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Digital Is Just 1's And 0's. Not!

Billb2

Billb2

Diamond Member
There's no such thing as digital: A conversation with Charles Hansen, Gordon Rankin, and Steve Silberman. http://www.audiostream.com/content/draft

Steve Silberman (AudioQuest), Charlie Hansen (Ayre Acoustics), and Gordon Rankin (Wavelength Audio) discuss "Digital Signals"

"Anyone who feels it's only "1" and "0" is missing a ton more variables that need to be addressed. "
 
He is trying to merge physical and logical states into one concept. Is there something important that he brings to the table, or are you just showing us you found someone who doesn't know what they are talking about on the internet? I stopped reading after it was obvious he was trying to play smarter than he actually is.
 
He's not wrong.

Digital is all just 1's and 0's but I think his point is that there are environmental factors that apply to both analog and digital signals that complicate the issue. A bad analog tv signal comes up as static and faded picture. A bad digital signal blocks up and goes choppy. Same situation just with slightly different symptoms. If external factors affect the ability to receive those 1s and 0s then it's just like analog.

The most interesting thing in the article was that if you rip your CD with something like dbPoweramp, the rip is compared to a database of thousands of users and can be corrected automatically. I did not know that.
 
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"AS: Since there's no such thing as 1s and 0s in digital transmission, what is being sent over our USB/Firewire/Ethernet cables when we play back music files?

CH: An ANALOG signal!"

Wat the hell...
 
smitbret said:
He's not wrong.

Digital is all just 1's and 0's but I think his point is that there are environmental factors that apply to both analog and digital signals that complicate the issue. A bad analog tv signal comes up as static and faded picture. A bad digital signal blocks up and goes choppy. Same situation just with slightly different symptoms. If external factors affect the ability to receive those 1s and 0s then it's just like analog.

The most interesting thing in the article was that if you rip your CD with something like dbPoweramp, the rip is compared to a database of thousands of users and can be corrected automatically. I did not know that.
Click to expand...

He's not right either. "If external factors affect the ability to receive those 1s and 0s then it's just like analog." is not the sole comparative value defining the two.

Yes, it's still an electrical signal and it is still subject to potential interference. Digital or Analog is merely the *format* of that signal. A digital signal has two states, call them what you want (0 and 1, on or off, whatever). The idea being that a digital formatted signal is more resilient to interference and weak signal issues, it doesnt have to be a flat line at 0 or a flat line at 1, as long as the base signal + noise is still close enough to the intended value, its going to be decoded properly on the other end. If there's too much noise, of course the transmission will be impacted when decoded. Analog formatting is a more "true to the source" formatting, but it's also much much more susceptible to noise degrading and distorting the signal, and a weak signal can easily alter or corrupt the received data.

Ben90 said:
He is trying to merge physical and logical states into one concept. Is there something important that he brings to the table, or are you just showing us you found someone who doesn't know what they are talking about on the internet? I stopped reading after it was obvious he was trying to play smarter than he actually is.
Click to expand...

I have to agree, are these guys trying to make a point, or are they just a bunch of misinformed audiophiles trying to justify why "digital is bad" to themselves?
 
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This reminds me of the discussion from about 20 years ago when some folks claimed at a $50 (it may have been cheaper maybe) Radio Shack portable CD player was just as good as units costing 10-100 times as much. There were mod kits galore being developed for this unit to tweak it even further. Putting the link above in perspective, audiophiles always claim to have some special kind of hearing that allow them to differentiate subtle differences that may or may not be real and they also have the ability to suspend the laws of physics (remember the Shun Moon little wooden pucks that you placed on top of speakers to tune them to the room???).
 
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