Interesting article.

[4krow]

O' Lord how things changed from the original Bell System.

  I see false memory mentioned earlier in this thread. Man, that is one of the craziest games that our brains play on us! What's the deal with that? And it happens across the board. How big things seemed when we were young, or how amazing this or that sounded. Then you go back and the memory may be completely distorted. Selective perhaps, 'error correction', I really don't understand all that mental drama and it's purpose.

 

[Chris]

It's like a "desensitization process"..part of our adaptive abilities "survival"...  Everything is well said, and very interesting.... I will add 2 very basic and yet powerful forces in shaping our already fine hearing abilities.... 1) is Body Chemistry, what we are , or have been lately, putting in our bodies ie. nutrients or lack thereof, too much coffee, booze, on a bad diet kick, lack of exercise, fatigue and on and on... (I am sure Jim already included these in the above Physiology category)...  2)  the often overlooked and never mentioned amount of Earwax a person CAN have.... I for one, usually have to go to an audiologist from time to time and get it removed.. When, I leave it for 2 years or so, My ear drum is completely covered over.. I can hear very well, but, the funny thing is, just how much it robs my hearing of the lower midrange and  makes me much more sensitive to high frequencies.. Many things sound a tad brighter to me and more annoying.. When, I came back from my appointment the first time, I played my system, expecting maybe nothing but a little clearer sound, but, BOY, the FULL, rich midrange that was filling the room that wasnt there before...I thought my speaks were just a little weak in that area, but NO, it was my ears....I never hear people discussing this, I just assume it must be me only..However, it surely doesnt hurt to make an appointment, If you dont do it already to an audiologist and make sure your lower ear canal is pretty wax free.... Maybe, this is a dumb post from me, but I am just making sure if anybody hasnt thought of this and has relatively plugged ears and doesnt know it... It is a CHEAP and simple upgrade to your TOTAL audio system experience.... just sayin..

 

[Doc B]

A cheap and often amazing upgrade, I agree. I tend to lose top end when my ears have been waxy. Luckily it doesn't happen that often, every few years. But taking care of it is like spending $10k on great new gear.

 

[Chris]

Yep,  I wonder how much gear people have gotten rid of due to this. When it maybe wasnt their gear at all.. Or rejected a perfectly nice sounding product  due to this also...haha

 

[PassionForSound]

I just read this article and it's great!

Question: does a USB cable experience the same ramp up mentioned in the article and do different cables therefore have the potential to introduce jitter?

 

[mpeg2]

One thing that you need to keep in mind concerning USB cables is that many of the "audible" changes attributed to them are highly unlikely. Most issues like jitter and other timing things are easily taken care of by simple buffering - a long solved problem, with an easy solution. Bit errors are either corrected - or detected and result in loss of packets (if not correctible). Loss of packets results in major audio glitches - pops, dropouts and so on.

More subtle things like changes in the "character" of the music or changes in midrange level (for example) will NOT be caused by cables - as they would have to result from actual changes in the digital "numbers" carried within the bitstream - and any such changes would be detected as errors by the checksum (or CRC) algorithm that is used over the entire packet. For a cable to change (for example) the midrange character of a signal, it would have to figure out which numbers are carrying that information, make the changes and then recalculate the checksums to make the packet valid again - which is a pretty tall order for a simple piece of wire.

    Rich

 

[PassionForSound]

I understand that in theory,  but my experience differs and goes against placebo in this situation. I expected no change based on the same theory you just explained, but my results were  significant, repeatable and undeniable.

The only explanation I can fathom is that ramp up or some similar trait must be involved.

 

[mpeg2]

This may well be a case where human and psycho-acoustic factors come into play (expectation rather than experience) as the science/engineering is pretty clear cut and very simple. However, if someone does have a technical explanation for other effects (with some data to back it up), I'm certainly open to learning more.

BTW: I think this applies to more than just USB - most digital audio connections don't simply pour bits over the "wire" - rather there's a packetized structure involved that does have error checking (and an establised timing/buffer model).

I come from the Digital Television world, mostly inventing and standardizing new transport structures...

    Rich

 

[PassionForSound]

This may well be a case where human and psycho-acoustic factors come into play (expectation rather than experience)

That can't be the case when the expectation goes directly against the experience. Had I expected improvement, I would question the positive experience, but expecting no change and then hearing a definite change (for better or worse) suggests that something is going on. My question then is not "Did I hear a change?", but "Why did I hear a change?"

 

[Doc B]

It could be simply that the cable carries EMI that is injected into the signal ground of the DAC, and that carries over to the analog stage ground.

 

[PassionForSound]

Are there any standard issues that this type of EMI would create? What would it do to the or could it vary dramatically?

 

[TrevC]

Very interesting article.

When I was younger, I remember being so annoyed whenever someone would leave the TV on in another room. The CRT whine felt like it was penetrating my skull. It took me a good while to figure out that most people could rarely, if ever hear that noise when a TV was running properly. I assumed it was normal and everyone tolerated it

This may well be a case where human and psycho-acoustic factors come into play (expectation rather than experience) as the science/engineering is pretty clear cut and very simple. However, if someone does have a technical explanation for other effects (with some data to back it up), I'm certainly open to learning more.

BTW: I think this applies to more than just USB - most digital audio connections don't simply pour bits over the "wire" - rather there's a packetized structure involved that does have error checking (and an establised timing/buffer model).

I come from the Digital Television world, mostly inventing and standardizing new transport structures...

    Rich

As an example, how come a faulty HDMI cable can cause video artefacts resembling random fuzzy picture noise (which going on appearance alone doesn't look like lost packets/data, but seems overlaid on what is functional video). The signal is there, just with added snow I've observed this on a Chinese cable which was beyond spec and far too long.

That's the only reason I wouldn't totally dismiss claims of one USB cable being "better" than another, even though it seems like the end results should be far more 0 and 1.