does not jibe with audiophile notions. I constantly hear that computer audio is terrible and running it over USB just makes it worse. However, I can play my CD player using it as a transport and sending the signal to my SMSL SU9 DAC and then play the same song using on my computer from a FLAC file over USB to the DAC and guess what, each song sounds virtually the same. If computers and USB are so bad, shouldn't I easily be able to hear all the problems with noise, power supply, and jitter that my computer is giving off?
What about jitter in toslink from TV out? Dacs clean it, right but PLL also introduces noise on its own, that maybe isn't revealed in the 12 KHz tone. And then why people say streamers digital outs sound better than TV's? Because the clock is better to begin with, you don't have to 'clean it'. Some dacs like SMSL have a DPLL setting, which acording to the manual says: "When the clock stability of the input signal is good, this value can be reduced, so that the clock performance of the system is better. The PLL chip achieves a balance between anti clock jitter and input tolerance". And how does the AP simulate jitter for the test, if its SPDIF is so good? Is simulated jitter the same as real jitter?
You are asking a lot of questions there for a youtube comment. :) Briefly, I measure Toslink on DACs and I have yet to see one that is a cause for audible concern. Some are better than others though. The traditional comment about Toslink having more jitter may be true but DACs even with standard PLL have no trouble cleaning it up to lock to it. Fancier PLLs can be used which give you a trade off between lock time (how fast it switches sample rates) vs jitter reduction. I have played with these as well and still can't make a case of audible difference.
@@amirmajidimehr640 I see but if there is a PLL strength setting it means you'd get better performance with a better timed spdif, otherwise why offer it. It'd be interesting to test this tradeoff with the AP.
Amir, well done on continuing to confuse the issues with the facts. I wonder though, how many lay people will pay attention. I love that ASR continues to educate people on the quality aspect of expensive “snake oil”. Keep up the great work, and thank you.
Thanks. I used to think this was a lost cause. But the more I do these videos, the more I get feedback from people who where going to buy this and that and no longer want to do so. And that they had their doubts but lacked the technical background to challenge the other side.
1:00 My father was a Chemist. Not needing to measure water is total nonsense. pH, surface tension, PPM, etc. are all useful stats to know about water purity. Just because taste is subjective does NOT imply that we should just blindly ignore the goal of trying to objectively measure water to help understand WHY and HOW water tastes the way it does. i.e. When you have water filtered through an Reverse Osmosis System it will taste a certain way. My father suspected that even the bond angle on water showed variation because he was getting a *non-associative property with different kinds of water* which demonstrated that there are large variations in water that we still don’t understand. Darko unfortunately completely ignorant about Chemistry. He should stick to topics he knows about.
There was no real issue of testing water, it was an analogy. That said you'd taste water to decide which had the best flavor. If you know a measuring device for flavor other than a human please share.
@@johnsmith1474 It's true that one would taste water to determine which one you like the most, but at the same time we can't rely on the subjective claims from any other person, sponsored or not. Not only that, it has been demonstrated that we can't even trust our own senses. E.g. in the British tv program "Eat Well for Less" where people have to live a week on food packaged in blank packaging, most swapped with alternatives, some their usual brand and type. It's almost every episode that people will say that they really don't like a certain food or drink, and then to be told it is not swapped but it's their usual (favourite) brand.
@@johnsmith1474 To add: many of the claims made by such reviewers are about objective parameters. If we can demonstrate no objective difference in the signal delivered by usb cable A and cable B through measurements, we know the claims to be false. And for (digital) audio equipment it's much easier to measure compared to water, because we know what changes in the signal are audible, but we can't measure or test for every possible aromatic molecule in water.
@@johnsmith1474 with high certainty, it is possible repeatedly to PRODUCE equally tasting water samples based on their identical chemical (and biological) components / parameters, that's how a science works 😀. Reproducible results everywhere and everytime, with precise methodical, non-biased, and measurable input and output parameters.
I just watched his video. I don't think he knows anything about anything, except selling snake oil. Therefore I think, in a way he is following your advice.
You can certainly analyze any electrical waveform using methods for measuring analog signals (I did it intensively as an electrical engineering student when the world was largely analog) and it does make it possible to understand it, you can do things with digital signals you can't do with analog signals. You can restore its shape using s Schmitt trigger. You can restore its timing errors after transmission using dejittering and reclocking circuits. You can turn it into a series of light pulses and send it through a fiber optic thinner than a human hair for thousands of miles without degradation. You can transmit data from beyond pluto yielding crystal clear images. You can send many hundreds of digitally encoded high definition video signals over long distances with a fiber optic and then a few hundred feet with a coaxial cable. With analog you'd be lucky to send even one NTSC analog channel much over a mile or two with a wire. And you can detect and correct errors in the rare circumstances they occur. Another advantage of digital signals is they almost always work perfectly or they don't work at all. Therefore I reluctantly had to admit that for many reasons signals in the digital domain could be far preferable to using the analog domain, especially for the transmission, storage and retrieval of analog waveforms. And one more thing you can do with digital that you can't do with analog, you can set arbitrary limits to performance that you can meet. One thing untrained audiophiles in the fields of electrical engineering including information theory and information theory don't understand is that there is a finite limit beyond which improved performance while technically possible is of no value to them and only adds to cost. Another is that in the process of converting analog to digital and digital to analog there can be variances in the analog domain that are audible and often correctable using the very powerful tool of equalization which can be performed in either the analog or digital domain. The analog methods of analysis using frequency response, noise, and distortion still are valid. Based on my analysis RBCD standards meet all these criteria for audiophile applications in the digital domain.
Don't know if it's mentioned in the video since I didn't watch it all but modulating a digital value into an analog signal doesn't mean that noise or distortion will translate into the data getting corrupted, that's precisely the point of sending digital information in the first place. Digital transmissions are not a flow of the raw data you want to transmit but they're encoded with error detecting and correcting systems. These are just mathematical tricks used to detect data corruption, like (in the simplest form) adding a parity bit: if one bit is flipped during transmission then the number of 1s won't be even anymore so it's clear that that package needs to be resent. There are much more complex codes that not only allow for error detection but also correction. So a high number of transmission errors would result in a slower data rate due to more bandwidth being used to resend the same package multiple times. You can check this yourself by looking at the status information of a data connection: the lower the signal intensity is, the lower the available bandwidth. Low quality signal means more error rate, and thus a lot of retries that take time that could be used to send more packages with less tries per package. But the data is either valid or resent, not mistaken by valid when it's corrupted.
5:15 It is usual to allow some tolerance in the voltage levels used; for example, 0 to 2 volts might represent logic 0, and 3 to 5 volts logic 1. A voltage of 2 to 3 volts would be invalid and occur only in a fault condition or during a logic level transition.
First, yes I want my water measured to ensure it doesn’t have stuff it should not have in it. Yeah preferences vary but there should be no harm. Second, yes measurements of mineral contents etc can inform how water will taste if you know what the correlations are. Third, if the water claims health benefits, I want to know if there is any basis for it and if so if the water actually has the ingredients that cause that benefits. All are analogous to why measurements are needed in audio.
