@boxer12
If the difference is due to placebo, it at the end of the day makes no difference from an actual improvement, as you feel the system is sounding better. However, your perception may not work in the same way as someone else, so actually claiming it performs better would be disingenuous.
The fact of listening for a difference itself will lead you to look for differences and possibly hear them even if they don’t exist. This also is in replay to audioengr and how he said his customers heard a difference, just the fact of asking if they heard a difference would itself invalidate any findings. Just remeber the story I told in the beginning, people heard distinct differences even though the system stayed the same. Our brains are easily fooled, just think back to what color that dress was (it’s black/blue; I saw white/gold the first day and the next day I could only see black/blue, truly mind blowing).
@audioengr
Also, I mixed psec with ns. Going from 22psec to 7psec is not audible. Some studies/trials have been done, and human audibility of jitter is >10ns (~20ns one study found), which is 10,000psec. And again, any good DAC would get rid of jitter to beyond audibility in the first place.
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It’s really simple, there’s documented studies showing that digital signals can sound totally different when using S/PDIF cables that are over $30...it’s called placebo. |
@audiothesis Yes, a 50¢ optical cable you find on Aliexpress may have issues, but any AmazonBasics, Monoprice, etc. cable will not have any issues unless it’s a super long run, but anything under 10ft will be fine. @karmapolice Saying you heard a drastic difference that means the decibel change would likely be 2dB or higher, or the original one you had (>$50) had audible distortion that was really close to the fundamental, which just isn’t going to happen. @melm
Jitter is well documeneted. However, comparing jitter between DACs has nothing to do with if you are using a $20 generic digital cable (coax or optical) or a $4000 Nordost one. There’s one story where people have said they’ve hear a difference when switching between a cheap solid state amp and a McIntosh tube amp, yet the McIntosh didn’t even work and the solid state amp was always in use. If those people heard a difference when nothing in the system changed, you should just own up to the fact that your brain is telling you that your new digital cable sounds better when it in fact is outputting an identical signal. Now, if you hear difference, then that’s money well spent. However, there is no difference and I hope you never recommend someone do the same as you. Spend money on better room acoustics, not replacing your over expensive optical cable with one even more expensive. |
@melm
I will be the first to say I don’t have a golden ear, my $4000 towers speakers don’t sound much better than my $300 bookshelves and my $15 headphones don’t sound much worse than my others costing far more (all are well reviewed/measured, so it is simply on my ability to differentiate being poor). The good thing though is that doesn’t matter as the signal is 100% identical for music.
I have seen measurements showing jitter in Toslink, but they were showing >100kHz and even in the MHz range, so it has no influence on music.
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@melm
Look at how Stereophile tests jitter, it actually is in our hearing range. Who cares if the timing errors are at 500kHz?
You claim the clock differences can be heard, I no doubt believe you hear a difference, I do doubt though that any differences are above our audibility thresholds (and not by a reasonable margin, you are claiming differences that are magnitudes upon magnitudes upon magnitudes lower than what studies have found).
And again, our audibility threshold to hear jitter has been tested to be >10ns, the fact of using a femtosecond clock is irrelevant, as a jitter error of 1 femtosecond won’t sound better than an error of 1 nanosecond. |
@boxer21
And yet you do not know it actually made a difference, all you know is that you heard a difference.
@audioengr3
I know a few psec makes a difference, and the measurements I was talking about showed digital coax around 100psec at 100kHz to 1.4MHz and Toslink at 500-1000psec for the same reason. However, that’s well beyond human audibility so it doesn’t matter.
Show me the jitter difference between an Amazon Basics optical cable and then from an AudioQuest Diamond optical cable. I have seen one users measurements where he compared a ~$3 optical cable to a $200 glass one, and the $200 was 5psec less.
However, keep in mind any properly made DAC (I’ve seen $1000 ones perform worse than $100 ones) will get rid of jitter anyway, even the AudioQuest DragonFly USB DACs will reduce the jitter to be inaudible. |
@audioengr
I didn’t say the DAC would eliminate jitter, I said it would reduce it to beyond audibility.
