Differences in digital audio cables
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- Опубліковано 1 бер 2021
- If digital audio cables make a difference why doesn't the digital audio data change? How can something sound different when the data remains identical?
Have you gotten your copy of the Audiophile's Guide to setup? Make magic with your system using this guide and CD. www.psaudio.com/products/the-... - Наука та технологія
What Paul is trying to say is that expensive underpants are much better at preventing your bits falling out than cheap underpants.
Buy good underpants!
Good one.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha i just love it, oops my bits are hanging out
Its pure non sence.. bits are not drop by digital cable.. there isnt any improvement by paying more.. any cheap ass cable transport the signal without degradation. That is thr whole point of digital
Each time you copy a files... the files stay the same.
A cable is just a way to copy the file between device.
There's a difference between expensive and good underpants.
Sorry to say Paul but you only described why your transport interface is the best not how some digital cables are better than others. There is always a buffer on the end receiving the packets, timing for playback is the responsibility of the playback device not on the transmission cable.
That's my view also. The cable only gets the data there. What happens to the data upon arrival is up to something else.
USB has no correction, a buffer doesnt fix jitter and noise ul have to reclock everything and isolate everything, and that can get expensive and thats exactly why the dont do it in cheap stuff
@@MrDannydjmix2 usb is a comm. Protocol it was never meant to be used as a correction or timing method for audio file playback. The file is delivered to a playback device the playback device is responsible for playback, using its buffer and clocking standards.
@@MrDannydjmix2 USB as well as ethernet don't give a shit if the data are excel files or audio and it don't need to
Yeah, exactly this. Once the bits are delivered to the input, the signal timing and noise floor are handled by the equipment and the cable has done the only thing it needed too.
I've tried many a so called 'superior' digital cable and its always sounded exactly the same to me, but I can easily hear differences in analogue cables.
Maybe it helps with lower end equipment, but if you already use filtered mains and other noise suppression techniques for your equipment, then I've never been able to hear a difference with any digital cable.
I've been watching the back catalog of "ask Paul" videos and I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that many of the "snake oil" issues stem directly from deficiencies in the designs of the electronics.
Do you need a power plant? Yes -- because the power supplies provided with the equipment do not sufficiently regulate the power rails.
Do you need a ridiculously expensive USB cable? Yes -- because the DAC does not sufficiently isolate the input to prevent noise from coming through the USB input.
The result is a klugde that is treating the disease rather than curing it. I would rather pay more for equipment that does the job right in the first place then spend money on expensive bandaids to fix equipment that is fundamentally broken.
Exactly. Equipment that isn’t designed to handle noisy power and USB simply isn’t designed well. It’s not like these things are new and their noise and fluctuations can’t be measured.
Very good point you have there.
ideal but not practical
While it is a very good point (and I'm in no position to buy expensive high-end cables and such) keep in mind that is not POSSIBLE to design a perfect power supply or perfectly isolate a DAC. It's not that those are bad product it's just you can't do it 100% perfectly and also it wouldn't be feasible in a real world budget for a production line. So these tricks are meant to give you the last 1% in audio quality and not because the products are badly designed.
@@petersagi275 It doesn't have to be perfect. It only has to be better than the alternative. I could do a lot of extra power supply engineering for the price of a PS audio power regenerator -- and it wouldn't suffer from the economic inefficiency of duplicating the function of an existing component. The same goes for the the DAC input and the price of a high end USB cable.
I'll share my experience(s) with two projects I was involved with. I was a new kid Engineer. We constructed two data collection, not control, systems based on bascially the same hardware. Figure a central computer then distributed data collection points ( NEMA 12 Boxes ). The collection points feed their data back to the central computer via RS-232 digital cables. Some cables with rebroadcast extenders. The collection boxes could receive and resend data. The data was live data constantly changing. The two applications were oil & gasoline distribution tank farm terminals and a single Nuclear Power station. Both wildly electrically noisy.
The kid engineer, me, got sent to a new start-up in Santa Clara to get smartened up on two new IC Chips. One a processor, the other an ASYNC chip to interface to the interconnecting RS-232 cables. The ASYNC chip featured a double buffer at both ends. So the incoming digital signal was re-clocked twice. There was zero, none, zippo, nada, jitter or any other such nonsense in the received data, after the buffers.
Time frame: 1972 - 1975
Company I worked for: General Atomics ( ga.com )
Customer 1: Gulf & Shell Oil
Customer 2: The Nuclear power plant will go unnamed
Chip builder: Intel Corp.
We moved jitter free, timing error free, perfect digital information over cables in horrific electrical noise environ nearly 50-years ago.
tldr, you're an engineer, that tells me everything I need to know
I worked at a GM car plant (Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly) for 30 years in the IT department. The plant was 100% dependent on the data from the servers and the network. If for any reason the line stopped running it cost $50,000 a minute (USD). Needless to say there was a lot of emphasis on us keeping data flowing. Never once was there a discussion about putting different CAT5 wires in or worrying about RJ45 connectors that might be better because they had magical properties. it was a noise laden environment with hundreds of welding robots running 18 hours a day. And yet the data still flowed. Rest assured that the 1's and 0's don't care what wire they go down. Don't fall for the crap that PS sells. It is fraud.
It feels like he said it once, and now he can't stop going
Imperfection and instability of perception of the human auditory system - this is what "distinguishes" the sound of digital cables.
Wow you're so smart. It's a good thing you know so much, what would any of us do without you?
@@vladg5216 watch snake oil salesmen online
I wear pants that contain my bits.
3 bits? (010)
LOLOLOL
Absolutely love your "elabs" on audio in general & specific !
Thnx & grtz from The Netherlands
Use great cables but don't pay snake oil margins for them...too many US$10 (FOB China) cables are sold at insane margins with some branding sticker on them.
Yes, use certified cables that are shown to operate within the specifications and discard when they become damaged.
@@paulgyro Yes, for digital data cables, there is no magic to it and the standards define what makes the data come through reliably. It doesn't matter if it's an e-mail, Power Point, image, movie or music that is being transferred, none of it can allow data errors. Of course cables can carry noise into the analog circuits and if a USB cable carries power to a DAC, there can be some special case concerns, but none of these things are costly to avoid nor do they need any special snake oil products.
@@ThinkingBetter Agree, ASR just did a debunk video on the same subject.