19:55 I would say the bits are still bits, but the analog portion of the DAC (its in the name, after all) is still subject to the same issues as any other analog device. If noise bleeds into it, it will naturally get through to the audio. Stating it this way at least makes it clear that its not the data itself that is to blame per se as audiophiles might suggest, but poor analog design and interference via ground loops, PC bus noise, etc. In my mind I always segregate the two when diagnosing noise or interference since a PC always follows my speakers around, but the general audio community seems to conflate them together. Noisy DAC = Digital audio bad. Tubes and record player good! But the reality is designing quiet analog circuitry is a pain. Designing quiet analog circuitry that has to share real estate with a DC-DC switching converter and a bunch of digital circuitry takes that to another level. Of course there can be issues with the digital portion of the design as you elaborate on, but usually its the part where it turns into a squiggly wave that we can hear that most of the issues crop up.
Exactly this! There are so many dodgy products that are designed to a DAC's datasheet spec but lacking a clear understanding of the various ground paths (analogue and digital), how they induce noise in the DAC, in its PLL, in its references, or at its outputs. As a former PCB designer (but not for audio), I always told people "You need to understand where the electrons go". Thinking deeply about that can solve a lot of issues caused by system noise.
I agree. Bits are still bits. The noise may have been there when the analog was converted to digital at the start perhaps? What about the parity bit? Isn't that used?
Science vs Religion. The discussion will keep going for as long as people believe/prefer in fiction over fact. And just like the TV evangelists, money drives the religious factions.
What I’m curious about are the preamps built into these dacs and streamers. What is happening after the conversion to analog before it is sent to the amp and how does that impact sound quality.
There are two types of pre-amps or I should say volume control. One is inside the DAC chip itself. That control works superbly and has no degradation. Some do it externally but this is quite rare. Depending on what they do there, sometimes distortion is increased. In general, I would not hesitate to use these DACs as pre-amps. Adding another box just adds more noise and distortion although it is necessary if you have multiple sources.
@@AudioScienceReview That is really interesting as I have also heard that cited as explanation for changes in sound quality and character between dacs. I was just experimenting with running a Schiit Modi 3+ through my Anthem STR integrated in HT bypass mode controlling the volume from my MacBook connected via USB. Volume starts playing quite loud at 70 db at the lowest setting and sounds brighter and a bit harsher than connecting MacBook usb > Anthem STR USB in (internal dac). Is this a product of poor gain matching? Am I overdriving the usb input?
I’m very grateful to this channel, and a few others, for providing objective measurements and explaining the science behind the technology of the hobby that I enjoy. This information was missing from the hobby space, mostly, until relatively recently, and even when a publication did provide measurements, it was done mostly, in my opinion, as a way to lend credence to the subjective opinions being offered. I don’t mind, mostly, the subjective reviewers, Some of them provide useful information, provided they tell viewers what their preferences and biases are, which a few do. But when they are hostile to science and measurements, or try to “debunk” the validity of measurements, then they open themselves up to rebuttal. I’m again grateful to Amir and others like him (not many!) who take the time to explain whether the criticism is valid or not.
This educational series of videos is the absolute bomb (much more interesting to me than individual product reviews - though they have an important role too). I'd be interested to hear an explanation into more of the details of how digital audio is communicated over a S/PDIF connection, what bi-phase mark encoding is and that the samples sent over an S/PDIF connection are actually arranged into blocks with control words sent with each block. Such information is of no real practical use to the consumer, of course, yet it makes it much easier to realise what utter rubbish many (most) audio salesmen & industry apologists spout when trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.
Thank you for kind words. Thanks for the suggestion. Alas, that level of detail I think is way too technical for what I am trying to do. There are so many high level topics that I have yet to cover that i don't' see me getting to next deep dive anytime soon.
@@AudioScienceReview Thanks for your reply to my humble suggestion! That's fair enough and quite understandable. Maybe consider mentioning a few terms people can look into when there are deeper layers ? Kind of 'if you're interested, then look into X, Y and Z'. Anyway - these videos are great, I'm just a hobbyist and make all my own kit and while I've studied the topic for decades I _always_ learn things or gain insight from your videos. :)
@@HandbrakeBiscuit I’m afraid that level of detail stops with Amir indeed and answers should be found by communicating with well experienced audio engineers who design with the intention of improving sound quality. A journalist just performing measurements cannot help you.
@@peterzuiderveld2979 I know this stuff already, and the things I mentioned are actually built into the standard way a 'humble' Sony/Philips Digital Interface has worked since its launch. It isn't something that audio engineers are actively designing (a DAC designer couldn't just change what his device expects about the format of what a streamer or CD transport sends to it, could he?). The point of my suggestion was that if consumers _knew_ just how involved the pattern of hi/lo pulses really was, and why, it would help them see through the various marketing claims and salesman patter. Amir clearly knows about and understands such concepts too - it comes across as condescending for you to describe him as 'a journalist just performing measurements' then trying to infer that he doesn't know.
19:40 thanks for talking about GPU noise I have been dealing with that with my topping DAC and AMP, i have been searching for way to deal with it without throwing away my setup
As I recall, several years ago there was something of a scandal when one of the great, French bottled waters contained clinically significant levels of benzine, despite the fact that the taste was not apparently affected. So the most important thing about testing is knowing what the test you are doing actually measures and whether that is relevant to the outcome.
Another good video. I can report that in my home system, I have a 10 meter (~30 ft) digital coax cable connecting one of my integrated amps to a source, and I can report that I never had any noticeable data error, even in that distance - after almost a year of regular use.
This explains why high quality vinyl recordings on UA-cam still retains that beautiful "analogue sound" playing through my audio interface, to my vintage amp and speakers.
Another really good video just like being at school many thanks as always. I will say this I have some heavy well made gear but I still know that a cheap CD player used as a transport is not going to sound worse than a high-end transport, I do chuckle when reviewers say this transport sound better than that one...
Hi, Amir! How can you explain the fact that the same DAC connected via USB to different computers loaded with different OSes, Windows or specialized audio OS, playing same audiofiles sounds differently, and that differs only from PC to PC, regardless to OS? When I discovered that, I've overheard all my notebooks and one of them sounded frankly dirty (regardless of OS and player) and at the end I chose the one that sounded most clear, but mostly clear sounded my friend's Macbook Pro. And he also easily heard that difference. Nay, we used two different DACs in our test and had the same effect.
You mention in ...most all of... your reviews that some digital (or analog) artifact is "well below the threshold of hearing". I understand that. But, if the jitter "spikes" shown in this video ( at 2kHz. 4kHz, etc ) occur over audio that's playing at that same frequency, wouldn't that ...boost(?) the amplitude (or cancel out in the case of being out-of-phase) of the audio? Couldn't that then be perceived as "bright" or having a "more subdued midrange" or {insert other standard audiophile BS adjectives here}? I understand that the decibel is a logarithmic scale, but if some artifact or bit of distortion has a measurable amplitude -- even if beyond our hearing threshold, wouldn't that be added to the signal? Or, is it *because* it's a logarithmic scale, the resultant of the two "waveforms" is negligible? Would this be a good use of the DeltaWave software to show differences, say, between the SPDIF and USB outputs of the same source? ;)
You are right that they would add in. But their levels are so small as to not make any change that is material. And yes, it is because it is a log function. Without it, those spikes would not even be visible in such a scale. Yes, in theory we could conduct nulling tests. The previous versions of Deltawave though could not handle dynamic clocking drifts that occur in these situations. There is a new version which should help with this and if so, we can do the null tests.