Just take a second (pun intended) and just think how short a nanosecond is, and then a picosecond. Sorry, but no, we can’t hear a difference. And again, any customer feedback is irrelevant. There is positive customer feedback on using pebbles scattered across the room to act as diffusers. |
@Kalali I’m a skeptic because I reference studies showing the differences are inaudible? @audioengr That’s BNC, not optical. And again, that’s at frequencies we can’t hear. Since you know how quick a psec is, let’s listen to what 2 microseconds (2 million picoseconds), http://www.sereneaudio.com/blog/what-does-jitter-sound-like On my phone, I could guess the original 1kHz vs 2µs periodic (the others were obvious), but was magnitudes more difficult with music. So, it should be obvious that if 2 million psec is not easily differentiable with music playing, than your original statement of going from 22psec to 7psec being a drastic difference should show you why I stated it was bogus, even if your gear and room are near silent, the difference in the noise floor with content playing would be insignificant, just like how going from dithered 16bit to 24bit is impossible to hear, as dithered 16bit has a dynamic range of 120dB, and the noise floor of a song is never gonna be say 20dB, so one could have a song that’s 20dB to 140dB be perfectly reproduced by noise-shape dithered 16bit. Of course, given your job, I highly doubt you would state otherwise. |
@audioengr
I know an iPhone isn’t resolving, just giving a reference point. However, did you use that link and take the test? Be honest if you actually could differentiate the 2 microsecond (random or periodic) with music playing; even if you could, now imagine the difference being ~91,000 times smaller (2 microseconds vs 22psec).
And again, customer feedback proves nothing, as placebo is more likely be factor.
As for a “personal attack”, Empirical Audio/you sell a $700 reclocking device, so I was pointing out it would be unlikely for you to admit, the truth, that jitter in Toslink cables is a non-issue.
Suggesting that for the time it takes for the speed of sound to travel 0.0000002979 inches (22psec), which is also a phase shift of 0.0001584° at 20kHz and 0.0000001584° at 20Hz, to be audible is on the verge of insanity.
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Forgot to add, in order for any jitter to be present for 16-bit (not factoring in jitter reduction by the DAC nor dithering), it needs to be less than 346psec ((1000000000000/44100)/(2^16) ).
So, since <346psec is litterally not present for 16-bit, without reduction or dither, making the claim that going from 22psec to 7psec was drastically audible should now be clearly evident as bogus (placebo).
And yes, there is no benefit from going higher than 16-bit, which can cover say 35dB to 126dB without dither, and 25dB to 145dB with noise shaped dither. |
@boxer12
i don’t have a golden ear, that is very true. However, not a single person tested professionally/scientifically has been able to hear jitter below a nanosecond, so to say that 0.0012ns (22psec) of jitter is audible just isn’t true.
Jitter introduced by Toslink is not an issue, even without a DAC reducing it. With a DAC reducing it, the problem is non-existent; when doing a J-Test (pretty much worst case scenario of jitter), the $100 AudioQuest DragonFly Black had a jitter reduction of no worse than -105dBFS; meaning you could playback 35dB (average noise floor in a treated room) to 140dB and have no jitter present.
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@Kalali
If specs show me that any further reduction in jitter would be inaudible, then I wouldn’t spend time nor money looking at a re-clocker or anything, as it’s not theoretical, but actually impossible for there to be any audible improvement if the current jitter is below the noise floor.
For say speakers, I’ll look for speakers that measure close to ideal, and then try to demo (as if my room is overly reflective or narrow, I wouldn’t want a speaker with a super wide soundstage for instance, as that would cause too many reflections; the same goes for a narrower soundstage in a wide room). |
@celander I have shown that psec levels of jitter is indeed need, but it’s already >300psec for 16-bit. Also, no, jitter doesn’t alter the reaslism of instruments/vocals, the type of jitter we are talking about is a rise in the noise floor, or distortion-like peaks of low-level. Meaning, it’s like a bit of static added in. And again, this whole conversation was about the how a new Toslink cable make a drastic reduction in jitter. Keep in mind how I showed even the budget-ish DragonFly DAC can reduce even immense jitter well below the noise floor anyway. Also, here are some measurements of different Toslink cables: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/05/measurements-toslink-optical-audio.html?m=1 Including a freebie one, an intentionally poorly made one, an all glass one,etc. Guess what? They are 99.9% identical, and jitter all below 100dBFS. So yeah, I stand further by my claim that the poster simply fell prone to placebo. |
@celander
You again misinterpret what I said. I said even on my phone all the jitter values with the test tone were audible, except one of them. So, I invited Steve to take the test with the music samples to see if he could hear it. I never suggested that if I couldn’t hear it on my phone, that it wasn’t audible. |
@audioengr
”This is a fact supported by hundreds of reviews in Stereophile where the measurements werevery poor and yet the review with music was stellar.”
Because the review was good the measurements must not show the whole picture (even though JA’s don’t, like no distortion measurements)? The reviews are done sighted with knowledge of the company and price. To suggest the reviews being positive must only correlate to performing better than the measurements suggest is just silly.