The data will travel around the world bit perfect, the only place it will fuck up is at the cable and dac you are using.
bingo!
Ive often though about why there isnt a solution to this problem. Cant we have some way to attach timing data to each packet so they can be replayed (with delay) perfectly after reconstruction??
@@Canadian_Eh_I LOL - if you could just figure that one out.
but only in his cable
@@Canadian_Eh_I the timing fucking don't matter - you buffer so that you can play a few seconds out of your buffer, thats all - the packets are "numbered" and have checksums - it's complete bullshit what this guy is talking about when it comes to digital transmission
that's what jitter buffer is for. the bits are written at the source speed + src jitter + network jitter, etc. The bits are read out at the internal clk speed (and with internal clk jitter). over/underflow control is a different issue and taken care of separately, depending on the particulars. youtube players usually buffer a few seconds of video/audio before they start playing anything. btw, if you count on the src being jitter-free, you'd better choose a non-engineering profession.
The buffer does not get rid of all the jitter, the buffer also adds it's own jitter, the word clock also adds jitter, fibre octive cables also add jitter, you can't get rid of it.
@@Sildenafil_Damages_Eye_Retina The jitter buffer does not have any jitter. The reading inserts some depending on the jitter of the internal clock. None of the other jitters play any role anymore. Done that.
I constantly hear how noise from the ethernet cable is transmitted through the expensive streamers/DACs, but this should be very minor. Once the bits are buffered from the network. The actual digital audio throughput requirements from the buffer to the DAC are so low that a simple 2$ optic coupler for data paired with a 3$ integrated isolating power supply will easily kill even that noise, so there isn't any excuse that a network cable or switch should change the audio sound coming from an even moderately designed streamer/DAC. (I design sensitive medical and industrial equipment) EDIT: Paul is saying a similar message, but I just wanted to point out how cheap and easy it is to fully isolate the digital signal, so there is no excuse that an expensive streamer should have differences due to cable/switch.
Get em😊
can I use 3+2 RCA cable, designed for audio/video set up, for my stereo sound system? the cable will connect equalizer with stereo amplifier.
Paul should record the video explaining level of different differences (😄)
For example if he talks about:
- room and imaging, it will be 20% of success to theoretically perfect stereo sound
- Speakers 75% (can be noticed by everyone)
- Analog cables 4.95% (can be noticed by half of listeners on their real systems)
- Digital cables 0.05 % (can be noticed by 1% of this video audience on their real systems)
So everyone will be aware that when he says HUUGE difference between digital cables it is within mentioned 0.05%... Like from 0.05 to 0.01 (five times, really huge!)
I am guessing the numbers but you got the idea.
Because now it seems a lot of people think everyone can notice this HUGE difference, but they are not -> so it is only Paul's fantasy.
If you have read till this row and you know there is such video already published, please share it with me. Thanks :)
Regardless of analog or digital cables, you need to develop spectacularly bad cables to hear a difference. Analog audio isn’t very sensitive to anything really, just have the proper gauge for the job. Digital is so simple and well understood that basically any cable that works will do
You made a mistake: Analog Cables: 0.00000%, Digital Cables: 0.00000%, now we're in the right ballpark
@@SteelBlueVision I didn't try to make statements about sound I just proposed concept for a new Paul's video in order for everyone to understand him better
Jitter, noise...hmm, nice excuse, it sounds better than autosuggestion😊
And where did you get your nubers from? It seems you don't listen. You try to calculate who hears it and who doesn't hear it. You don't hear it, that's what you actually meant.
The person ask how, in digital domain, cables makes a difference and the answer is isolating the analogue section of a DAC made a huge improvement during the design. Okay sure so the difference is not the digital cable.
The problem is probably that the good sounding digital cable sound exactly the same as the bad sounding cable and bias play a huge role in what one expect to hear.
My question to you would be : why does audiophiles think a properly engineered component is sensitive to the cables connected to it and why it's not the total opposite ?
@Douglas Blake this have been my opinion for a long time. After my "i think I hear differences between cables" phase and after the "let's test if this is real or not by removing the expectation bias" phase.
I can't understand why audio components designers accept the ridiculous "your components are not good enough if you can't hear the differences between cables". If it's the case than the design is flawed and need improvement.
If I was behind those designs I would take a stance of : you hear what you hear but we don't aim for any cable to make a difference designing a component. But that's me.
@Douglas Blake Taking money from from uneducated people is a great business model.
@Douglas Blake And yet that is what most advertising is based on. A new car does not make one more sexy, few owners of SUV's ever go off road, most diet plans fail, a fragrance does not attract women and in vitamins just create expensive urine.
@@zackschindler8334 that's not a business model, that's business.
So you're saying that a file streamed over the internet, that has travelled through several server rooms, satellites, cables, etc gets transmitted faithfully without any noise or jitter, but it's just that one digital cable in my audio system that introduces noise?
@@kytddjj What do you mean, by the timing of the data? The data is all there is, including error correcting bits. If the file is intact and within the supported bitrate of the interface, than any arising issues are due to improper processing of the file or conversion issues of the DAC. It's shouldn't be a cable issue at that point. Maybe I'm missing something.
Are you going to offer an upgrade pack with the next transport in the same manner that you did with the Perfect Wave DAC to Directstream DAC Paul? I have the original Perfectwave Transport, the upgraded Perfectwave DAC to Directstream, BHK 300's and the P10.
Wow, didn't expect my question to actually get answered :P In any case... Noise... Yeah I can see why that would be an issue. Thanks so much Paul! Funny, I submitted a second question just a few days ago. - Remy
Makes sense to me too now .... artifacts, namely jitter and noise on the identical bits.... can negatively impact what you udibly heard.
You hear ...
Remy, for you are presumably Dutch speaking... have a look at this video. Sorry for the international audience, it's in Dutch :-(
It's likely doesn't come close to the airgap solution that Paul was talking about, however but it's amazing what effect it has on the music reproduction.
ua-cam.com/video/E1-tA7py8q0/v-deo.html
@@hansbogaert4582 thanks Hans, I’ll give it a watch.
@@hansbogaert4582 Dat was wel een hele leuke video. Nooit bij stilgestaan dat glasvezel een dergelijke impact zou hebben. De vraag is alleen, zou ik het merken met mijn
A truly gentlemans response.
ps audio amps or parasound???? amir from audiosincereview inspired u to make this video paul?