I used a RPi with an Apple dongle for my speakers. DSP room correction and equalisation. Works for me. With USB/network you usually know when there's a problem. It's not subtle.
Is an optional 'femto clock' a gimmick? People claim they can ear a difference with an outboard femto clock.... what's your take on this subject? Thanks, appreciated 🙋
Yes, it is a gimmic. In audio, we don't care about accuracy like you would in a clock. If your music plays 0.01% slower or faster, you would not even notice nor care. What we do care about is variation in clock. That, creates noise and jitter. So it matters not what the clock is. What matters is that measured jitter is below the noise floor of the system.
I have tested it and it provides no audible advantage. I2S was an internal chip to chip connection, not something to bring out of the box. It is just adds cost with no benefit.
It's very helpful to understand where things start and how to remedy them if necessary. Keeping in mind there are still misconceptions and false myths.
On ebay. They are surprisingly hard to find but if you check from time to time, you will see them. Note that there are a lot of plastic ones. you want the ones that are ceramic.
Really great video packed with common sense backed up by scepticism and careful measurement! It does seem that the quality of the DAC is pretty important whereas the quality of a digital signal source is less so since ‘ bits are bits ‘. This is quite hard for us oldies brought up on record players to grasp - with those, the quality of the analogue signal source is absolutely everything. This video makes me wonder about the modern trend to CD transports being separate from DACS. Are the buyers simply wasting their money on expensive CD transports? I have some personal experience to support this thesis. When the drive of my very expensive Audiolab 8200CD player became faulty, the replacement drive was simply a common or garden Sony unit costing about $50! Before that, I’d fed the digital Toslink output of a moderately priced Pioneer CD player into a separate DAC and found the audio quality was much better. To my mind this suggested the actual CD drive itself was not so critical : ‘bits are bits’ after all. Keep up your excellent thought-provoking (and maybe money-saving) reviews, please!
Are you saying fortune cookies are worthless!!!😊😊😊😊 so good to hear a smart educated person talk about audio, I was thinking of getting the Onkyo TX-RZ70 I wonder if it’s as badly designed as the RZ50 that you mentioned… Thank you for your smart analysis 😊😊
if we measure something and the difference is below the threshold of hearing, and then ABXed it and hear the difference anyway, does this mean that we have the wrong idea about where the threshold of hearing is, or that we are measuring the wrong thing?
Thanks, I enjoy learning from you. Also, there are too many products for the average audiophile to evaluate, so I watch your videos to get an idea of which ones add value to my listening experience.
I am still listening to a Marantz 2325 , Klipsch k- horns, with Klipsch Belle’s running in back on B so I run A+B speakers and I’m sure everything comes out as analog . I can tell the better the source the better the sound but it is still coming out as analog ! Sounds fantastic, you can only hear so much anyway. I don’t plan on any up grades !
I'm a bit confused by how jitter turns into noise. I guess I don't really understand jitter but I'd assume it would ... well I don't know. I guess it distorts the waveforms because things aren't where they should be when they're supposed to be there?
If jitter is random, it produces random noise. If we have a single tone jitter, it creates two sidebands, one on each side of our main tone. Random noise has infinite spectrum so generates infinite random sidebands and hence, it is random.
Darko's channel is useful for getting pictures of how equipment looks in a living room.
He’s winging it for sure
Spot on! 😅
To muddle the analogy further, in the EU (where I presume Darko is filming), natural mineral waters are required by law to include measurements of their mineral composition on the label, which is precisely what gives the water its taste.
he is based in Berlin, Germany.
Of course ..are required by Law..
You cannot sell Mineral Water bottle without chemical and bacteriological Analysis in an Accreditated University..
This Is in Italy and i think in entire EU..
And those Analysis set the various Waters in different Categories..!!!
But who would want to measure water, those mineral measurements tell you *nothing* about how the water actually tastes like. And you can’t measure what I taste in my extra filtered and double mineralized balanced energy water. I can taste the sunshine and the love of the person bottling the water in every sip. There’s a night and day difference. Although, this one time I forgot I had filled one of my bottles with normal tap water, meaning to give it to my dog on a hot day (as no human would actually drink tap water, disgusting) and I ended up drinking it almost empty until my wife reminded me. Naturally, I had to go vomit it all out because I just then realized how bad it tasted. For some reason, before that I thought it was their best batch so far, but I think I had a heatstroke or something, as normally I would know the difference 100/100 times double blind. I just don’t have time to do that test, obviously.
@@alkestos Well...Analisys first of all assure that you are drinking a water that is authorized for Uman use, without any bacteris, poisons or heavy metals, and you don't die after drinking..!
Seconds..mineral types and quantities defines "Water Type" and terapeutics indications 'cause Minerals Waters was in the Past ( an also now) First globalized medicines and here in EU Princeps and Kings turned around most famous sources of water to cure their ills.
Thus mineral composition was fondamental.
Third...different Minerals and quantities give to Waters different tasting in the same way 'cause H20 is tasteless..
And waters with similar mineral compositions and similar quantities will have similar tastes.
This is certain and scientific.
Then everyone 'll have their own personal taste and will prefer one type to another but this is an absolutely subjective choice.
Analysis and Taste given't different response or deny each other ..
They are complementary to each other .. and the same is regarding measurements and listening in Audio..
@@alkestos Oh yes you can. One of many cases in point: Sodium rich waters, or Calcium rich. Etc.
Biggest paradox of the purely subjectivist crowd for me that they said measurements are mostly irrelevant and taste is subjective. But their conclusion almost always is that more expensive equipment sounds better. So their logic is that objective measurements don't count but there is one objective parameter which determine sound quality: the price.
Beyond cognitive biases, I think the purely subjectivist crowd is entrenched in a level of neuroticism. At what point do they just say that they are happy and satisfied with the sound? At what point do they say "I don't want to delve in this new obscure tweak for my own sanity". I feel like a lot of their hobby is just an excuse to engage in rampant consumerism where the consumption of gear takes priority over the consumption of music.
@@ChildrenOfDesire I think you are actually spot on with this as I've had to start fighting the urge to want to upgrade my system on a constant basis. I've finally come to the realization that my current system sounds SO much better than my old one and that I'm satisfied with how it sounds just the way that it is configured and setup today. No more upgrades for me. Now on to the living room where I need to replace my old(ish) sound bar with a cheaper and better 2 channel system. The soundbar is a DefTech WStuio Micro, which uses DTS Playfi to create a "true" 5.1 system using some DefTech wireless cubes as the rear speakers. The problem is that DTS Playfi almost never works so after 5-6 years, I'm giving up on it. For movies and TV the soundbar does a really, really good job but for music it sounds incredibly thin. Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?
That's just a dumb assumption used to support your ignorant talking points.
@@Corwin74 To each their own. We all hear or discern what we hear differently.
@@motorradmike That is true enough, especially when you throw room acoustics into the mix.
I’m a computer engineer & IT director and I never find fault in your reviews and assessments. Love the work you are doing debunking false conspiracies in audio marketing. Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much!
You're probably not very good.
@@TOM7952 You're probably never invited to parties.
@@TOM7952 Cable worshipers always lurking on ASR ready to attack anyone, who's not a member of their religion.
@@Bob-Fields it's unlikely you've ever been to a party
Funny.
Both tap water and bottled water are continuously measured during production to ensure quality and the absence of biological organisms or other contaminents.
