REGISTER NEW USERLOST PASSWORD? WELCOME, Logout

Why everything matters in today’s high-end systems

Paul's Posts — 26 April 2012

By

Why everything matters in today’s high-end systems

In 1973 when we first started PS Audio everything mattered to the sound quality path: types of capacitors, types of transistors, resistors, circuit topology, connectors, power supplies, chassis builds and so on.  Then we moved to digital audio and the pundits of the day proclaimed that bits are bits it wouldn’t matter what we did with them it would always sound the same as long as the bits didn’t change.

Boy were the futurists of that time wrong.

Today everything is different yet the same.  Music is mostly delivered digitally and instead of analog’s direct hardware based paths for the audio to travel we have millions of logic gates to direct the flow of music instead.  We’re learning that the route those digital musical bits takes is every bit as important to the sound quality as it was in the days of direct analog.  Even if the output of bits is identical, the course they take seems to affect the sound quality you hear.

Isn’t it odd that while everything seems different it’s really the same?

email Why everything matters in todays high end systems Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers

Get new and fresh stories like this each morning by joining the folks reading Paul's Posts. Click here

Related Articles

Serving it up Rolling it off What’s all the fuss about? Young turks

Share

About Author

Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan is the CEO and co-founder of PS Audio Inc. a Boulder Colorado design and manufacturing company of high-end audio products and services. McGowan has been designing and building high-end products for nearly 40 years. Hobbies include skiing, music, hiking, artisan bread baking, kick boxing and cooking. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his 4 sons.

(4) Readers Comments

  1. April 26, 2012 at 5:32 am

    Everything matters. Everything’s important. It would seem odd to me if something/anything were different from that.

    It’s what makes us…us.

    • Ultrarunner

      April 26, 2012 at 12:32 pm

      What is really amazing is most audiophiles aren’t aware or don’t accept this when it comes to computer audio. Different USB cables, different servers, and different rippers make a huge difference. I can do a blind AB of WAV vs AIFF for my wife and she can consistently hear the difference. Yet most audiophiles and manufacturers would dismiss this out of hand because it can’t be possible based on theory.

  2. Tom Devey

    April 26, 2012 at 6:52 am

    identical (Oxford)

    Pronunciation: /īˈdentikəl/
    adjective
    1similar in every detail; exactly alike:
    four girls in identical green outfits
    the passage on the second floor was identical to the one below
    (of twins) developed from a single fertilized ovum, and therefore of the same sex and usually very similar in appearance. Compare with fraternal (sense 2).
    [attributive] (of something encountered on separate occasions) the same:
    she stole a suitcase from the identical station at which she had been arrested before
    2 Logic & Mathematics expressing an identity:
    an identical proposition

  3. Soundminded

    April 26, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    Paul you blew me away and left me gasping for breath with this posting.

    “Even if the output of bits is identical, the course they take seems to affect the sound quality you hear.”

    ????? How can that be? This raises so many questions. How would you know it’s the same without going through every last one and zero to check? This reminds me of The Amazing James Randi when BBC took up his million dollar challenge to prove homeopathy where the equivalent of a glass of water’s worth of ingredients is diluted by the equivalent of the Atlantic Ocean, the homeopathic theory being that even though none of the ingredient atoms were present any longer in the dilution, that water has memory.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathy.shtml

    Of course Randi won.

    Well this creates a whole new kettle of fish. Let’s suppose what you say is true. I download a high definition music file and I get the same bits that were sent to me but it might not sound the same as the source? Why would I take the risk? I buy two CDs, same manufacturer, same disc made in two separate plants in different parts of the world. They manufacturer says they are identical but they might not sound the same? I play one of the two discs on two systems. System A has component for component substituted for an alternate in system B. System A sounds better overall and amplifier A sounds better than amplifier B, wire A better than B, speaker A better than B. Now I play the other disc and if what you say is true, I could get exactly the opposite results, couldn’t I? If I buy an expensive speaker, amplifier or whatever in a store, unless I get the very demo unit I heard there, the one I take home might perform differently no matter how much testing, quality control, and conformance to ISO 9000 the manufacturer went to pains to conform to? How would one make a rational decision about which audio equipment, which car, which jar of pickles to buy? The one you get might be entirely different from what you thought you were buying based on what seemed identical. BTW can you tell without opening up the case or checking the system file but just by using it if your PC programs are running on an Intel or comparable AMD chip? I couldn’t. And they don’t even claim to be identical.

Leave a Reply