Transparency in sound explanation?

[Viper Necklampy]

Toslink is most transparent as it conducts light.
RCA's don't conduct light so cannot possibly be transparent

Anyway i don't get the point of you 3-5 guys who tell me that a 200€ cable is like a 20-40€ ones, and what are your bases.. I hear you because i'm a newbie, and you all are way more Expert than i am.. Does a ''Golden ear'' can hear the difference of 50€ and 200€+ cable? With opticals i see jitter that can be bad on cheap cables, as i Read online jitter is pretty considerable determinating on final sound quality, probably more than high purity conductors like 9,999 or 9,999%.. Please don't judge me or facepalm LOL take my word that i consider myself e Nooby,
i just can't come to an end if someone just say an expensive cable is useless just because.. i must made a purchase in toslink and RCA cables in next days I'm sorry to bother
(Good site man, i picked up el8 titanium even thanks to your site, you made one of the very few measurements online of el8... Anyway i picked 8/10 in the test on your site yesterday I hope you come with more headphones measurements, with max SPL info and all that stuff, hard to find online these measurements for a lot of headphones)

 

[restorer-john]

The term is an overused catch-all for specific metrics across various parameters that have been arbitrarily deemed to be below audible or inconsequential.

As such, it evolves over time, is subject to individuals' interpretation and cannot be quantified.

In short, another meaningless audiophile weasel word used rather excessively on this site. I refuse to use it.

 

[solderdude]

Anyway i don't get the point of you 3-5 guys who tell me that a 200€ cable is like a 20-40€ ones, and what are your bases..

With opticals i see jitter that can be bad on cheap cables, as i Read online jitter is pretty considerable determinating on final sound quality

My bases is that I actually work in Photonics (Fiber-optics combined with electronics) as a daily job and have been in audiorepair and design for about 30 years. Call it experience and just enough understanding of it.

And yes, TOSLINK has lots of jitter. Much more than copper SPDIF AES/EBU and USB. It depends on the DAC how it handles that.
Optics is by defintion groundloop free connection.

Does a ''Golden ear'' can hear the difference of 50€ and 200€+ cable?

NO .. they just think/claim they can...

See Ethan Winers video link in the previous post... watch and learn.

i just can't come to an end if someone just say an expensive cable is useless just because.. i must made a purchase in toslink and RCA cables in next days.

There are build quality differences as you already found out.
Decent quality can be found for decent prices.
The cheapest ones are usually crap.
The expensive ones are snake oil.
A good RCA can be had between $ 5 and $25 TOSLINK cables for about the same prices.
Anything cheaper COULD be crap, anything more expensive is overkill.
Even between $5 and $25 it could be a crapshoot as well.

No need to buy expensive interlinks nor TOSLINK.

 

[Theo]

You're right. It looks to me as this is not a scientific term in audio. It is in optics as mentioned before. So, it is an analogy.
To answer to the OP, I would use "without distortion added" rather than transparent (like "without sugar added" in food). And as it seems that an 0.1-0.01% distortion range is close enough to 0 as far as hearing is concerned, I would say that properly designed equipment IS transparent does not add significant distortion, except for headphones and speakers which are lagging behind on that matter...

 

[Blumlein 88]

Anyway i don't get the point of you 3-5 guys who tell me that a 200€ cable is like a 20-40€ ones, and what are your bases.. I hear you because i'm a newbie, and you all are way more Expert than i am.. Does a ''Golden ear'' can hear the difference of 50€ and 200€+ cable? With opticals i see jitter that can be bad on cheap cables, as i Read online jitter is pretty considerable determinating on final sound quality, probably more than high purity conductors like 9,999 or 9,999%.. Please don't judge me or facepalm LOL take my word that i consider myself e Nooby,
i just can't come to an end if someone just say an expensive cable is useless just because.. i must made a purchase in toslink and RCA cables in next days I'm sorry to bother
(Good site man, i picked up el8 titanium even thanks to your site, you made one of the very few measurements online of el8... Anyway i picked 8/10 in the test on your site yesterday I hope you come with more headphones measurements, with max SPL info and all that stuff, hard to find online these measurements for a lot of headphones)

I understand all the things you are posting in this post are something of common knowledge among audiophile press. It is just they aren't so. They are old wive's tales.

Toslink always causing lots of jitter:

Look at this post where I test a coax vs a toslink from the same device. There is no difference.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...l-converters-introduce-jitter.2279/post-62262

Even JA at Stereophile has shown an excellent eye-pattern using 15 ft of cheap toslink.