Also, saying the Toslink measurements aren’t valid because they are taken after the DAC thus shows you agree the DAC can reduce jitter to below audibility. And no, it is valid for my argument, as any differences that would show up would indicate that the differences between them is large enough that the DAC couldn’t reduce the jitter to the same amount. |
@karmapolice
I just showed that USB cables can sound different. But I also showed if your DAC doesn’t correct it, then the DAC isn’t performing well. |
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@chrisg1000 No measurements for that, but I do have for the Hugo 2: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/chord-hugo-2-dac-jitter-measurement-p... Excellent jitter reduction as well. Indeed, regardless of a test, you did hear a difference, and that’s all that matters at the end of the day (for you). However, tests tell us if there actually is a difference, rather than just hearing one. I said this in my initial comments for this thread, but people describe differences in a amp even though it was the same unit, so differences are heard with the same system, since you changed the system by using a different cable, it’s easy to understand that you heard a difference. |
@chrisg1000 DACs do in fact have jitter reduction, and a J-Test is done when measuring them, Stereophile always performs one for instance. The test doesn’t introduce picoseconds/nanoseconds of jitter, but instead uses frequencies, so I don’t know the correlation but it’s stated as worst case scenario levels of jitter. Chord makes good DACs, not sure which model you have, but let’s look at their $500 Mojo: Stereophile: https://www.stereophile.com/content/chord-electronics-mojo-da-headphone-amplifier-measurements AudioScienceResearch: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-chord-mojo-dac... Both sources show it reducing jitter to below 120dB, enough for 24bit data to have zero jitter no matter how long or cheap your cables are (EMI is a different thing), and also well below your room’s noise floor. Also, take note the measurements are different as Stereophile does jitter tests for 44.1kHz and ASR does jitter tests at 48kHz, Stereophile also used a tone that’s -6dBFS and ASR does 0dBFS. And yes, that’s the only difference a digital cable can introduce, frequency response, THD, and everything else would be identical. So unless you are cranking your amplifier above full scale, there will be no difference no matter the digital cable. |
@chrisg1000
Speaker cable can have difference in say interference (twisted cables help for longer runs), so yes.
@nonoise
Sorry, but none of that is factually sound. Test equipment can indeed not hear, but it can measure everything that we are hearing, and we use human trials to see what audibility thresholds are. If I brought everyone on Earth 1 by 1 into chrisg1000’s room to listen to the different USB cables and not a single other human on the face of the planet hears a difference, does that mean that chrisg1000 simply has the best hearing on Earth, or the more logical conclusion that it’s placebo? Jitter is the only difference with digital cables, and his DAC easily reduces it so that it’s 100% non-existent in 24bit content (even if playing 32bit, no one can hear lower than -130dBFS.
There is nothing about our hearing that we can’t measure.
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@chrisg1000
I’m nuts yet you hear a difference you cannot explain? See, this is very typical, audio forum discussions that result in name calling.
It could be a grounding issue with the amp which is affected by the power of the signal given over digital cable. |
@chrisg1000
I was asked a question so I answered. What makes a speaker have good soundstage width is actually a pretty simple question, so nothing really to debate.
Again, what I don’t know, is why you are hearing a difference; it’s not jitter as we established your DAC is good enough (which is the original argument I had with @audioengr), but I did hypothesis that maybe it’s a grounding issue with your amp (which is only excited with the cheaper cable as maybe it didn’t meet transmission specs (which is common, especially for microUSB, even Anker don’t meet standards), which could be checked with a multimeter. |
@boxer12
Soundstage width is an aspect of the recording, the speakers, and the room. So it depends what aspect you want to measure. For speakers, it’s simply directivty, how attenuated the signal gets off-axis.
Soundstage depth is done via time/amplitude/phase alterations. A perfect binaural recording for instance played on “perfect” headphones would perfectly replicate our natural hearing.
Instrument separation is simply just a combination.
So yes.
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@chrisg1000
Well, I would like to hear the possibility; other than “sounding better”, because you still didn’t explain what differences you heard. |
@boxer12
Speaker cables will result in power loss and sometimes frequency response deviation in the bass (damping factor).
Output loss will be well below 1dB, and in most cases below 0.5dB, so no, speakers cables won’t affect soundstage width.
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@audioengr
Drivel as in measurements showing the differences are insignficant? Also yes, you heard plastic optical cables as better sounding than glass because plastic ones do measure better. And also, yes, USB cables of shorter length measure better than ones or longer length, but also bargain bin USB and “audiophile-grade” USB measure near identically.
And again, any decent DAC will reduce jitter to at least below say -110dBFS, so all these differences before the DAC can indeed be ignored, unless you are cranking your amplifier above full scale.
And yes, I’ve used wire bough at Walmart and wire that was much more expensive, no difference. Getting a sufficient gauge and maybe twisted for decent runs are pretty much all that matters. And no, you don’t have to listen for days to begin to appreciate the difference, our recall ability is about 15sec to my knowledge, so if you can’t immediately hear a difference, than any difference you hear latter on is not real.