Hi Paul,
Will there be an Audible version of your book “The Audiophile’s Guide” ?
All the very best from Dublin, Ireland. Michael Buttimer.
Does it go through the "aether", as in ethernet, at all? Is it all cable?
A bit .. is a bit .. is a BIT ! there is NOTHING different. The difference is in PERCEIVED quality based on PsychoAcoustics and the depth of the listeners pockets in their expensive pants.
Remember the story "The Emperors New Clothes" and his expensive pants
@@adamm450 I have a degree in Electronic Engineering and 40 years experience in the industry. An oscilloscope will indeed show you the profile of the signal, fortunately digital circuits do not work on a profile, they work on a threshold, if the voltage threshold is above then its a "1" see this www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/switching-threshold. What this indeed means is that a 1 is a 1 - there are no "part" digits. The circuit is either On or Off. There can be variations and potential losses in the signal, these are accounted for by using a CheckSum mechanism, this matches the value and corrects any errors (this is vital for the integrity of any digital value - just think what would happen to your money in the bank if there were digital errors) .
Now we look at "jitter" the slight timing variations that can exist, a sample rate of 16bits @ 44Khz or 1,408,000 bits per second - clocking errors in digital circuitry are accurate to .001% or 140bits - insignificant error for hearing.
It is true that digital circuits can be affected by high frequency noise, but if this happens you lose far more than a few bits, an example of this is when using a mobile phone, when the signal is low you lose large audio chunks which make it very difficult to hear what is being said.
Happy listening
@@adamm450 In which case a "better" digital cable (subject of the original discussion) will make no difference. The only way that changes is the design of the Digital to Analogue section to managed any noise, and the design of the Analogue output stage to provide a clean signal. At which point we are discussing the quality of the low voltage signal through an analogue cable - nothing to do with USB or HDMI cables. Most good RCA type cables will manage this well.
I have been involved in designing and building digital to analogue systems in the harshest of environments where there is NO margin for error. So back to my original point .. A bit is a bit - the errors if there are any are in the analogue stage.
@@adamm450 I have spent enough of my life working on this stuff. Noise on the input digital date is corrected with error checking. Wifi and RF signal levels are so low they have no audible effect. Ethernet cables are already shielded and use twisted pairs to deal with noise (first used in the 1930's).
Designers spent many hours making sure what goes in - comes out digitally 100% correct. USB and HDMI are digital only cables, and are not in the susceptable analogue stage.
BUT when all said and done if you want to spend your money on expensive cables that is your choice, personally I will buy something nice for my significant other :-D
Make sure you just have a data cable or get a bit of nail varnish and put it on the plus pin of the USB cable from the computer
I think the writer of the question got a good laugh from the answer given.
This answer is not about digital cable, but about transmitting and receiving electronics.
Lol! Paul, I've been watching you for about three years, and every time I hear something that I'm not sure of, or someone else says something that makes me shake my head, my imaginations always send my minds eye a cut of THE WIZARD OF OZ". And I see one of the Munchkins and one( it must be me, because I always look for someone smarter than me for help) of them get the rest of the Munchkins attention and says " Let's go to the great and powerful Oz, he'll know what's what!" And, I smile to myself and go to PS audio on Utube, and see what the all great and all powerful Paul has to say, And, Paul, you've never let me down. Paul the great and...lol 👍 thanks again, the best to family and the PS audio family too.
"Look Paul, I ain't got no wires!" .Informative and entertaining as always.☺
ma
I'm also an IT guy Paul, been doing it professionally for almost 25 years. Even if the damn music source is digital and even if it went around the world twice, in order for your ears to hear it, it will have to go thru a Digital to Analog converter, correct? Yes, so the cables don't care, but your ears will.... Digital, unless previously degraded will be 100% perfect with relation to the type of source file it is. So what you get is what you get, whether it be an mp3 or a FLAC file, all has to be converted to analog.
I worked at a GM car plant (Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly) for 30 years in the IT department. The plant was 100% dependent on the data from the servers and the network. If for any reason the line stopped running it cost $50,000 a minute (USD). Needless to say there was a lot of emphasis on us keeping data flowing. Never once was there a discussion about putting different CAT5 wires in or worrying about RJ45 connectors that might be better because they had magical properties. it was a noise laden environment with hundreds of welding robots running 18 hours a day. And yet the data still flowed.
ppl interested in streaming audio should visit The Hans Beekhuyzen Channel
His recent video on a 2,500 Euro digital to digital converter where the manufacturer gets confused about where to plug in the cables was very convincing.
Hans is a BAFOON
That is a very good channel
Great explanation! Another discussion point / question is? Why if I Rip a cd on my home pc versus my audio server each file sounds different when I play them both back on my system? Audio Server rip being the better sound quality? What’s going on there?
Ripping FLAC/WAV will sound identical. If you're ripping to MP3 check the quality on each machine
shielding around cables i believe is the most important factor period x
BGP pathing over the Internet is pretty consistent. Packets can take different paths if something fairly extraordinary happens but in normal transmission, packets tend to take the same path.
Topping e30 + raspberry pi, really good streamer for under £300 rivals any high end equipment
The cable never touches the other end of your connector, so if radio emissions from your cable _outside your unit_ interferes with the analogue signal path, that is a pretty serious flaw. And if you don't design for crappy cables and source clocks and re-clock your (buffered) signal to correct for errors, resends and jitter, that is bad too. You always need to design for everything being very non-ideal outside your unit. That is also why a lot of DACs these days dictate the sample clock, so that they can basically fix "all" timing problems with a little buffering. SPIF doesn't understand this, but most modern connects do.
Best comment here. 100% agree. Proper cable/power management & separation will have far more audible affect than simply spending a fortune on pricey cables.
Thank You.
Both noise and jitter are measureable, both have been proven repeatedly to be inaudible by any human regardless of cable, this is just straight up measureable fact..
Ugh , I've been saying this to "audiophile expers"for years and they always want to argue it to death . It's like bro , can you yourself hear the jitter ? Because I doubt it.
Which quality transports have you auditioned?
Aurender, Innuos, Melco, something else?
Yes, noise and jitter are measurable.
Both have been proven to be easily audible to the human ear.
Use one of the above digital transports, and your ear will hear the improvement. And your ears will not be subject to being tricked. The improvement is glaring.
