USB versus Ethernet - a study reveals the winner

Empirical Audio

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Mike,

It seems you are missing my main point. I am not skeptical about the technical achievement - even more, I know it is technically true, these are just generic properties of terminated lines and optical glass fibers. The question is how these long distances are technically relevant to audio subjective quality.

BTW, 50 ohm cables are supposed not to have a sound. But when I had the Dartzeels I found that Hervé recommended cables sounded better that a few others, even technically better, 50 ohm cables we used in the laboratory. Some certified cables even sounded very poor.

That makes no sense unless the DAC Master Clock is affected by the input stream. The whole objective is to eliminate this.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

Empirical Audio

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I like solutions that sound best.

No it's because of glass's immunity to emi/rfi; noise from stray voltages of any kind.

EMI is not generally a concern unless you have ground-loops. It's the ground-loop that is eliminated that can pick-up EMI, so galvanic isolation is the important advantage of optical.

Isolation can also be achieved other ways, like RF isolators and pulse transformers.

Just like long conducting cables, long optical cables can degrade the signal. There is also the electrical-optical conversions that add jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

microstrip

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which is exactly what i said.

But is is not what the marketing and interviews report ... It is why I commented.

like anything, executing a proper 50 ohm BNC cable comes down to getting the details correct. so proper connections and cable construction matter to the sound. I've tried Radio Shack BNC cables, Herve's BNC cables, Audience BNC cables, and Evolution Acoustics BNC's. the Evolution are best sounding, and Herve's are also quite good. the Audience was ok, but not great. the Rat Shack sucked.

the 50 ohm interface is a concept. execution matters.

No, the concept is just that as long as the cable matches the impedance the execution does not matter to performance. It is why in laboratories we specify the impedance and bandwidth, never the brand or type.

As far as I know no one knows technically why you and probably others preferred the Evolution. But knowing the source of Hervé cables, I doubt that they are more "proper" to the 50 standard than those supplied by the manufacturer.
 

Mike Lavigne

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No, the concept is just that as long as the cable matches the impedance the execution does not matter to performance. It is why in laboratories we specify the impedance and bandwidth, never the brand or type.

As far as I know no one knows technically why you and probably others preferred the Evolution. But knowing the source of Hervé cables, I doubt that they are more "proper" to the 50 standard than those supplied by the manufacturer.

Kevin Malmgren (Evolution Acoustics designer) used Herve's cables as the target to improve on, and was able to accomplish it. just more robust connectors, and more shielded and stiffer cables. and those things (and likely a few other secret things) made sonic differences. there are so many times when seemingly technically proper gear gets improved by sweating the details. maybe we don't know so much.
 

microstrip

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EMI is not generally a concern unless you have ground-loops. It's the ground-loop that is eliminated that can pick-up EMI, so galvanic isolation is the important advantage of optical.

Isolation can also be achieved other ways, like RF isolators and pulse transformers.

Just like long conducting cables, long optical cables can degrade the signal. There is also the electrical-optical conversions that add jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Optical always has perfect galvanic isolation, something not achieved most of the time by RF isolators and pulse transformers. We always have trade-offs, the difficult question is what matters more for subjective sound in systems.

Manufacturers and technical minded people often test their solutions in properly grounded and RF noise optimized systems - they forget that it is not the picture of the typical audiophile system!
 

Pb Blimp

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EMI is not generally a concern unless you have ground-loops. It's the ground-loop that is eliminated that can pick-up EMI, so galvanic isolation is the important advantage of optical.

???? This is the point I have made to you repetitively. It is superior to ethernets galvanic isolation for low voltage noise which uses conductive materials.

Isolation can also be achieved other ways, like RF isolators and pulse transformers.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Not as well. We keep covering the same ground. Have you tried it?

There is also the electrical-optical conversions that add jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Less so than conductive connections when the glass conversion is done with a low noise media converter and a good LPS. Or even better with the proprietary topology used by MSB.
 

microstrip

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Kevin Malmgren (Evolution Acoustics designer) used Herve's cables as the target to improve on, and was able to accomplish it. just more robust connectors, and more shielded and stiffer cables. and those things (and likely a few other secret things) made sonic differences. there are so many times when seemingly technically proper gear gets improved by sweating the details. maybe we don't know so much.

I have no doubt on it - but the fact that it can be improved conflicts with the 50 ohm concept. We can not have the umbrella of "technical perfection" of a well known solid concept - see the old reviews http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/dartzeel2/preamp_3.html - and then say it can be perfected with secret sauce!

Again this is the common situation in the high-end!
 

Mike Lavigne

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I have no doubt on it - but the fact that it can be improved conflicts with the 50 ohm concept. We can not have the umbrella of "technical perfection" of a well known solid concept - see the old reviews http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/dartzeel2/preamp_3.html - and then say it can be perfected with secret sauce!

Again this is the common situation in the high-end!

or.....we don't have a precise enough definition of the technical standard to know when we fall short of it. and the tweaking gets us closer to that spot.

i'm over my head here talking tech with you.....:rolleyes:
 

ddk

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Unfortunately there are always "if"s in high end audio because "conditions" are the key to achieve the best possible sound. I do not believe that you think that all transports (good ones as per your words, which I have tried many over the last 20 years) sound the "same" especially if they are not set up properly (proper rack, proper cables, proper ac filtering, proper grounding etc.). And yet, from your words I get the idea that you excuse them and accept them as the only "correct" digital source (maybe I misunderstood).

