Some actually believe that music from different drive types (SSD,HDD) or different SATA cables can sound different

[Kiko1974]

I don't know what happened to that inexpensive My Media SSD but something wasn't right with It, so I didn't bothered with it and I returned it.
My current SSD, which as I said I put together myself, can't be cheaper and It sounds great. I'll explain what It features: an inexpensive, around 12 Euros Blueendless USB case, fully metallic, with an USB C port, and an also inexpensive Silicon Power 1 Tb. A55 SSLC, around 52 Euros. Total price of my self put together SSD is around 64 Euros, for an SSD that doesn't look fancy at all, but everything looks well made, performs well and both the USB case and the internal SSD have a full metal body that makes the bundle both robust, built like a tank, and also very conveniente for heat disipation.
Regarding optical drives, I'm sure if one takes Marantz 's top of the like SACD player, if I'm not mistaken it's the SACD 10, and chance it's optical drive for a lesser quality one, I'm sure this would have an impact, for the worse, on sound quality.
I didn't know that SSD's didn't need for error correction, it's either the data is right, as It was originally transfered to It, or It wasn't.

 

[EJ3]

"Some actually believe"... LOL.

Some actually believe that the earth is flat and lizard aliens control us...

I knew a guy like that in Saipan. He was a retired radio operator (on US NAVY ships) and afterwards worked as a transmitter tech. for Voice of America.
If being involved in that (and on ships for over 20 years) all his life did not convince him that the earth is not flat...
All I can say is that strange things get locked into peoples brains, like non-faulty cables sound different.
There are some that cannot believe the truth, no matter what.

 

[EJ3]

The Earth is indeed flat, if you process your raw measurements taking Pi to be exactly 22/7. Some people will go to the ends of the Earth to fit the facts to their beliefs.

The idea of the Sun ever rising in the west remains risible, though.

It becomes dark when you go over the end of the earth, right?

 

[EJ3]

Is there any difference between 8" and 5 1/4" floppys? I actually remember 8" floppy disks on IBM cluster controllers (and paper tape feeds from the Met Office and 747 engine data).

I had a client that used a magnet to hold the 8" floppy program disc on the filing cabinet when she was done for the day.
That was kind of entertaining.

 

[antcollinet]

When I was ripping my CDs back then, some CDs will rip with C2 errors

Were you ripping them at 1x speed? Or were you ripping them at 24x or 32x or whatever max speed your drive would run at.

Huge difference in error rate (Like from a few down to zero) - and why systems like "accurate rip" can work : It just detect errors and slows down the read speed before repeating the rip for that part.

Playback of course is always at 1x speed.

Well of course you are correct about the CD anyone tried a CD knows that small scratches or stains causes errors in the playback artefacts and sound errors.

Well if you are getting audible errors, like skips or dropouts, it means the error correction has failed. If you don't hear anything then either error correction has worked, or (By far most likely) there are no errors.

It's a bit like ethernet. Ethernet is designed to detect and correct errors. However in a typical home environment with low noise, and cables of typical home lengths, you can look at net stats, and see that there are zero errors over hours, days or even weeks.

If the error rate were high (say hundreds per second of corrected errors you might hear something perceived as a continuous quality loss - but then you effectively have a fault situation. If it is zero, or 1 corrected error every few seconds, it will have no audible effect.

 

[Arc78]

Exactly the thing is that in a computer filsystem you can not have a high random read and write error. Before it would affect the sound it world have crashed the systems function.
Either it works or not works,not both but at lower quality…. That’s not how a computer system works

 

[storing]

Interesting and I admire it but why those bad components disrupt only the audio stream but not other more complex and sensitive tasks running in the regular PC ?

Sorry not completely sure what you mean - my first paragraph is about ground loops and electrical components generating an electromagnetic field, resulting in noise being picked up by crappy soundcards, or speciality antennas. Second paragraph is about a hypothetical situation where the OP's hard drive might somehow have some form of bitrot. But OP's HD isn't inside a PC, it's for audio only and used as storage for some media player.

Really? - try creating a file with a single sample full scale impulse. Then play it.

We're talking about music here, as the next post by danadam hints: yes a single FS sample in a silent section is audible. Put that same sample where the music is already near FS and it won't be.

 

[antcollinet]

Sorry not completely sure what you mean - my first paragraph is about ground loops and electrical components generating an electromagnetic field, resulting in noise being picked up by crappy soundcards, or speciality antennas. Second paragraph is about a hypothetical situation where the OP's hard drive might somehow have some form of bitrot. But OP's HD isn't inside a PC, it's for audio only and used as storage for some media player.