Cheers!
@@NoEgg4u here we go again , lol .
@@blairwilliams136 Yes, we will keep "going again" because people that believe that bits are bits, without ever testing with the gear that addresses noise and jitter, those people keep making unfounded claims.
None of them ever audition the equipment that they ridicule.
I have, and those quality transports are amazing. Once you hear how good they are, you will never want to listen to digital music without one. That is my issue, because I have heard it, and I cannot afford to part with the $$ to own one.
The problem is that 1) most people never heard of these brands, and 2) you will not find these brands at Walmart, Target, and Best Buy. So auditioning them means that you have to make the effort to locate stores that have them. And if you live 100 miles away from the closest store that carries these brands, then you are not likely to make the trip (especially if your mind is already made up that it is all snake oil, and also if you do not have the spare $$ to buy one). So it is easier to simply bash the transports.
I just wish that folks would not draw conclusions about equipment that they have not heard.
They would not draw conclusions about food they have not tasted.
Cheers!
@@NoEgg4u the bigger issue I have with your points is that I don't have , no would I want to spend thousands of dollar on just a transport when the difference in jitter is honestly negligible for myself and most other people out there. But if you say that it makes a huge difference to your ears more power to you man . My argument is the money for an average pesant like myself could be spend more wisely on other parts of the system for dropping $3000-$5000 usd on a transport . But if you got that much money your probably not even worried about it. Cheers.
So cables don't change the digital data. However, if the analog section of your system isn't well isolated noise from a wide variety of sources can impact the sound. Poorly shielded digital cables can collect noise from the environment and properties of the cables can alter existing noise to make it more or less of a problem. That noise will not change the digital data, but can be audible in the analog signal path or otherwise affect the operation of the analog circuits. Paul also mentions various problems that only affect digital interconnects that send the clock and data together in real time.
Are there any humans that can hear the difference even if one even exists?
when your DAC is useless and expensive crap maybe
I’m not sure the cables are as important as galvanic isolation. I have a denafrips ares 2, which I’m sure deals with jitter well. Nonetheless, if I had an ifi ipure 2 spidif to the DAC, being fed by a sonos port, there is definitely an upgrade in sound quality. I suspect it is because it is galvanically isolating the DAC from the noisy streamer.
I love you, Paul, I truly do. However :) you pick 2 cables any price -- I'll throw in an Amazon Basic one. Would you bet $10,000 you could pick the Amazon one in a true Blind Test >60% of the time while switching randomly 100 times?
On a boom box with Mp3 file for sure you are correct , on less resolving system as well .
Take a true high quality system and USB cable will make a clearly heard difference .
@@kdomster9141 must be cheap crap dac 🐒
@@johannesterl9083 no It's not , dacs do not self correct jitter in some marketed miraculous way .
@@kdomster9141 I would gladly book your $10K :) in the same test I offered Paul
@@larrywe3320 Just enjoy the sound of your boombox with a amazon 3.99$ cable. 😂
By the way 20usd , ali express China made USB cable using quality teflon insulation, pure copper and quality connectors hand soldered can sound sooo much better than you 3.99usd amazon cable
Learn how to spend your audio money wisely before you open your mouth.
I'm a big fan of this channel, but "bits having jitter"? Either the data is exactly the same and then I can't understand hearing a difference or the jitter means the dat is somewhat corrupted.
In any case, I didn't understand the explanation.
What he's talking about describes problems during the last-leg journey (usually spdif or USB to the DAC), rather than the data itself. The concern is that you're not feeding your DAC at a constant speed; i.e. not perfectly always 44.1khz, etc. which is like having a turntable with a non-constant motor speed, slowing and speeding up parts of the song (where the record itself represents the data). In digital land this doesn't cause tone shifts, but rather becomes audible by hurting the noise floor instead. I believe he is referring to this same phenomenon when he mentions 'noise' in bits as well; bits themselves cannot be noisy as you are thinking. I wish he clarified that jitter doesn't apply to the networking realm; delivery of music over the network just isn't a time-sensitive operation like feeding a DAC is (and if your DAC has an internal buffer and reclocks the data before conversion, jitter on the USB/optical line simply isn't an issue)
Now this is a clear explanation! Thanks a lot.
So, as you said in a previous "Digital cable" video, it's not the actual DAC itself, it's the analog section after the digital conversion. Good grounding and true noise rejection are mostly an analog problem.
I think he is talking about the cable that runs from the streamer/computer/transport to the DAC.
@@alphaniner3770... of which carry current between the components and can potentially (see what I did there) set up ground loop issues if ground connections are "questionable".
Again, it is the job of the DAC itself to faithfully reassemble those 1's and 0's back into the music that was relayed from piece of equipment to piece of equipment. Where the coloring of the signal comes into play is when the signal becomes analog again. This is the domain where electrical noise and unintentional (and intentional) sound shaping is most prevalent. And when you introduce noise from somewhere down the line, and try to carry it over wires, which use voltage AND amperage to reliably transfer that signal, whether analog waveforms or digital packets, it can make its way into the power supply of successive components. Yes, each piece of equipment does a job (good or bad) of cleaning up power for each of it's stages, but there are times when even the best design cannot get rid of all that noise. So if you want good, clean, reliable transfer of data (whatever kind that may be), you need to make sure your connections are clean and snug (properly seated) and that your "wires" (cables) are at least adequately sized and shielded, and placed with care to avoid as many noise sources as possible, like NOT running a signal cable parallel to a power cable, but rather crossing at 90 degrees if possible.
@@TheTrueVoiceOfReason you make a good point. The back of my audio stuff is a rats nest of power cables.And yet it sounds pretty good anyway without special cables. To be fair, its a cat6 cable in and speaker cables out only.
@@KeithHeinrich good choice for signals, plus I'm sure your system was meant to use it. Cat 6 has 4 sets of twisted pairs of wires in that jacket. Twisted pairs are very good at rejecting noise, by design. Just ask any Tube Amp builder/repairman.
Hi Paul; I wish all of you are doing well. Or is it that I did miss some of the bits or are there ‘galvanically isolated’ digital audio cables out there too? Thanks in advance 'n blessings for y'all. Please stay safe guys 👍🙏👍!!!.
they are called tos-link and are optical
Sorry Paul. No human can tell the difference between digital cables. Jitter is a measure of latency fluctuation, not signal interference. You don't get noise in TCP connection, because it will drop the packet if it is corrupted in transit (ie gets induced with noise). Sorry. Nope.