Regular tasting is done by some companies, but never before measurements (sensor readings and lab testing of samples) confirm it is okay to drink.
Excellent point. In that regard me reviewing audio gear with measurements plays the same oversight role that government safety boards have. And sadly, doesn't exist much among typical audio reiewer.
Surprisingly the analogy is just complete opposite of the point he thinks he’s making. The irony is as delicious as the tastiest mineral water.
(See what I did there? Mineral water is not very delicious at all, so I ended up making the opposite point I wanted to with my poor analogy, like the guy in the video and… okay I’ll show myself out.)
@@alkestos I just watched the first 10 minutes of Darko's video. His analogy indeed fails, the water is about subjective comparison, what does one like the best. We could extend that to music, what style does one like the best.
But towards audio gear, there is a demonstrable and measurable quality of reproduction that we can measure. We can objectively determine what gear has the best reproduction. Some might like the distortions created by certain equipment, like tube amps, and some might not. These distortions can be measured and demonstrated, it's not some magic ability of our auditory system that lets us differentiate between such systems and that supposedly cannot be measured.
I live in a desert. Our tap water tastes like chlorinated sewage. I am not so sure they are conducting these "tests" you speak of on our water.
I can't remember when I last watched a Darko video. I never miss Audio Science Review and I'll leave it right there.
Why would Amir love this comment about someone not remembering the last time they watched a Darko video..classy
@@georgescookie well I would imagine because it's praise for his channel over another. Nothing wrong with that.
@@georgescookie are you a secret Wanko lover?
@@neetop1557 Two wrongs don't make a right, take your parents as an example
@@georgescookie that makes 0 fkin sense. Do better.
Outstanding and essential explanation. So many are confused about the differences, pros and cons, and basics of analog vs. digital that it has opened yet another window for the sale of pseudo electronics like "audiophile ethernet cables" and anti-jitter devices that cost a lot but do nothing. Thanks again Amir for adding to the education of your audio enthusiast audience.
At this point people need to realise that channels like Darko are just salesmen pitching to you. A lot of channels are like that now unfortunately, We have been duped into watching long adverts.
Thanks for this Amir! It shocks the conscience that audiophile reviewers refuse to address all the cognitive biases and flaws of subjective reviews while listing so many reasons objective measurements are flawed.
Hey Fomo guy, keep wearing your white gloves to hide your chapped hands...
Wait, him drinking water at the start didn't convince you? Well if that doesn't convince you nothing will.
"Audiophile": one who is in love with his own subjective taste and unable to accept or understand science or fact.
@@GuteisFinger And you are a measurebator. Also known as a 50 year old virgin who still lives with his parents.
Darko is a likeable salesman - to me anyway. He is also fun to watch. I don't take what he tries to sell seriously. Most of his review products are out of my price range. Production is very slick , so I think credit is due when earned. If I want real information beyond the subjective opinion I come to this channel . Thanks to ASR , I have learned a lot of good/useful information.
Right on all fronts. Can you imagine the positive effect he could have if he put those talents toward speaker the truth in audio technology? FYI I reached out to him prior to production of this video offering to get on his podcast. Sadly he turned me down.
@@AudioScienceReview I cannot imagine him giving deep solid scientific evidence based information. It's just not his thing and probably for most of his subscribers. He sells dreams...
@@AudioScienceReview I am disappointed he turned you down. We could really do with a coming together of subjectivist and objectivists trying to understand each others point of view. Or not, as the case may be
I guess graphs are not his cup of tea
This is exactly what snake oil salesman does. Likable, fun to watch, and etc. But all they said are completely BS.
Thank you for your effort, the clear presentation and the easy to understand visualization.
Great video Amir! My issue with Darko has always been that he takes money to advertise the same products he reviews which is a blatant conflict of interest not to mention money fueled confirmation bias. So no surprise that he always finds the most expensive brands to be the best performers.
Thanks for watching and kind words. What is even more amazing is that so many people are oblivious to this conflict of interest.
@@AudioScienceReview it depends whether the relationship he has with the brand sustains a bad review and I suspect with him it does because he is clearly a people person. How would it be that he has given the dac magic 200m a bad review but is then receiving further product from them if that wasn’t the case? He operates in a market in which it is hard to say bad of products for which he is sponsored, but wouldn’t that be the case in every commercial market, and judging what he earns from UA-cam with his following, even with just a few long terms sponsors he will make a good living, so adding to a sense of credibility.
Excellent conference. Learned a lot! BTW, the other day I had to laugh at an extremely expensive DAC because the manufacturer said that its design helped avoid digital problems that are so subtle that they can’t be measured. I asked myself: If the problems are so subtle that they can’t be measured, how can your “hear” them? As you implied and mentioned, they, as many other manufacturers, rely on the “if it is very,very expensive, then it must be much better” mantra. Thanks for your excellent service.
Love the great debunking Amir. As they say... "hater's gonna hate!" So many of us love what you are doing, helping to educate the massively fragmented HiFi community.
Haters are a waste of time, beteer things to do
Absolutely phenomenal work, a great service to all.
Darko’s channel (and most the others) absolutely relies on support from the audio manufacturers, and maintaining the illusion of some kind of mysticism in hifi. Luckily for the UA-camrs and hifi manufacturers, there are still enough gullible people with money burning a hole in their pocket to sustain this bullshit.
True, and it’s quite obvious in Darko’s case with the promotions. He’s not hiding it as such - his channel is corporate advertising in its purest form and nothing much else. That is what pays the bills for him.
Just like ASR rely on people dumb enough to believe that human hearing can be modelized entirely on a frequency response graph. Everything that you hear and that cannot obviously be seen on the graph is an hallucination
I think the funniest part of this is that you don't realize ASR is also sent free review units. You're just another naive mark.
I follow this kind of channels only for finding out the producers or new releases. Basically volunteering for ads lol. Not for a purchase decision though.
@Conor Hanley 10/10 punning there.
As someone who's been sending digital data back and fore as my job since I left school, often over hundreds of metres of 20+ year old unshelded cable wrapped around 400 volt unshielded power cable buried in asbestos cladding that would make your grandmother cry, this video is a masterclass. Luckily for me I am still within the 30 day amazon prime return window on the 0.5metre £7543 Cat9dd ethernet cable so I think I will be sending that back for a no quibble prime refund. Thanks Amir if I ever meet you I would like to buy you a pint (and let you measure my 30+ year old Wadia DAC though I know I am not gonna like the measurement results!!) :D
Would be interesting to see an old Wadis component measured. Guessing to heavy to ship.
@@michaelchaney1230 indeed. if I was in the same country I'd take mine to him. Shame I'm too many thousands of miles away.
Amir certainly makes enemies from all other UA-cam influencers that have a vested interest in propagating BS marketing nonsense that goes contrary to basic measurement. Critical ears certainly help, but there is so much hype in high end audio products that it is super valuable to have objective measurement. Can there be rare circumstances where Amir might miss the mark? Sure, but that is science and he would probably be the first to admit a flawed test. That said, I wish there were more Amirs that really tickle my early electrical engineering training when I were a young pup. Solid vetted science usually wins the day. We need a handful more Amirs in this space to measure spectrums and 1's and 0's. Keep up the good fight, Amir!