We're talking about music here, as the next post by danadam hints: yes a single FS sample in a silent section is audible. Put that same sample where the music is already near FS and it won't be.

It will when it flips full scale negative to full scale positive. **

Plus a lot of music plays a lot of the time a long way from full scale.

I've heard music when toslink starts to lose sync and data starts to get corrupted. It is very audible, even when it is just starting at 1 click every few seconds.


** EDIT : seems not necessarily. I've just edited a single sample of Eminem's "My name is". This is admittedly a brickwall compressed track, but a single sample going full negative to full positive was not audible.


EDIT SOME MORE : On the other hand I've just put three single sample glitches into Enya's "How can I keep from Singing". The third is 20 seconds in, and placed at a point where the volume is typical of the rest of the song.

All three are clearly audible, and the sound is similar to what I heard in the situation I described above where Toslink was just beginning to lose sync. The sound is also similar to the light clicks you get when listening to vinyl.

 

[storing]

All three are clearly audible, and the sound is similar to what I heard in the situation I described above where Toslink was just beginning to lose sync. The sound is also similar to the light clicks you get when listening to vinyl.

No surprise, as a rule of thumb in a job I did we used 'if you can see the spike you can hear it (but not the other way around)', like in your screenshot. So if you'd amplify this part of Enya's song such that the max goes near 0.9 then apply the same faults it might become a lot harder to hear already.

 

[ahofer]

'if you can see the spike you can hear it (but not the other way around)'

I’d challenge that. Measurement instruments are way more sensitive than ears. If you don’t see it, either it doesn’t exist or you aren’t looking in the right place. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your assertion.

So if you'd amplify this part of Enya's song such that the max goes near 0.9 then apply the same faults it might become a lot harder to hear already.

Which appears to contradict the prior assertion.

 

[antcollinet]

No surprise, as a rule of thumb in a job I did we used 'if you can see the spike you can hear it (but not the other way around)', like in your screenshot. So if you'd amplify this part of Enya's song such that the max goes near 0.9 then apply the same faults it might become a lot harder to hear already.

Sure - the point though is that music recorded at the levels of that Enya track are common. Single sample damage then becomes easily audible.

 

[solderdude]

For CD the CU errors (unrecoverable read errors) usually are replaced by sample-hold and hardly noticeable and due to CIRC spread over a few samples.
Of course, the laser pickup would not have to skip a track.

I once fitted my Technics CDP with LED's (with monostables to prolong a flag) to C1, C2 and CU and found all CD's had constant C1 errors, some C2 errors and when badly damaged had some CU errors. In most cases these too weren't audible untill it became really bad.

Of course this method is not used when playing back audio files. A corrupted file may well have sample errors in it which can be just about any value when 1 bit is toppled for some reason.

 

[egellings]

It becomes dark when you go over the end of the earth, right?

Where is the end on a sphere?

 

[EJ3]

Where is the end on a sphere?

I guess that I'm not supposed to be facetious?

 

[Doodski]

Where is the end on a sphere?

At the axis.

 

[antcollinet]

At the axis.

But only when you've climbed to the top of the pole.

 

[storing]

I’d challenge that. Measurement instruments are way more sensitive than ears. If you don’t see it, either it doesn’t exist or you aren’t looking in the right place. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your assertion.

In this particular case, this was in neuroscience, looking at/listening to the electrical signal generated by a single brain cell, which drowns in noise from the surrounding cells and, well, a ton of other noise sources. A cell firing looks a whole lot like the type of artefact antcollinet's screenshot shows. One (or usually a couple of, depending on sampling rate) sample clearly sticking out amongst the surrounding signal.

Which appears to contradict the prior assertion.

Not really: 1 full scale sample sticking out of 'noise' with .9 amplitude is harder to spot (both visually and audibly) that one full scale sample against .3 amplitude.

 

[JSmith]

What one needs to really be careful with in regards to SQ is RAM...

JSmith

 

[EJ3]

At the axis.

For those that believe in the "flat earth theory":
If you go over the edge of the Earth, will their still be points of light (stars) that you see or will it be dark, like 10 miles inside of a cave (without glowing organisms)?

 

[mhardy6647]

Digital data does not know it is playing music.

Well, technically, nor does an amplifier or even, say, a reel to reel tape recorder/player.