I can tell.Always.Wash your ears first.
I can tell. Dont even have to get the uber expensive cables to notice a leap of difference. Sorry, its too easy to distinguish.
Yeah I felt that was a lengthy introduction with a a little bit of a .. too brief... response
I can, easily.
@@doctorrobin3040 digital audio signal. 1’s and 0’s. You’d need to have a machine to tell the difference, unless you’re using single strands of 40awg wire that was broken and intermittently touching.
It's like a gaming chair makes you good at gaming.
And better golf clubs makes you Tiger Woods
@@zackschindler8334 Really? I am off to the store to get some better clubs. Thanks for the tip. LOL
through the air... meaning optocoupled obvs
Paul, I totally get the idea of isolating noise from small signal analog, valid points for sure. But please, that long haul
Internet analogy was totally off the mark. Stick to the things you know well, which is a wealth in your case! I really
enjoy hearing about high end stuff I'll likely never own, and I truly appreciate what you're doing for your company,
and your staff during this broken time. Be well.
I am not a computer engineer nor electrical, nor audio expert, but here you have one bit: 0 or 1. Can someone explain to me where is the noise and jitter in this bit?
Perhaps I didn't understand the Pauls' answer, but it seemed for me he essentially said - there is no difference in data transmission and any competent digital cable (e.g. TOSLINK) will do it's work. However, it is DACs and output stage combination that matters. This seems to me legit, however, question was about cable... :)
Keep up the good work, Paul!
Cheers!
@@Sildenafil_Damages_Eye_Retina Thats true, but that 1 meter digital interconnect does not have any influence on that. And the original question was about the digital cable, not the sending or receiving hardware.
Hi Paul
My question is sensitivity (SPL) is one of the most important parameter for HiFi loudspeakers in the Home Theater.Should (Must) have the same level dB (SPL) of sensitivity. Is it true? or What would you recomend?
I enjoy your videos. It is amazing how you find the best way to explain complex topics, with simplest words.
Thanks in advance
Ignacio Martínez
Monterrey México
probably with a expensive high-end crap, other audio hardware does room measurement and set the center with lower sensitivity to +1.5 dB and you are done
Where I use ACM Link from my PC sound card
Amir from Audio Science Review did a video. Showed absolutely no difference in USB cables in any measure. Please, everyone in the audio/audiophile world needs to learn about expectation bias. These are effects that neuroscience has explained. Our brains create signals based on expectations. What you report is personal experience. I can set up a blind listening test and I bet you anything you will not be above chance.
Amir had also said many things about Amp/DAC’s especially dongles DAC’s saying that the S8, S9 were better than $1,000 DAC’s/Amps. Which were both 💯 Wrong!! So it just goes to show you that measurements without actual listening to products means absolutely nothing!! Especially when you are not listening to these products on decent systems! Cheap sound systems don’t reveal much lol Tell Amir to upgrade his system as he has Donate links all over his websites! So it shouldn’t be that difficult lol
@@CarAudioHorizons amir has revel salon 2 speakers for his main system if I'm not mistaken.
But what the poster above may not realize, is that amir posted a review of an HDMI cable about 10 years ago that cautioned about making the "bits are bits" argument when talking about digital connections. The signals are still analog voltages, and therefore can suffer variances, interference, or loss of information completely. USB audio does not use error-checking like traditional file copies or even tcp/ip that can resend data if packets are lost or don't match from the sender. The DAC is left to 'handle' any errors, and slight variances could result in subtle differences if you displace bits.
From my understanding, you won't always have the tell-tale pops, glitches, or dropouts like you get when more data is mangled. If a single 0 is interpreted as a 1 from the analog square wave that is generated for the signalling, what could that result sound like? I dunno. Where did it occur in the music? How many of these square waves are getting mangled and misinterpreted and what is causing it?
I think Amir published this data, yet most of the ASR folks are just railing against cables so hard they too have forgotten some of the science. In the case of USB, there is little evidence to report that one cable is superior over the other. But you can't make that statement, for every situation, for all of the time. Maybe the device outputting the signal WILL perform better with different conductivity or wire type.
Claiming to know it could never make any difference is simply not the reality, even if MOST of the time, it likely makes no difference.
In my estimation, you have two relatively blind sides of the argument, going at each other.
Blindly claiming one USB cable is better in all situations is as ridiculous to me as claiming that ANY USB cable is the same, as any other, in all situations.
@@erics.4113 Everything I have tested I would say I’m not a big fan of anything USB, there are some decent products but I always prefer Digital Coaxial connection over everything else (Car Audio) as that’s what I test subjectively.
You can do all the tests you want like Amir does but at the end of the day your ears are going to be the final judgment, and we all know everyone hears differently from one another and likes different sound signatures.
I tested the HIDIZS S8 that Amir says is better than some $1,000 DAC/AMPS and it SUCKED! The HIDIZS S9Pro was far better but nothing special other than it was pretty powerful for a dongle DAC, but power doesn’t mean great sound quality although most people think it does because it’s louder 😆
Looks like now he is bashing Chord 😂
@@CarAudioHorizons I saw that the chord m-scaler is seemingly adding jitter components. Not something you'll see in the literature from chord I guess.
And I saw a response video from the chord designer on another channel, and the interviewer starts off with a question about the j-test for jitter that amir published. The designer starts by stating that he didn't see amir's article.
Excuse me?! This guy goes on to do a 45 minute video to discuss the product, but couldn't have been bothered to take the 15-20 minutes to look at amir's published measurement data, the same that I did?
Told me everything I needed to know right there.
I'm not sure what I think about USB audio either. I'm using a node 2 that now supports it, and connected to my DAC, vs coax, ..undecided. it's been about a month now and I am still doing AB back and forth. If there is in fact any difference, it's subtle.
For what it's worth, the coax cable is a entry level(ish) audio quest coax, and the USB is the cheapest I could find on the planet. I'm likely going to buy an expensive audiophile USB printer cable in the near future to experiment further.