I once argued with darko in the comments about expensive usb cables... This guy seriously believes that 1k usb cables sound better than normal ones lol
He blocks his comments in instagram so we don't talk. It's how he avoids some confrontation about his claims
I just bought a $170 USB cable that arrived today. (To compare against my freebie I've been using for a while.)
They both sound musical when I play music through them. Other than that, I will be doing some more AB testing, and afterwards may gouge my eyes out with sharpened spoons. But hey, it's helping me pass the time through some tough life situations going on right now lol
He does indeed. I recently offered to go on his podcast and explain these topics and he turned me down.
@@AudioScienceReview that's disappointing as he recently had GoldenSound on talking about measurements. I would very much like to hear a constructive discussion between you and John.
@@1SourceAudio That's because GoldenSound is an even bigger shiller. You can replace all products he reviews with an apple dongle and I'm 100 percent sure he wouldn't be able to differentiate it in a blind test.
Amazing introductory masterclass on digital audio Amir! You address all the important issues and questions that today's audio consumer will come accross when designing their digital audio sub-system in a very clear, concise and structured manner. All that along with a couple of slap downs at John Darko that naturally arise from the nonsense that he usually blabbers. Your video is a must watch.
Furthermore, the analogy that Darko makes about bottled water is more pure nonsense and the analogy with which Darko shoots himself in the foot. Water wells and spring water sources can become contaminated over time with dangerous toxins, which is why such sources are constantly tested and analyzed by governmental environmental agencies, i.e. MEASUREMENTS! Your subjective taste buds won't be able to tell in many cases when the water has become unsafe to drink.
About the Great analogy, Also wines have to be controlled. I would not make my choice based on the lab report though. Not shure Darko shoots himself in the foot 😜, are you?
@@peterzuiderveld2979 controlled blind taste tests would rock the world of fine wines.
@@mattsch21 You don’t have your own preference in wines either I guess.
These videos and explanations are absolutely great. You perfectly describe and demonstrate concepts I’ve internally understood but have been unable to communicate to others for years. Sharing your videos is my new go-to solution for dispelling audio woo and my new tool for reinforcing the concepts you discuss. Thanks!
I went the rounds with Darko over Ethernet cabling. His solution wasn't to provide better information, it was to delete the information I was providing.
He's 1/3 of the holy trinity of bullschiit artistry with Hans Beekhuyzen and Alex Crespi that prompted me to make my own series of videos debunking their claims about data networking as it relates to audio reproduction.
It is disappointing that he doesn't accept new information/counter points. I offered to go on his podcast to explain these things but he turned me down.
@@AudioScienceReview it would be great to have an open invitation panel on some of these topics at a show.
@@mnoble247 I just watched your video on goalpost moving. Very informative, good stuff.
Darko is toe-curlingly embarrassing. The water analogy was, in fact, one of his better attempts to pour scorn on anyone who thinks audio manufacturers should back up their claims. If Darko, or his sponsors, decide something isn't worth it, it's USELESS or DEAD (see hi res audio). If Darko, or his sponsors, have a new product to debut, then it's The Future of Hi-Fi TM. His highly polished, uber-professional videos are all gloss and preen, but if you dare to disagree, or even raise a query, it's like the Eye of Sauron has turned its wrath on you.
@@richardt3371 Well said.
Amir, Your educational videos are truly on target. Ethan Winer has also debunked much of the hoopla about jitter by simulating jitter in audio files to determine if you can actually hear it. He has posted the audio files on his website. Winer also wrote a recent article in AudioXpress on the topic. BTW, although timing errors seem to not matter much in terms of audibility, what about the DAC's interpretation of audio levels? The reason for R2R DACs is supposedly to eliminate this problem, which is probably also a non-problem in terms of audibility. Anyway, thanks for a very clear and technically accurate video!
Another very very interesting and full of enlightenment session. Bravo Amir!!!
I am using the chance to raise a topic. Recently, I got an iFi Pro iDSD - it is a wonderful device, a superb dac, and has upscaling capabilities. I cannot decide if I should do upscaling or not. For example PCM audio file - is it good (better) to upscale to DSD512 or even DSD1024; what is the value of doing that if I am not sending the signal to another dac and I am listening with headphones from the iDSD? I can understand the upscaling of 'old audio files' that are just 16 or 20 khz but should I upscale 44.1 or 96 khz to DSD512/1024. Frankly, sometimes upscaling makes changes that are audible - smooths the sound or makes some tones more full of body or sharper. I think lots greenhorns will appreciate if you do a review on that?
I personally would not bother with any upsampling. Such a resampler can slightly filter the highs but that is not what I need it to do.
@@AudioScienceReview thank you so much for advice
Terrific episode. Learned a lot. Is it possible to upload a sample of how exactly jitter sounds like?
Jitter has infinite spectrum so it can sound like anything.
You opened my eyes with many videos as well as others who were deceived about what really is high-quality audio accessories. Thank you Mr. Amir
Thank you for such an excellent overview and explanation. Clear, understandable, valuable information that addresses and corrects most of the misinformation being spread by audio component reviewers and bloggers.
That MOMENT at around 4:22~ ... instant realization of " WHY " Digital ... 0 and 1 ...on and off ... resilience LOL Amir i am certain you don't even realize how good you are at simply explaining things ... I seriously just realized WHY Digital is so good, simply watching you explain stuff that is probably very basic and low level for you . ( ok i'm late commenting sorry ..watched it the day it got out forgot to comment ) Again another superb video, with plenty of learning spread through it all. Thanks for taking time of making this !! Much appreciated !!! 👍👍👍
👍. Good stuff as usual bud. One of the best parts of all your videos is that you truly don't make your particular perspective and/or critique personal. 👍 Moreover, your articulation of the subject matter is superb. 🏆
Thanks for your efforts.
John Darkos channel is useful to view when considering buying equipment, alongside other reviews on UA-cam and in the specialist press etc. On the one hand he does have a valid point with the water in that its what the gear sounds like that matters rather than how it measures, but on the other hand there is far more difference in audio gear than in mineral water and, fundamentally, the water is most definitely measured. It has to be analysed for content before being allowed to be sold! You are at odds with him because your channels validity is based on measurement. Nothing wrong with that of course. There are similarities with buying a new car. You check out the specs then drive it and if you like it, try to get a good deal. You don't rely of specs alone.
Great explanation, thank you Amir.
Love this content; great work, Amir!
One additional point on where not all "bits are bits" is that streaming SERVICES usually have an automatic feature to throttle the data throughput on slow connections. And the client/server connection is often finicky: if there's some small hiccup or sudden burst of other network traffic between your device, router, or ISP and the service's cloud storage, it may to automatically switch, mid-stream, to sending you a worse-quality, smaller audio file (albeit still a bit-perfect copy of it). The same reason Netflix, Prime Video, and (especially) HBOMax go all blurry sometimes.
This might be user-defeatable, like on Spotify's phone and desktop apps there are multiple things to turn off in the settings, but you have to look for it. With some streamers, e.g. my AVR with Spotify Connect, there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it from throttling if something triggers the internal software to think it has a slow internet connection.
So, -sometimes- people are hearing legitimate-yet-subtle differences between streamers, but not for any reasons that the manufacturers advertise. And the real problem is probably that cheap little wifi router that Comcast gives you that's sitting on the floor on the far side of the house.
Yes, the concept of "streaming" can be very broad. In this case I am assuming you are streaming lossless music from cloud or your own home network.
