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In Reply to: RE: Simple systems are best posted by soundchekk on November 19, 2014 at 01:15:54
It's about power and grounding and various forms of parasitic coupling. This is all EE stuff. If you're a computer programmer you will miss all of these details. If you believe that bits are just bits, then you are wasting your time reading this forum.
This is not simple stuff. The "transmission rates" may be low in the digital domain, but they are not low when you consider digital noise which goes 1000 times higher in frequency than any "audio" signal. This noise is radiated and coupled ("every wire is an antenna") and enters low level amplification sections via feedback loops. At this point it intermodulates with the audio signal proper, producing spurious effects in the audible range.
It doesn't take lots of parts to make a complex system, provided there is non-linearity. Consider the Three Body Problem in Classical Mechanics. A little Googling turned up these slides with pretty pictures. Strange things happen when one has an unstable system.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Follow Ups:
I am an EE btw.Perhaps you should read what I wrote.
The audio interface has to take care on all the "known" distortions.
The designer has to make sure that close to nothing impacts the analog output quality of his device.
Most of the challenges are known to the vast majority of designers and EEs (and me too).
The real problem:
Usually budget, knowledge and market situation prevents from doing things right - doing it right from an enduser perspective.
Manufacturers usually run the "It's-good-enough-for-them-and-the-competition---We-need-some-space-left-to-sell-the-next-upgrade" mode.
(iFi nano-> micro-> mini)Everything else are stupid excuses - blame the others for mediocre gear performance. The funny thing is. It works. Stupid users (that includes me) tweak their upstream environment, invest hundreds/thousands of $ and endless hours in questionable tweaks... ...and guess what!?!?
As a matter of fact: The system will sound better after applying many of these great tweaks. And it finally proves: The Audio interface is that good that it shows any of these changes in terms of a "better sound experience".
That'll make the successful enduser tweaker a hero!!!
(Some of these even become official reviewers.)Poor mans conclusion: The very competent EE (manufacturer) gave the right directions: Build a new house and your own powerplant - live in a Faraday cage - Restructure and reinvent the WWW and computer industry - just to get a 300$ device an environment that it really deserves.
That sounds like a reasonable solution of all our problems to me.Less knowledgable people - especially in forums like AA or CA - don't even realize how much they get fooled all the time.
Enjoy.
Edits: 11/19/14 11/19/14 11/19/14 11/19/14 11/19/14
don't necessarily know much about audio, which includes acoustics, psychology and human emotion
Some of my PhD electrical colleagues are just textbook believers when it comes to audio ie straight wire with gain, bits are bits and all that nonsense. Most don't even think that capacitor quality makes any difference; to them it is just two strokes on a circuit diagram.
Do your PhD electrical colleagues design audio equipment for the audiophile niche? If not, I wouldn't expect them to know the nuances of electronic components as they are applied to audio equipment.
However, there are many EEs who do work in the audio field and do understand.
And then there are acoustics trained engineers and PhD's who know nothing about electronics or computers. We see some of that here with random tweaks that have no basis in understanding the electronic components or material properties that make up those components.
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