If it does nothing, at least it's thick enough to wrap around my neck for choking purposes. Lol
@@erics.4113 Audioquest is another company that gets bashed all the time and rightfully so on some of their products but I love their Coaxial Digital cables for my car audio system and I compared four different ones for my set up and it’s the first time I have ever heard a difference in cables. I preferred the Audioquest cinnamon or carbon and then Bluejean cables were a close second but are not as flexible as the Audioquest cables when it comes to car audio installation as the Bluejean cables are stiff. Then the last two were a custom one, and just a standard coaxial cable.
I always test everything regardless of what someone else says. That’s the whole reason I tested the HIDIZS S8 originally is because I stumbled upon Amir’s flying colours review 😆 But ended up being the worst product I have tested.
The correct answer is that coaxial digital cables are not bit perfect. They stream digital data asynchronously without error correction at the packet level. Any interference “can” cause distortion on the signal. However, this distortion is likely not predictable when talking bout a digital source. Anyone who’s says “this coax cable is better for low frequencies” or something similar, is just parroting something they heard. Optical cables offer the truest signal, but they do have a more limited bandwidth. The industry should invest in developing a higher bandwidth optical connection, but then they couldn’t sell the coax snake oil products, so it’s not likely to happen
Interesting!!!!
Hardly, rather a mash of terms without actual substance and a demonstration of poor understanding of digital audio
I think this comes down to more of a cable's ability to transfer data from point A to point B reliably. Hence why you can't pump a digital 4k 120hz+ signal through older HDMI cables. They are digital, but the bandwidth isn't necessarily available. Higher bandwidth demands higher quality cable construction. I would say that lower quality cables could result in a cable being susceptible to noise which could potentially impede the cable's ability to have adequate bandwidth for said signal. But in terms of perceived quality, bits are bits. If you receive the bits without packet drops, the actual sound of the audio simply cannot be different. However, if there are packet drops it could lead to stutter or something.
Thanks for the insight Paul. I appreciate that you take time to candidly explain complex and even controversial concepts like a fireside chat.
I’ve spent my life teaching and installing computers networks always passionate about audio, i can give countless reasons why digital interconnects shouldn’t make a difference. Having performed blind testing I can guarantee that they do, can’t explain it but it’s there.
If anyone watching this has the opportunity to attend a hifi audio show I’d recommend it, there is a lot happening thot you can’t see on a spec sheet.
This is by far the best argument I've ever heard for buying premium digital cables. Still don't think I will though.
@Douglas Blake It's not even that. Even with an unlimited budget, I can't ever see myself buying 99.999(repeating, of course)% pure copper, quintuple insulated, cables with braids tied by organically raised German children. There's just no need. When it comes to digital cables, if they conform to the spec, they should be just fine. SOME of these ultra-fancy cables even break spec. If your cables are picking up noise, you probably just need to organize your cables or space out the components of your system. Monoprice and Amazon Basics cables will do just fine for the digital side, even if you spent $20k on the rest of your system.
LOL yes, most of the arguments are a lot less coherent than this.
talking about bits having noise is pure bullshit
@Douglas Blake who cares about that? the 0/1 bits when they are bitperfect don't have a noise
Wow that was a bunch of this and that but nothing real. Thumbs up the video as always:)
A Bluetooth connection can can send an optimized signal if the power cable is made of pure silver and the line-signal is filtered.
Connected my new CD transport to my Naim Uniti Atom. One with Coaxail and one optical. Both cables/connections sound different 🤷♂️
So the conclusion is, network cables do not matter cause the TCP stack will take care of everything. Though the last few feet/inches of the signal path within the device does matter, since the DAC chip is sensitive to bit/word jitter. So if you have all your cables above the bare minimum and don't get any retransmits due to transmission errors you will be fine.
the DAC don't see any jitter after a tcp transmission and there is also no noise on bits
That’s still not technically possible. If the bits had noise/jitter they effectively would NOT be the same.
Digital cannot add noise to the file.
So it’s really about the noise isolation at the digital interface and how good it is. So if the Streamer isolates the digital input from the DAC stage properly why you could remove the need for expensive cabling? After all they pass the masters digitally around the world don’t they?
get a optical connection and the problem is solved, it still don't have anything to do with the digital data at all
What a fantastic reply and explanation. Thank you Paul. Seasons greetings.
I think this would be better explained by saying that a bad cable will carry with itself any electronic noise that was generated in the signal generator and this will reach the receiver of this signal causing interference on the electric components inside of it that will ultimately affect sound in some way or another. It's also important to note there needs to be any noise to begin with and if you just power everything from batteries and live in the country side with not much RF interference the difference will be far lower meaning your mileage will vary depending on your specific situation and electronics used.
hi thanks for the extremely valuable video There is an aspect that escapes me and I can't really understand
leaving aside the cheap equipment for a moment and instead analyzing the valuable ones, I swear that I don't understand why DACs and digital sources of a certain level have not adopted for the transmission of the spdif signal the BNC standard which is the one commonly used for digital oscilloscopes, function generators and digital spectrum analyzers
It was a standard already available and absolutely valid since they use it up to 1 GHz
Not only that, I have also seen that these units are so precise that they are able to highlight problems even in the bnc to bnc connection cable, for example with square wave tests.
That is, it seems that every now and then in high fidelity there is a naïve, unscientific approach
The RCA cable was not created for transferring digital signals but analog ones.
I really don't understand why you should force yourself to adapt a cable wrong by design
A 50USD right cable could be much superior to a 500USD cable wrong by design
Obviously it's not even worth discussing cheap devices with their understandable limits
Not the packages, or the file, not how it is read, but how it is interpreted the bad distortion noise is in the amplifier output.
Reminded me of a speach by the late Steve Jobs@Douglas BlakeBlake when he explained why Apple had artists (for the design of the typography for example) and Claris software had people in arts and iconography for the UI design, and engineers for the design of the hardware, and in the end they placed them all in one room to talk about the next development (kind of an Agile type of stand-up meeting)
IMHO, It is not syncronous thing, it is asyncronous. The data are stored in the buffer/RAM for a while, and while the data are already stored, they are completely silent until they are accessed.
The signals of data coming from the RAM when they are accessed do not contain the noise/jitter from the source, and the timing is the according the internal clock of the DAC, not the timing from USB. It is solely depend on design and built/construction of the DAC it self.
Hmmm not sure I'm with Paul on this one! Blind tests using the same equipment please!!