Brilliant vlog much needed in this muddied world of doctored sound
The best analogy I can come up with is imagine someone reading you a math problem. It doesn't matter if I tell you to add 10+4 or James Earl Jones asks you. You're still going to come up with 14. And at some point if the speaking is so distorted that you cannot understand it, you're not going to come up with 14.00001 or 13.9999, you're just not going to have an answer at all. That's VERY similar to how digital audio works. Sure, the voice itself is analog, but the answer isn't dependent on the precision of the analog signal until it becomes completely unrecognizable.
learn the difference between synchronous and isochronous data transfer in USB
usb audio has no data integrity check
@@Fl3xo2d and yet it's still amazingly reliable. And as amir says if there are issues you'll hear them and then you'll just get equipment that isn't broken and it will go away.
Brilliant work Amir..
Thanks for explaining jitter so well. I didn't really understand it before.
Love your passionate and competent work Amir, is a fortune there are competent and trusted people like you (and other moderators) and fora like ASR who can educate us in choosing the best gears (or simply learn how to evaluate the performance of our gears). Keep going on this way please. Best regards from Italy !
In the 70's we could find deep measurements in magazines, until shareholders stopped it. As long as Amir has no shareholders he is helping tons of people learn to not believe in b.sh.t marketing
Some very good stuff here, I'm already on the forums for 2 months or so and enjoying the discussions with people, subscribed...!
Thank you for your time, prof. I'm very thankful and glad you make these videos. Your knowledge is very valueable and I appreciate it.
Thank you Amir. Yet another great presentation. In engineering we have simple paradigm : knowledge->methodology->discipline-> verification. You show expertise across all. Others sell voodoo based on subjective opinions, especially in HIFI.
Thanks so much for educating us lay people on digital audio. It's amazing when one's experiences at simply listening to music does not jibe with audiophile notions. I constantly hear that computer audio is terrible and running it over USB just makes it worse. However, I can play my CD player using it as a transport and sending the signal to my SMSL SU9 DAC and then play the same song using on my computer from a FLAC file over USB to the DAC and guess what, each song sounds virtually the same. If computers and USB are so bad, shouldn't I easily be able to hear all the problems with noise, power supply, and jitter that my computer is giving off?
Master class! Well done Amir!
What about jitter in toslink from TV out? Dacs clean it, right but PLL also introduces noise on its own, that maybe isn't revealed in the 12 KHz tone. And then why people say streamers digital outs sound better than TV's? Because the clock is better to begin with, you don't have to 'clean it'. Some dacs like SMSL have a DPLL setting, which acording to the manual says: "When the clock stability of the input signal is good, this value can be reduced, so that the clock performance of the system is better. The PLL chip achieves a balance between anti clock jitter and input tolerance". And how does the AP simulate jitter for the test, if its SPDIF is so good? Is simulated jitter the same as real jitter?
You are asking a lot of questions there for a youtube comment. :) Briefly, I measure Toslink on DACs and I have yet to see one that is a cause for audible concern. Some are better than others though. The traditional comment about Toslink having more jitter may be true but DACs even with standard PLL have no trouble cleaning it up to lock to it.
Fancier PLLs can be used which give you a trade off between lock time (how fast it switches sample rates) vs jitter reduction. I have played with these as well and still can't make a case of audible difference.
@@amirmajidimehr640 I see but if there is a PLL strength setting it means you'd get better performance with a better timed spdif, otherwise why offer it. It'd be interesting to test this tradeoff with the AP.
Amir, well done on continuing to confuse the issues with the facts. I wonder though, how many lay people will pay attention. I love that ASR continues to educate people on the quality aspect of expensive “snake oil”. Keep up the great work, and thank you.
Thanks. I used to think this was a lost cause. But the more I do these videos, the more I get feedback from people who where going to buy this and that and no longer want to do so. And that they had their doubts but lacked the technical background to challenge the other side.
1:00 My father was a Chemist. Not needing to measure water is total nonsense. pH, surface tension, PPM, etc. are all useful stats to know about water purity. Just because taste is subjective does NOT imply that we should just blindly ignore the goal of trying to objectively measure water to help understand WHY and HOW water tastes the way it does.
i.e. When you have water filtered through an Reverse Osmosis System it will taste a certain way.
My father suspected that even the bond angle on water showed variation because he was getting a *non-associative property with different kinds of water* which demonstrated that there are large variations in water that we still don’t understand.
Darko unfortunately completely ignorant about Chemistry. He should stick to topics he knows about.
There was no real issue of testing water, it was an analogy. That said you'd taste water to decide which had the best flavor. If you know a measuring device for flavor other than a human please share.
@@johnsmith1474 It's true that one would taste water to determine which one you like the most, but at the same time we can't rely on the subjective claims from any other person, sponsored or not. Not only that, it has been demonstrated that we can't even trust our own senses. E.g. in the British tv program "Eat Well for Less" where people have to live a week on food packaged in blank packaging, most swapped with alternatives, some their usual brand and type. It's almost every episode that people will say that they really don't like a certain food or drink, and then to be told it is not swapped but it's their usual (favourite) brand.
@@johnsmith1474 To add: many of the claims made by such reviewers are about objective parameters. If we can demonstrate no objective difference in the signal delivered by usb cable A and cable B through measurements, we know the claims to be false. And for (digital) audio equipment it's much easier to measure compared to water, because we know what changes in the signal are audible, but we can't measure or test for every possible aromatic molecule in water.
@@johnsmith1474 with high certainty, it is possible repeatedly to PRODUCE equally tasting water samples based on their identical chemical (and biological) components / parameters, that's how a science works 😀. Reproducible results everywhere and everytime, with precise methodical, non-biased, and measurable input and output parameters.
I just watched his video. I don't think he knows anything about anything, except selling snake oil. Therefore I think, in a way he is following your advice.
Fantastic video! Thank you, Amir! Keep up the excellent work!
You can certainly analyze any electrical waveform using methods for measuring analog signals (I did it intensively as an electrical engineering student when the world was largely analog) and it does make it possible to understand it, you can do things with digital signals you can't do with analog signals. You can restore its shape using s Schmitt trigger. You can restore its timing errors after transmission using dejittering and reclocking circuits. You can turn it into a series of light pulses and send it through a fiber optic thinner than a human hair for thousands of miles without degradation. You can transmit data from beyond pluto yielding crystal clear images. You can send many hundreds of digitally encoded high definition video signals over long distances with a fiber optic and then a few hundred feet with a coaxial cable. With analog you'd be lucky to send even one NTSC analog channel much over a mile or two with a wire. And you can detect and correct errors in the rare circumstances they occur. Another advantage of digital signals is they almost always work perfectly or they don't work at all. Therefore I reluctantly had to admit that for many reasons signals in the digital domain could be far preferable to using the analog domain, especially for the transmission, storage and retrieval of analog waveforms. And one more thing you can do with digital that you can't do with analog, you can set arbitrary limits to performance that you can meet.
One thing untrained audiophiles in the fields of electrical engineering including information theory and information theory don't understand is that there is a finite limit beyond which improved performance while technically possible is of no value to them and only adds to cost. Another is that in the process of converting analog to digital and digital to analog there can be variances in the analog domain that are audible and often correctable using the very powerful tool of equalization which can be performed in either the analog or digital domain. The analog methods of analysis using frequency response, noise, and distortion still are valid. Based on my analysis RBCD standards meet all these criteria for audiophile applications in the digital domain.