Just to point out for those that don’t know, there is $10,000 amplifier challenge for anyone who can differentiate between two amps that are level matched, operating at volumes with THD below 2%, amplifying linearly (no tubes or bass boost), etc. This has been going on for almost 30 years, and not a single person could do better than 65% accuracy (24 guesses). So if anyone believes they can hear a difference, here’s your chance to win $10K. Over a thousand people (of course the majority are fellow audiophiles) have taken it and all failed. |
@geoffkait I could be wrong, but I think the ~15sec statement which I’ve been told/have seen comes from this study. EDIT: That link seems to not work sometimes, try this one. |
@paul79 I’m all for improvements and tweaks; I am not for placebo and snake oil. A $10,000 speaker wire won’t sound better than a $50 one, and a $2000 USB cable won’t sound better than a $20 one (all assuming same gauge/length/etc.). Claims being posted here, such as Steve Nugent saying that he heard a drastic difference going from 22psec to 7psec of jitter (>20Bit to <22Bit, which is >120dB to <132dB of dynamic range; and again, before the DAC, which reduces jitter) is just furthering already debunked myths, which leads people with fat wallets to spend thousands on cables and accessories that won’t fix these “issues”. One debunked myth is that silver cables sound brighter than copper cables, they don’t, they just conduct electricity a bit better so decibel loss is a tad less over the same distance, and yet going a single gauge better for copper will have even less loss and cost a heck of a lot cheaper. I don’t care if people sell high-end cables for asthetics or better construction (I pay more for nice braided, pre-terminated speaker cables), I do care if they lie and say they are perform better (like solid core, which is worse than stranded; or cryo-freezing to align the crystalline structures). However, as a I stated earlier, if someone bought such items and they did hear an improvement, then it was money well spent. Just keep in mind people sincerely claim to hear improvements using these. |
@geoffkait
You are using memory in the general sense, no one can recall if a stereo system they listened to 50yr ago was bright, had good imaging, etc., not even if you had an Eidetic memory (as that’s visual).
I’m am talking about the auditory recall to be able to differentiate frequency response, soundstage width, etc.
That’s why ABX testing has tone be done quickly. |
@audioengr Or I just haven’t drunken the Kool-Aid. Kidding aside, I know there are other aspects to speaker wire than gauge and material, but the rest make no audible difference unless specifically designed to (and never an improvement, in terms of more accurate; but it’s rare to get a measured difference, and usually requires an amp with a terrible DF). Speaker Cable Face-Off, I seem to recognize someone’s company’s cable being tested and showing no benefit in skin effect over zip cord, despite this someone’s claims, and that no benefits were found for audible frequencies. As I’ve already shown that any decent DAC can reduce jitter to at least -110dBFS, I would appreciate one reason why a $2000 USB cable is worth purchasing besides asthetics/build quality. Anyone making claims of a more open soundstage by exchanging speaker wire should have such claims be taken as truth, as the two have no correlation. You may have seen Ethan Winer’s recent video where he null tested some different speaker wire (invert polarity so any similarities cancel out), and came to the not so surprising result of having no audible differences. This is nothing new, people have done such experiments for years. I also own a measurement mic, so it would be pretty easy to see any frequency response deviation, decay differences, etc. by changing out my analog/digital cables and speaker wire. I personally won’t do this though as it most certainly would be a waste of time and money. |
@boxer12
All I’m saying is if your system has jitter that’s -130dBFS, that’s not an audible issue, and you shouldn’t upgrade your cables, DAC, buy a re-clocker, etc. to “fix” it. That’s like complaining that your speakers have a 0.1dB spike at 10kHz.
Spemd money where it matters, the weakest links being your speakers and the room. $10,000 cream of the crop speakers (Revel F228Be for one) and a $350 Onkyo integrated and using analog and digital cables bought at Walmart in a properly treated room will sound better than $3000 cream of the crop speakers (Ascend Acoustics Sierra Tower with RAAL for one) paired with a $10,600 Cord Dave DAC, $54,000 Boulder 2110 preamp, $99,000 Boulder 2150 monoblocks, and all Nordst Odin2 cabling ($30,000 for 1 meter of speaker cable, $20,000 for 2ft of digital interconnect, etc.), in a less than properly treated room. |
@boxer12
Prove me wrong then; you state they do with no proof so far, yet I have shown proof, and it shows the audible differences can be treated as minimal to non-existent. I’ve never seen the Sun in person without Rayleigh scattering, but I know it will look white instead of the normal yellow/orange.
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@boxer12
Don’t need double blind tests when measurements exists, and those measurements are well below human audibility, which is found via scientific blind testing. |
@cleeds
Please re-read what I said. I believe in double-blind tests, but they are not needed to compare DACs when measurements exists and such tests have been done to analyze the thresholds or human hearing.
It’s like how I don’t need to race a Tesla Model S against a Toyota Camry to find which is faster, there are recordings of their 0-60 and 1/4 mile performances. |