What does this galvanic isolation mentioned in the video have anything to do with digital audio cables? Does anybody realize that ethernet is galvanic isolated by design? The differential pairs offer common mode rejection and go through both inductive isolation through the transformer and capacitive isolation. The DC coupling is done at the PHY. A cable has NO SOUND. A cable has RLC, period, end of story. If you do the math the amount of RLC has to be GROSS to impact the low frequency of 20kHz. If your cable is magically changing the sound either 1. Confirmation bias or 2. Fundamentally flawed audio gear in build or design.
it's about grounding issues with coax cables - just use optical cables and you are done - the digital transmission itself don't give a shit nor can bits have noise
There is only one way to settle this. Measure a sample of cables and provide those measurements. Then see what is in the audible range. Also see what the DAC does to the noise and jitter.
That’s what science is for.
I see NO measurements from these cable companies on their products.
Just have to listen to hear the difference.
@@doctorrobin3040 damned there is no difference you can hear between digital cables - this bullshit is unbelievable!
@@doctorrobin3040 If it can't be measured there is no difference. Otherwise you are then in the realm of magic or religion.
@@Harald_Reindl great business model though!
@@zackschindler8334 Ah well there was a time the distance between your elbow and the tip of your middle finger was a standard measurement. Measurement science continues to improve.
What boils my brain is this new trend of "audiophile" network switches & PC's Paul put it best, the greatest audio PC is the cheapo laptop running off a battery. Any pre-source running off grid is bound to impress honestly. That includes a DAC using even the poopiest of cables.
Batteries come with their own set of issues though. Clean power without noise and a perfect sine wave, like with a linear power supply or power plant connected through a dedicated outlet is very impressive and in my experience blows the pants off any battery I have ever used.
Mr. Paul, Another great easy to understand video. I appreciate you very much. Thanks. Also, how in the hell can someone give a thumbs down to this informative video?
Because the information is misleading and the cables largely don't make any difference at all unless you're using a 1$ cable from 2003.
For more information go see audio science review
@@mistafizz5195 it is possible that we can't measure everything that constitute the end result. When I changed my USB cable between my streamer and my DAC I noticed a clear improvement. I can't explain it and it probably can't be measured, but the improvement is nonetheless apparent. Not imagined. (The cables were even of the same price category, about 40-50 bucks.)
@@marcusbrsp If you can't measure the difference you can't hear the difference. The tools used for measuring are orders of magnitude more sensitive than even the best of ears. If you pay more than 50$ for a cable then you got ripped off for a similar quality product with zero tangible benefits. Especially if you are using balanced cables.
@@marcusbrsp It sounds like the first cable might've had some quality control issues. So long as you buy from a reputable brand you shouldn't have any issues. Spending more than 50$ on cables is a rip off. I spent 20$ on my usb cable and 30$ on my XLR cables.
I didn't expect such a good answer that explains differences. I'm glad that I watch this channel every day. There are lessons to learn when you wouldn't expect them to be.
The difference between capacity and latency in data at rest vs. data in transit.
If they don‘t even measure any different, I can certainly not hear a difference. Any difference I would hear is confirmation bias.
Have you watched audio science review channel?
@@dagnisnierlins188 of course. I’ve also done similar measurements in my university lab and personally own some fancy audio cables (for the look of them) and can’t tell any difference to normal cables
@UCa2DdBdXExShLohmlipkerQ I didn't do a blind test but for the price of expensive cables I could rather get more room treatment or even a better component which makes more of an night and day difference than a cable
@Douglas Blake you are right speaker and room treatments are where it's at! 98% of sound. Everything else is 2% give or take.
What happened to your speakers? Do I need a Schrodinger test to see if they are dead or alive :-)!
The cat's alive and well due for release in June.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio 😁👍
i noticed that some Chord coaxial cables are around £500 There really is no need to spend all that money on a coaxial audio cable. instead… i make my own with high quality 100 satellite cable. It’s just as good.
Wednesday evening 26th July 2023. Southampton England 🏴🇫🇷🇮🇪🇩🇪🇮🇳
Where is the noise with a cheap optical cable? The only thing I can gather is that if your getting noise couples into your DAC from an Ethernet cable, maybe you should consider a better designed DAC. Ethernet does inherently have its own isolation. What you describe for your new product with isolation and maybe moating is a very standard design practice, its just new to you folks.
There is no noise in a cheap optical cable.
your DAC never touches the ethernet cable because there is a tcp stack which is software - it is all bullshit
I think there is misuse of the word "jitter". It is relevant only during real-time data transmission which will not apply if you are playing the audio file locally.
Also "noise" in digital signals should not affect the data significantly unlike in sine waves. Bits are simply represented as no voltage or the presence of about 80% of the upper voltage limit (could be +5V, +3.3V or +1.8V).
In digital circuits, the 1's are renegerated by the circuits inside the device (could be a NIC card, network switch, router, firewall, hub), thus any noise introduced to the square wave when travelling from device A to device B should have been removed when the bit is transmitted to the next device.
DAC would have a better error and signal correction, I assumed, because it needs to ensure that the voltage level of the bits received should be high-enough to represent "1".
No explanation here. What is noise?
If you use wifi instead of a cable, you don't have a cable connection that produces jitter or noise. We don't have a data loss with WIFI- 5 or 6 either, so why not better WIFI right away?
Bits come in one at a time and are buffered, the digital data sent exactly matches the data received and is lined up in the buffer, it's bit perfect. That said, I have some "new old stock" wax and paper capacitors for your Stratocaster I'll sell you for $100 a piece and I'm sure you'll agree they have a better "sound" then the same measured value new caps.🤞🙄
Right, except on a blind test I have yet to find a person that can actually distinguish between a straight signal from an audio source to the DAC with a "cheap" Monoprice USB cable and a $1000+ "audiophile" super duper conductor cable with jitter filters and reclockers.
Because there is no difference.
@Lloyd Stout I agree, except I have yet to see one with opposite results.
@Lloyd Stout if it has other results go and find the error source, it's not the cable, especially when it comes to digital transmission, that works or not
Hm, maybe this is the Reason why my System sounded a bit better as I switched from an old noisy PC to a Laptop/Dock setup as digital source. Then again it could have been the impact of the old and cheap PSU on the Powerline or the lack of Fan noise.