This video is brilliant. Thank you for explaining.
Don't know if it's mentioned in the video since I didn't watch it all but modulating a digital value into an analog signal doesn't mean that noise or distortion will translate into the data getting corrupted, that's precisely the point of sending digital information in the first place.
Digital transmissions are not a flow of the raw data you want to transmit but they're encoded with error detecting and correcting systems. These are just mathematical tricks used to detect data corruption, like (in the simplest form) adding a parity bit: if one bit is flipped during transmission then the number of 1s won't be even anymore so it's clear that that package needs to be resent. There are much more complex codes that not only allow for error detection but also correction.
So a high number of transmission errors would result in a slower data rate due to more bandwidth being used to resend the same package multiple times. You can check this yourself by looking at the status information of a data connection: the lower the signal intensity is, the lower the available bandwidth. Low quality signal means more error rate, and thus a lot of retries that take time that could be used to send more packages with less tries per package. But the data is either valid or resent, not mistaken by valid when it's corrupted.
Another great video. Well done.
You have admirable patience
Thank for another great video I just love the way you explain things and debunk so many of the HiFi pundits.
Amir you’re the audio reviewer we need but don’t deserve! 34:45
Another great class. Thank you Amir!
5:15 It is usual to allow some tolerance in the voltage levels used; for example, 0 to 2 volts might represent logic 0, and 3 to 5 volts logic 1. A voltage of 2 to 3 volts would be invalid and occur only in a fault condition or during a logic level transition.
Thank for making these videos! All thumbs up!
First, yes I want my water measured to ensure it doesn’t have stuff it should not have in it. Yeah preferences vary but there should be no harm. Second, yes measurements of mineral contents etc can inform how water will taste if you know what the correlations are. Third, if the water claims health benefits, I want to know if there is any basis for it and if so if the water actually has the ingredients that cause that benefits.
All are analogous to why measurements are needed in audio.
Brilliant explanation.
19:55 I would say the bits are still bits, but the analog portion of the DAC (its in the name, after all) is still subject to the same issues as any other analog device. If noise bleeds into it, it will naturally get through to the audio. Stating it this way at least makes it clear that its not the data itself that is to blame per se as audiophiles might suggest, but poor analog design and interference via ground loops, PC bus noise, etc. In my mind I always segregate the two when diagnosing noise or interference since a PC always follows my speakers around, but the general audio community seems to conflate them together. Noisy DAC = Digital audio bad. Tubes and record player good! But the reality is designing quiet analog circuitry is a pain. Designing quiet analog circuitry that has to share real estate with a DC-DC switching converter and a bunch of digital circuitry takes that to another level. Of course there can be issues with the digital portion of the design as you elaborate on, but usually its the part where it turns into a squiggly wave that we can hear that most of the issues crop up.
Exactly this! There are so many dodgy products that are designed to a DAC's datasheet spec but lacking a clear understanding of the various ground paths (analogue and digital), how they induce noise in the DAC, in its PLL, in its references, or at its outputs. As a former PCB designer (but not for audio), I always told people "You need to understand where the electrons go". Thinking deeply about that can solve a lot of issues caused by system noise.
Sure, you could state it that way as well.
Implementation, implementation, implementation....
I agree. Bits are still bits. The noise may have been there when the analog was converted to digital at the start perhaps? What about the parity bit? Isn't that used?
Science vs Religion. The discussion will keep going for as long as people believe/prefer in fiction over fact. And just like the TV evangelists, money drives the religious factions.
What I’m curious about are the preamps built into these dacs and streamers. What is happening after the conversion to analog before it is sent to the amp and how does that impact sound quality.
There are two types of pre-amps or I should say volume control. One is inside the DAC chip itself. That control works superbly and has no degradation. Some do it externally but this is quite rare. Depending on what they do there, sometimes distortion is increased. In general, I would not hesitate to use these DACs as pre-amps. Adding another box just adds more noise and distortion although it is necessary if you have multiple sources.
@@AudioScienceReview That is really interesting as I have also heard that cited as explanation for changes in sound quality and character between dacs.
I was just experimenting with running a Schiit Modi 3+ through my Anthem STR integrated in HT bypass mode controlling the volume from my MacBook connected via USB. Volume starts playing quite loud at 70 db at the lowest setting and sounds brighter and a bit harsher than connecting MacBook usb > Anthem STR USB in (internal dac). Is this a product of poor gain matching? Am I overdriving the usb input?
Good stuff Amir! Good to bring Darko back to reality.
"Darko" and "technical", two words that should never be used in the same sentence.
I’m very grateful to this channel, and a few others, for providing objective measurements and explaining the science behind the technology of the hobby that I enjoy. This information was missing from the hobby space, mostly, until relatively recently, and even when a publication did provide measurements, it was done mostly, in my opinion, as a way to lend credence to the subjective opinions being offered.
I don’t mind, mostly, the subjective reviewers, Some of them provide useful information, provided they tell viewers what their preferences and biases are, which a few do. But when they are hostile to science and measurements, or try to “debunk” the validity of measurements, then they open themselves up to rebuttal. I’m again grateful to Amir and others like him (not many!) who take the time to explain whether the criticism is valid or not.
This educational series of videos is the absolute bomb (much more interesting to me than individual product reviews - though they have an important role too).
I'd be interested to hear an explanation into more of the details of how digital audio is communicated over a S/PDIF connection, what bi-phase mark encoding is and that the samples sent over an S/PDIF connection are actually arranged into blocks with control words sent with each block.
Such information is of no real practical use to the consumer, of course, yet it makes it much easier to realise what utter rubbish many (most) audio salesmen & industry apologists spout when trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.
Thank you for kind words. Thanks for the suggestion. Alas, that level of detail I think is way too technical for what I am trying to do. There are so many high level topics that I have yet to cover that i don't' see me getting to next deep dive anytime soon.
@@AudioScienceReview Thanks for your reply to my humble suggestion! That's fair enough and quite understandable. Maybe consider mentioning a few terms people can look into when there are deeper layers ? Kind of 'if you're interested, then look into X, Y and Z'. Anyway - these videos are great, I'm just a hobbyist and make all my own kit and while I've studied the topic for decades I _always_ learn things or gain insight from your videos. :)
@@HandbrakeBiscuit I’m afraid that level of detail stops with Amir indeed and answers should be found by communicating with well experienced audio engineers who design with the intention of improving sound quality. A journalist just performing measurements cannot help you.
@@peterzuiderveld2979 I know this stuff already, and the things I mentioned are actually built into the standard way a 'humble' Sony/Philips Digital Interface has worked since its launch. It isn't something that audio engineers are actively designing (a DAC designer couldn't just change what his device expects about the format of what a streamer or CD transport sends to it, could he?).
The point of my suggestion was that if consumers _knew_ just how involved the pattern of hi/lo pulses really was, and why, it would help them see through the various marketing claims and salesman patter.
Amir clearly knows about and understands such concepts too - it comes across as condescending for you to describe him as 'a journalist just performing measurements' then trying to infer that he doesn't know.
19:40 thanks for talking about GPU noise I have been dealing with that with my topping DAC and AMP, i have been searching for way to deal with it without throwing away my setup
If anyone having the same problem topping usb isolater fixed the issues.
