Click to view our Accessibility Statement or contact us with accessibility-related questions
coolerking
164
Jun 5, 2018
There are two issue folks. 1/ Audio enjoyment is a subjective endeavor. Period. In this world we strive to obtain objective information, desperately. The only real objective information is empirical, meaning, what are other peoples experience with a given product. 2. Secondly, there is a lot of what I call digititus out there. We have, through huge marketing efforts in all consumer endeavors, been lead to believe if something is named digital, it is one of two things, period - on or off, high or low, works or does not work. This leads people to black and white thinking, and/or zero sum gain thinking. It amazes me. No signals or products are purely digital, period. I see people constantly labeling products and technologies as thus, where as in their respective field they would never do this. Can you imagine someone in criminology after 20+ years experience saying that all criminals are either evil or not, period, there is no in between. Or a teacher saying kids are either dumb or smart, period. Hardware is analog. It is exists in the physical world, and thus, it has many aspects to it. Just because it is difficult to articulate this does not make it true.
So my advice is to try to see what people have to say about the sound of the product, in unfortunately qualitative language. With a degree in Electronic Engineering and going on 30+ years in many different facets of the hardware industry, the more I know, the more I realize I do not know. It is damn near impossible to explain to someone with no experience why a better "digital" cable makes a difference. Just as it is someone in banking to explain what money really is.
Read reviews and comments. Stay away from advice from folks who say things like "you cannot tell the difference between a MP3 signal with X resolution from one with Y." Come on, how the hell do they know? What they can offer is that they cannot hear the difference. If you like music then take the jump, and see for yourself.
Good Luck and Enjoy - the more people joining this hobby, the more we all benefit.
You are replying to
coolerking

Cancel
tinamou62
83
Nov 25, 2018
coolerkingI love this comment. I think too often we forget the point of the hobby - it's not to get the absolute purest, least distorted, perfect signal. It's just to enjoy the music. And that is so subjective.
You are replying to
tinamou62

Cancel
coolerkingThe priests of bit perfect declare this post as HERESY! haha, but honestly I agree with you, we learn a bit and fill in the rest with assumptions, and then it's all too easy to believe we know it all. Absolutely USB cables carry analog pulses of electricity that are interpreted as digital signals, hopefully as close to a perfect square wave as possible, but theory and practicality are different and subject to imperfections and interference.
You are replying to
Evshrug

Cancel
PRODUCTS YOU MAY LIKE
Trending Posts in Audiophile