Yep, both of those will make a difference
My bits are huge Huge.. HUGE. Lol
Paul,now you have done it "Audioholics" now gets to make two videos on the'SnakeOil' of cables,even though,he is given a very high cost brand of cables .For his use. Doc BC
He also uses Blue Jeans Cable besides the Kimber. He tests those(and other cables) and shows there is no measurable difference, certainly nowhere near the audible range. He likes the Kimber because it is well-constructed, well-engineered and they don't make extravagant claims. Cable companies don't like to submit their cables for testing. Quality cables matter but expensive cables don't.
There is no shame in buying pretty and fancy cables as long as you don’t claim they have magical properties only you and your Krypton super hearing can experience
@@erico888 do you know the price of kimber cables? They arent cheap fyi
@@freone111 while true, wasn't the point at all and I explained that in my post.
@@TofumanFC3S True. The law of diminishing returns applies everywhere and most assuredly towards cables.
Cable conflict reminds me of contact lens worn by the rich and the poor. Rich pays $300 , poor $30.
Only catch, lens made of same plastic, but exact vision correction.
The bits r bits crowd seems wrong headed to me. Of course bits r just bits. BUT what is all important is the way those bits get out together for conversion to analogue and then out to speakers. How about this example: bits that get sent to different computer screens all look different depending on the type of screen. Why wouldn’t audio bits be the same?
better than the $99 PS AC noise harvester?
@Douglas Blake and only $99....lol
@@toneysunny9283 Hey! That thing is worth *at least* 99¢ for the fun of watching blinky lighty flashy.
Oh, wait, $99? Fools and their money, huh!
@@richardt3371 you can sell anything to Audiofools. I can make a special Power Cable where Electrons will only FLOW ONE direction for mere price of $5000.00
@@toneysunny9283 Is that excluding the WaffleBaffle or is that all in?
Why not use optical cable, then? (product idea: accept LAN/electrical bitstream, convert to optical)
Isn't there a resolution limit to optical, either with the cable or transmitters? I've read that 24/96 is the max. That would cover most music out there in Hi-Res land. But, I bet more and more people are demanding 24/192, even though there is still a limited amount of music at this resolution.
Yah. I've been using Toslink for years.
I have some very well broken-in vintage USB cables to sell. They have an extremely good tonal balance and clarity. The price is 1 BTC per cable. Takers?
Provided the cables are technically sound it is 100% impossible for there the be a difference sound. As mentioned, the files are decoded and checked for consistency in the streamer. If the consistency fails, a new packet is downloaded.
"Data isn't just data" wrong. Data packets are checked on multiple layers. When the application finally receives the constructed file it is 100% the same as the source. The jitter story is nonsense. And for the record, some folks did actual measurements on that, even with disconnecting the cables during playback. 0 difference.
"Hifi switches" of hifi network cables are a scam. 100%. As for fiber, again if technically ok, the amount of signal loss is negligible and the protocols still error check it. We are talking thousands of kilometers before a file reaches you, through dozens of devices. It does NOT matter. The streamer matters, what it does with the file after it has been received. Not before.
Thanks Paul. So is there a difference in the sound of your device which has this air gap when you use a cheap or an expensive USB cable? I would guess that the one air gap should eliminate all the bad influence from the input, correct? And does that also mean that any other device which has a good filter (air gap or whatever) should be immune to good or bad USB cables?
I think most of use will agree that a bad cable together with a bad designed device will have quality problems. Because a good designed device should filter the input.
Very good and spot on. My favourite digital cable is the Lifatec USA optical cable. New ones sound better than the older ones. Just so clean and natural. Kill any coax I have tried.
there is no difference between optical cables for 5 dollars versus 1000 dollars and what you heard on the coax was a grounding issue
@@Harald_Reindl lol look at you telling people like you know better than they do what they heard
@@vladg5216 the problem is that you audiophiles believe hard enough to hear it really
it's called imagination and the main problem is the short time frame you can really compare two audio setups even if there would be a difference
now comes imagination and expectation into the game - bingo
YES you idiots REALLY hear a difference in many things you are doing, but you would also hear a difference after scratch your balls if you just believe it hard enough
Rest assured that the 1's and 0's don't care what wire they go down. Don't fall for the crap that PS sells. It is fraud.
@@zackschindler8334 I can hear it. Easily.
Hi Paul, same goes for Voip a shielded cable has lower jitter and noice. This has to do with electro- magnetic interference. So much that they had to put a bit of artificial noice on the line because the sound is so clean and silent people thought there was no line. Still i bought my hdmi cables “not so goldplated” on Aliexpress. A money driven decision 🙄 i’m Dutch as well.😆
If audio equipment is susceptible to cable design then there is a weakness in the equipment not the cable. CRC checking would show how much any link errors are actually caused by the cable. This would be a more scientific method over ‘I can hear the difference” .
i can see this explaining USB, but not network cables or optical
Welp it's official, I'm no audiophile, that's for sure.
How come?😅
Beeing an audiophile does not mean you have expencive stuff and buy expencive cables...
You're lucky.. Too many are
@@drdelewded Nope.. To few are... I think you missunderstand what an audiophile is and belive it means you spend tons of mony and buy expencive cables etc.. That's a common but huge mistake. Audiophile only means you are really interested in good sound. Can be an audiophile while just owning a BT speaker.. Can still visit a friend etc to enjoy good sound...😉
@@Oystein87 As a sound professional, audiophile is a term for someone who wastes money on snake oil.. and really is more into the gear than the sound. Most of us cringe when we hear the term Audiophile used.. as its become, to pros, kinda a joke
@@Oystein87 As someone who's spent over $100K on recording equipment and audio gear over the past 25 years, Im insulted when someone calls me an audiophile..
So what Paul is telling us is that his digital input circuitry is insufficient to prevent analog noise on a digital cable from polluting his DAC output.
Paul is just making arguments for selling expensive USB cables from AudioQuest costing 30 times more than they cost to make. Even cheap DACs can have excellent high SNR above 100dB when connected via USB. It's funny how audiophiles who can live with the very audible artifacts of vinyl music incl. a horrible SNR also often are fanatically sensitive to some completely inaudible noise in the analog output of a DAC LOL...
Paul, love your videos.... I'm not going to pile on, but I agree with the Techies, then again I am a SCADA engineer.
of course you're an "engineer". ever consider that maybe that's your problem?