Amir - friend and champion of the common man, most hated reviewer of most audio companies. Thank you again for helping us appreciate what is what.
Thank you. Very educational.
I learn so much from your videos. Thanks!
As I recall, several years ago there was something of a scandal when one of the great, French bottled waters contained clinically significant levels of benzine, despite the fact that the taste was not apparently affected. So the most important thing about testing is knowing what the test you are doing actually measures and whether that is relevant to the outcome.
Another good video. I can report that in my home system, I have a 10 meter (~30 ft) digital coax cable connecting one of my integrated amps to a source, and I can report that I never had any noticeable data error, even in that distance - after almost a year of regular use.
This explains why high quality vinyl recordings on UA-cam still retains that beautiful "analogue sound" playing through my audio interface, to my vintage amp and speakers.
Does anyone have the link to the original Darko video?
I have added it to the video description now. Here is the link as well: ua-cam.com/video/RlCG2fK-abo/v-deo.html
@@AudioScienceReview Ah-much appreciated! Thank you.
Many thanks! Well done. I've learned a lot from to very informative video. I'm looking forward to your next videos
Another really good video just like being at school many thanks as always. I will say this I have some heavy well made gear but I still know that a cheap CD player used as a transport is not going to sound worse than a high-end transport, I do chuckle when reviewers say this transport sound better than that one...
Hi, Amir!
How can you explain the fact that the same DAC connected via USB to different computers loaded with different OSes, Windows or specialized audio OS, playing same audiofiles sounds differently, and that differs only from PC to PC, regardless to OS? When I discovered that, I've overheard all my notebooks and one of them sounded frankly dirty (regardless of OS and player) and at the end I chose the one that sounded most clear, but mostly clear sounded my friend's Macbook Pro. And he also easily heard that difference. Nay, we used two different DACs in our test and had the same effect.
You mention in ...most all of... your reviews that some digital (or analog) artifact is "well below the threshold of hearing". I understand that. But, if the jitter "spikes" shown in this video ( at 2kHz. 4kHz, etc ) occur over audio that's playing at that same frequency, wouldn't that ...boost(?) the amplitude (or cancel out in the case of being out-of-phase) of the audio? Couldn't that then be perceived as "bright" or having a "more subdued midrange" or {insert other standard audiophile BS adjectives here}? I understand that the decibel is a logarithmic scale, but if some artifact or bit of distortion has a measurable amplitude -- even if beyond our hearing threshold, wouldn't that be added to the signal? Or, is it *because* it's a logarithmic scale, the resultant of the two "waveforms" is negligible? Would this be a good use of the DeltaWave software to show differences, say, between the SPDIF and USB outputs of the same source? ;)
You are right that they would add in. But their levels are so small as to not make any change that is material. And yes, it is because it is a log function. Without it, those spikes would not even be visible in such a scale.
Yes, in theory we could conduct nulling tests. The previous versions of Deltawave though could not handle dynamic clocking drifts that occur in these situations. There is a new version which should help with this and if so, we can do the null tests.
@@AudioScienceReview that null test would be very interesting
I used a RPi with an Apple dongle for my speakers. DSP room correction and equalisation. Works for me.
With USB/network you usually know when there's a problem. It's not subtle.
Is an optional 'femto clock' a gimmick? People claim they can ear a difference with an outboard femto clock.... what's your take on this subject?
Thanks, appreciated 🙋
It's completely a gimmick
Yes, it is a gimmic. In audio, we don't care about accuracy like you would in a clock. If your music plays 0.01% slower or faster, you would not even notice nor care. What we do care about is variation in clock. That, creates noise and jitter. So it matters not what the clock is. What matters is that measured jitter is below the noise floor of the system.
@@AudioScienceReview thanks for the reply! A simple answer that can have positive financial impact... appreciated 🙋
Hey Amir, what do you think of I2S. Where does that fit in? What is your take on I2S?
I have tested it and it provides no audible advantage. I2S was an internal chip to chip connection, not something to bring out of the box. It is just adds cost with no benefit.
@@AudioScienceReview, thank you.
Excellent as always!👍🙏
It's very helpful to understand where things start and how to remedy them if necessary. Keeping in mind there are still misconceptions and false myths.
Thanks again, an excellent thoughtful and informative presentation.
Nicely explained!
I quite like measurements of water. So i dont die if they're poisonous etc
I like the Pink Panther figurines you use a lot, where do you buy this one i may ask?
On ebay. They are surprisingly hard to find but if you check from time to time, you will see them. Note that there are a lot of plastic ones. you want the ones that are ceramic.
Really great video packed with common sense backed up by scepticism and careful measurement! It does seem that the quality of the DAC is pretty important whereas the quality of a digital signal source is less so since ‘ bits are bits ‘. This is quite hard for us oldies brought up on record players to grasp - with those, the quality of the analogue signal source is absolutely everything.
This video makes me wonder about the modern trend to CD transports being separate from DACS. Are the buyers simply wasting their money on expensive CD transports? I have some personal experience to support this thesis. When the drive of my very expensive Audiolab 8200CD player became faulty, the replacement drive was simply a common or garden Sony unit costing about $50! Before that, I’d fed the digital Toslink output of a moderately priced Pioneer CD player into a separate DAC and found the audio quality was much better. To my mind this suggested the actual CD drive itself was not so critical : ‘bits are bits’ after all.
Keep up your excellent thought-provoking (and maybe money-saving) reviews, please!
Are you saying fortune cookies are worthless!!!😊😊😊😊 so good to hear a smart educated person talk about audio, I was thinking of getting the Onkyo TX-RZ70 I wonder if it’s as badly designed as the RZ50 that you mentioned…
Thank you for your smart analysis 😊😊
if we measure something and the difference is below the threshold of hearing, and then ABXed it and hear the difference anyway, does this mean that we have the wrong idea about where the threshold of hearing is, or that we are measuring the wrong thing?
thanks for starting to clean up the German audio believer scene. About time some real engineering knowledge is used to tone this guy down a bit.
Thanks, I enjoy learning from you. Also, there are too many products for the average audiophile to evaluate, so I watch your videos to get an idea of which ones add value to my listening experience.
Another great educational video, thanks Amir. We know Darko, he is a salesman , cherry picking information to bust sells.
Thank you, Amir.
i'm wondering, how jitter sounds if we could hear it?🤔 and why a CD on my cd player sounds much better than my pc? my dac its a Sound Blaster X-Fi HD.
I am still listening to a Marantz 2325 , Klipsch k- horns, with Klipsch Belle’s running in back on B so I run A+B speakers and I’m sure everything comes out as analog . I can tell the better the source the better the sound but it is still coming out as analog ! Sounds fantastic, you can only hear so much anyway. I don’t plan on any up grades !
I'm a bit confused by how jitter turns into noise. I guess I don't really understand jitter but I'd assume it would ... well I don't know. I guess it distorts the waveforms because things aren't where they should be when they're supposed to be there?
If jitter is random, it produces random noise. If we have a single tone jitter, it creates two sidebands, one on each side of our main tone. Random noise has infinite spectrum so generates infinite random sidebands and hence, it is random.
Can you enunciate the time scales on your wave forms?
You should probably link the original vid in your description.
Good suggestion. Just did that.
man, i admire the length he goes to to make sure he is fair to any claim, no mater how ridiculus, that is impresive