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Thanks for the response!

Hi John!

I much appreciate your taking the time to try to educate me on this matter. Sadly, I'm still at sea and still don't understand what's going on. If this post is a TL;DR then that's OK. You nor anyone else on this board owes me any sort of explanation. But if you're feeling generous and have some time to kill, please read on! I'm perfectly happy to see you up on a soap box! At present I feel like the rube at the country fair who simply cannot grasp the magician's hat trick. The rest of the crowd seems to be able to see what's going on but for the life of me I cannot understand how he keeps pulling that rabbit out of that empty hat.

May I ask, have you read mitchco's articles: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/520-fun-digital-audio-%96-bit-perfect-audibility-testing/ and http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/513-jriver-mac-vs-jriver-windows-sound-quality-comparison/ ?

I ask because the entire basis of my argument rests on the premise that the "bit perfect" outputs of the tested media players are identical and therefore fungible. To support his case, mitchco points to the deep, -144dB nulls he was able to obtain while playing the same song through different media players. If mitchco is wrong, or if I am reading mitchco incorrectly then there is no point in further discussion. I can easily grasp why different outputs would sound different. (Of course, that might throw into doubt my understanding of how computers work, but that's not the issue here!)

My second point is that all the responses I've read so far say more or less that digital audio is not fully understood yet and therefore playback equipment is not perfect and indeed can differ remarkably one from another. For this case let us presume that every DAC and amp or whatever has a unique and distinct "character" to it.

That said, may we agree that the "characters" of those various components are consistent from day to day? I think this goes without saying really, as some of the "characters" components have will be more highly prized by audiophiles and therefore command higher prices. The posters on this board may all be inmates but none are stupid. No one is going to spend money on a component that has a different character each time you use it. Still, it's important that we agree that components have consistent "characters" from day to day.

We then assemble our components into a chain, from source to transducer. Each time we play a song the media player loads the data into RAM, the CPU moves it through the PC to the USB port, the USB cable moves it to the DAC and so forth all the way down the chain. With each component having its own "character" the chain is a virtual roller coaster ride for our music, but again, the chain itself is consistent. If I listen to a song today, I will expect the media player to load the same data into RAM, the CPU to handle it the same way and every other link in the chain to handle it the same way as it did before. I fully expect the song to sound the same as it did yesterday and to sound the same again tomorrow. Indeed, I would be surprised and concerned if the song sounded different, as that would indicate that something in my personal chain of components had changed.

Note that for my hypothetical it doesn't matter if the various components or processes are imperfect, so long as they are consistent. If something is mishandled today, it will have been mishandled yesterday and will be mishandled again tomorrow. The sound, imperfect as it is, will be the same and retain the same overall "character."

This is where my confusion arises. We have two media players, say Foobar and JRMC. Both are capable of putting "bit perfect" data into my PC's RAM. If we've gotten this far, we've already agreed that "bit perfect" data is exactly alike: the same bit perfect song, even from different media players, will null perfectly, or at least to -144dB according to mitchco. Whether it came from Foobar or JRMC, it's the same data. Once that data is in RAM, I again expect the CPU to move it through the PC to the USB port, the USB cable to carry it to the DAC and so forth and so on; just like it did yesterday and just the way it will do tomorrow. I would fully expect the same song through the two "bit perfect" media players to sound the same, and would be surprised if it did not. Why wouldn't it sound the same? If the same song through the two players can be nulled to -144dB why wouldn't the rest of the chain handle it the same way?

I know this was a long read, and if you got this far I thank you heartily for your time and patience. Truly, I am not trying to troll you or anyone else. I would be happy to read any thoughts you might have on my dilemma.

Thanks again for your reply!

J.E.

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