If you meet the proper conditions and if they use the same reading mechanism (very unlikely in our days) they should sound very similar (otherwise one would be correct and the other not). I have done this test with the Forsell transport and the Theta Digital Data Basic II. They used the same Philips CDM9Pro (to my ears the most "musical" mechanism ever made, some years ago, more than I care to remember) and after proper tweeking of the cheaper transport (a lot, mechanical and electronic) and a lot of effort in the set up (at the time I tried most of the anti-vibration tricks available) they sounded pretty darn close in character (tone, resolution, stereo image) for such different machines (especially in price).

From my experience as a reviewer (and I mention that only to show you that I have had the chance to test many of them through the years), all transports sound different (in some degree or another) and then you end up with the same "problem" that you get in computer audio, which is which one is the "best" or for that matter the right one? I guess the only "right" one is the one that you like most in your system, and that is with the equipment that you have in the room that you have (change the amp or the speakers, or the room and you will probably like something else)... The same applies to a computer based source. But in computer audio the more you "take care of things" the better the SQ, and the advantage of this fact is that you can do a lot of things about it, as long as you have the knack for it (some do, some don't). And more times than someone would think is possible, computer audio sounds way better than any CD or SACD based audio, and most of the time it is cheaper too (there are always exceptions). And to my knowledge, there are of the self solutions (look at all the servers out there) that actually do a great job, and lots of "accessories" that can improve them even more (like the anti-jitter devices that used to flood the market some time ago, and which by the way I used 17(!) of them since they did improve the sound of my CD based source at the time). Its a trial and error procedure, like everything else in audio. And that is a big part of the fun about it (or the fact that we get bored easily, but we are only human :D), correct?

thanasis

Agree with you and the Philips drive most of my drive my favorite transports used that or a version of that drive. I'm not making excuses for the poor sounding ones and I know we're talking about relatively very few transports or servers here and not the general market. I value setup but in my view the equipment should deliver 70%-80% of their quality in a good basic setup straight out of the box, the rest is gravy. With file servers I've had installed in house, heard at clients and friends or shows my only reaction is spare me and turn it off please or at best tolerable for background sound. I'm not a fan of digital but at least with CD I've been able to find acceptable setups to enjoy music with and on rare occasion even suspend reality briefly, which is what I'm after. My best experience with computer audio has been tolerable and no worse than what you get from an iPhone/iPad streamed over a wifi network and I never had to deal with buggy hardware/software using them. I started with high end back in 70's, don't do trial & error anymore, nearly two decades without getting bored :)!

david
 

Bso

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I like solutions that sound best.



No it's because of glass's immunity to emi/rfi; noise from stray voltages of any kind.

You're right, to a degree, for the cable. As long as the rest of the chain and implementation is up to snuff, and it doesn't get noise from up from up the signal chain and begins to transmit it.
 

andromedaaudio

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Agree with you and the Philips drive most of my drive my favorite transports used that or a version of that drive. I'm not making excuses for the poor sounding ones and I know we're talking about relatively very few transports or servers here and not the general market. I value setup but in my view the equipment should deliver 70%-80% of their quality in a good basic setup straight out of the box, the rest is gravy. With file servers I've had installed in house, heard at clients and friends or shows my only reaction is spare me and turn it off please or at best tolerable for background sound. I'm not a fan of digital but at least with CD I've been able to find acceptable setups to enjoy music with and on rare occasion even suspend reality briefly, which is what I'm after. My best experience with computer audio has been tolerable and no worse than what you get from an iPhone/iPad streamed over a wifi network and I never had to deal with buggy hardware/software using them. I started with high end back in 70's, don't do trial & error anymore, nearly two decades without getting bored :)!

david

Since the 70 ties , wow thats a long time , i do get bored with the " high end" sometimes however :) i only am involved since 2002
 

ddk

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Since the 70 ties , wow thats a long time , i do get bored with the " high end" sometimes however :) i only am involved since 2002

Anything get's old & boring when it becomes a never ending series of trials even dating beautiful women; at some point we need achievements!

david
 

microstrip

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or.....we don't have a precise enough definition of the technical standard to know when we fall short of it. and the tweaking gets us closer to that spot.

i'm over my head here talking tech with you.....:rolleyes:

Apologies for any headaches I am causing you, :( but we can not avoid technical aspects in a technical discussion.

The 50 ohm standard is not an audiophile standard. It is a precisely defined engineering standard, empirically studied for RF in the late 1920's - see Belden on this subject. If I remember well my first time with BNC 50 ohm cables in the laboratory was around 1977 ... Audiophiles can not bring anything new to it, except distorting it according to their preference.
 

microstrip

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(...) My best experience with computer audio has been tolerable and no worse than what you get from an iPhone/iPad streamed over a wifi network and I never had to deal with buggy hardware/software using them. I started with high end back in 70's, don't do trial & error anymore, nearly two decades without getting bored :)!

david

Probably your best experience with computer audio is when listening to vinyl recorded or processed using digital ... :D
 

ddk

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I meant it merely as in " the industry" in general

Oh yeah, I hear you! It's the social aspect of the industry which remains meaningful for me, including forums like this that we can kick things around wether we agree or not.

david
 

ddk

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Probably your best experience with computer audio is when listening to vinyl recorded or processed using digital ... :D

I can't get passed the hardware Micro, there's a very prominent signature there like getting entangled in barbed wire irrespective of the software, dac or system.

david
 

microstrip

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I can't get passed the hardware Micro, there's a very prominent signature there like getting entangled in barbed wire irrespective of the software, dac or system.

david

What do you dislike less - the CD or the equivalent vinyl coming from the digital master?
 

andromedaaudio

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I can Just Imagine how high a vintage taperecorder stack , i could buy for that Vivaldi stack. Incl. Some tapeproject series .
 

andromedaaudio

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. I cant speak for David but on the sony cd. History page They say Themselves that digital neees a greater faultcorrection then tape , all those millions of magnetized particles make IT sound smoother more natural. Vinyl does kind of the same
 

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