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In Reply to: Analog -to- 24/96 PCM -to- analog is transparent to human hearing posted by Feanor on February 6, 2007 at 07:32:51:
Not one professional I know who actually works with digital audio on a day to day basis would ever say that, or agree with it.Even more amazing, not one of the serious pro companies that make ADC's or DAC's say's that their products are sonically "perfect". They know better than to make the claim to all those pro's I mentioned above.
There is a penalty to go into the digital domain from the analog, and back again, and it is not necessarily trivial.
Now, suppose we postulated both the ADC and the DAC were literally SOTA, the best there is right now. Yes, you would be hard pressed to hear them in a signal chain using pre-recorded analog music as the source, but with a live signal, they are still detectable.
As for the typical mid-fi (and I include all those devices you cite in that category, because none of them is even remotely capable of true SOTA performance), forgetaboutit.
BTW, "good enough" don't cut it. :-)
Follow Ups:
What about staying in the digital domain (until the very end)? Digital out from the CDP to digital in on a DEQ, digital out to a dac--the eq'ing between the cdp and the dac, aside from whatever intended effects the eqing may have--does this necessarily degrade the signal? Thanks. (Got your quick and dirty bass traps in my corners, so this is not a troll but a genuine question).
An ADC and a DAC have very specific and defined jobs, the measurements, as lame and inadequate as they still are, are dialed in to test them for those attributes they are believed to require to perform their jobs well, etc.A digital EQ on the other hand, is deliberately changing the bits, and I can assure you, it is NOT just the EQ of the amplitude that is going on. Unfortunately, the measurements we are currently limited to DO NOT truly test the digital EQ's properly for all that they are doing to the signals.
Various algorithms must be used to create these digital filters, and while most of these algorithms are designed to EMULATE an analog circuit and it's amplitude response, they ALL introduce other problems during the signal manipulations to achieve the intended changes in the amplitude response.
All of a sudden, all kinds of subtle and bizarre things rear their ugly heads to sully the signal: digital multipication, addition, subtraction, dithering, truncation, buffering, and so on, not to even enter into the extremely difficult realm of which algorithm to use.
Many digital EQ's use a form of the digital bi-quad algorithm, which is KNOWN to be suboptimal, but it is what the "free" software that the DSP or the digital filter chip they used came with, and 9 times out of ten, they use the default programming, the default software and algorithm, etc., you end up with the cheapest digital filter solution on the market. Guess what, it don't sound so hot.
Some companies, such as Apogee, Wadia, Arcam, etc. create their own digital filter algorithms, as do some of the digital EQ folks, such as Lake, and some of the others. Are these the ultimate? Who knows, but at least they tried to go one better than the default freebie software the hardware came with for bare minimal functionality. Someone actually listened to those algorithms to see if they sounded better than the cheapie defaults, and in most cases, they do sound much better. Are they perfect? Probably not yet.
Does YOUR particular digital EQ have custom algorithms that were carefully researched and listened to and tweaked by ear, or are they the "out-of-the-box" algorithms that came with the chip-set?
Who knows?
For instance, Behringer tends to "borrow" other companies algorithms, but they don't always pick the 'good ones', since they are limited to who else is using that particular chipset and general hardware. Most of what I have heard from the Behringer stuff is pretty much mid-fi quality, not that good.In theory, routing the signal chain as you desribe CAN provide the potential for a much better situation, but ONLY if the digital EQ is really up to par, which right now, means a near SOTA unit with totaly custom and tweaked algorithms, and these aren't readily available for less than about $4-5k or so.
Thanks Jon for taking the time to give me such a complete answer. Always looking for a free or cheap ride, I have a DEQ2496. Can't afford a Rives or whatever. I see all over AA posts re digital eq having no distortion penalty, and I even think AHC in TAS said something similar recently (although I don't have the mag at hand and if Im wrong I admit it up front), so I was interested as to what you had to say. I have seen no arguments on the side of no digital distortion added, and your arguments coming down on the negative side of that seem pretty compelling. Thanks again! Regards, Tom.
digital out from the CDP into your processor
is the best that you can do.
Now there might be jitter issues,
pbs with the asynchronous upsampling etc...
If you have a vacation this year Jon, I invite you to hear a display of digital that me and a few others believe to be SOTA, but, unconventional compared to todays commercial offerings.Lets just way, it takes some rather large file sizes.
Well, OK, if you're saying TacT is mid-fi then I have no rejoinder. I'll take your word for it that it doesn't meet the highest professional standards.For home application, though, TacT is about where it's at for home application.
Bill Bailey
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See my stereo config ... Good enough is good enough
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