Expensive cables don't do anything at audio frequencies that inexpensive cables can't do. Why do we think that? Measured results. Maxwell's equations. People who know about signal transmission know of no reason for it to be a problem. Audio frequencies are really low compared to all the things we do with radar, microwaves, cell phones, cable TV etc. etc. You can carry 100's of channels of TV, and internet over miles to thousands of people for cable TV using solid well made RG6, but it isn't good enough for audio over 1 meter? Roll that around your head for a bit. Does that make sense?

Recording studios that normally make all the music we get to hear, they overwhelmingly don't use exotic cable? Don't you think if anyone could hear the difference and find it worth doing it would be those people?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Anyway i don't get the point of you 3-5 guys who tell me that a 200€ cable is like a 20-40€ ones, and what are your bases.. I hear you because i'm a newbie, and you all are way more Expert than i am.. Does a ''Golden ear'' can hear the difference of 50€ and 200€+ cable? With opticals i see jitter that can be bad on cheap cables, as i Read online jitter is pretty considerable determinating on final sound quality, probably more than high purity conductors like 9,999 or 9,999%.. Please don't judge me or facepalm LOL take my word that i consider myself e Nooby,
i just can't come to an end if someone just say an expensive cable is useless just because.. i must made a purchase in toslink and RCA cables in next days I'm sorry to bother
(Good site man, i picked up el8 titanium even thanks to your site, you made one of the very few measurements online of el8... Anyway i picked 8/10 in the test on your site yesterday I hope you come with more headphones measurements, with max SPL info and all that stuff, hard to find online these measurements for a lot of headphones)

I understand all the things you are posting in this post are something of common knowledge among audiophile press. It is just they aren't so. They are old wive's tales.

Toslink always causing lots of jitter:

Look at this post where I test a coax vs a toslink from the same device. There is no difference.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...l-converters-introduce-jitter.2279/post-62262

Even JA at Stereophile has shown an excellent eye-pattern using 15 ft of cheap toslink.

View attachment 21110


Expensive cables don't do anything at audio frequencies that inexpensive cables can't do. Why do we think that? Measured results. Maxwell's equations. People who know about signal transmission know of no reason for it to be a problem. Audio frequencies are really low compared to all the things we do with radar, microwaves, cell phones, cable TV etc. etc. You can carry 100's of channels of TV, and internet over miles to thousands of people for cable TV using solid well made RG6, but it isn't good enough for audio over 1 meter? Roll that around your head for a bit. Does that make sense?

Recording studios that normally make all the music we get to hear, they overwhelmingly don't use exotic cable? Don't you think if anyone could hear the difference and find it worth doing it would be those people?

 

[Theo]

And of course cables are the most transparent distortion free equipment possible and don't need to be manufactured by the "TransparentCable" company.

 

[Theo]

BTW, sound engineering those days is very far from being transparent distortion free.

 

[solderdude]

How TOSLINK jitters is highly dependent on the used receiver module and above all the data processing behind it.
When you look at the eyepattern of the receiver signal things may not look as nice.. when you look at the signal after de-jitter process it looks fine.

When you look at jitter tests performed by Amir then it should be obvious in most cases there is no added jitter seen in those plots whether it is USB, TOSLINK or SPDIF. The reason is called jtter reduction circuitery. The link itself is of less concern.
The audibility of jitter depends on more than just a number. It is quite complex as there is more than one type of jitter and they have a frequency spectrum as well.
Jitter reduction circuitery (should) take care of this. As far as I am concerned jitter is of no concern, certainly not with the DACs currently available.

 

[andreasmaaan]

I appreciate that the word "transparent" is abused, and that it's impossible in practice to define it with absolute precision. But "distortion free" is not a useful term IMO. No device is distortion-free, so it's not appropriate to call it so. What's important is whether any distortion (or noise) is audible. This is the important concept captured by "transparent".

 

[Viper Necklampy]

I think I have an interesting twist on what constitutes transparency.

In the world of film and video there has been a debate raging over frame rate. Higher frame rate is objectively closer to reality than standard film, but cinema-goers hate it. To quote the above article:


What happens with higher frame rate (and I haven't necessarily seen this argument elsewhere) is that more accurate motion portrayal creates - literally - more accurate depth information for the brain i.e. even on a 2D cinema system, motion creates 3D for the brain. Slower frame rates distort that depth information, but don't affect the static, more intellectual 'monocular depth perception' based on scale, perspective, occlusion and so on. With slower frame rates you get a peculiar distortion of reality that you can't quite put your finger on: it's like looking at a moving painting rather than real life. If it had been designed for that purpose it would have been a brilliant invention. As it is, I think it was a complete fluke.

Now, if you asked most cinema-goers and film-makers what they prefer, most of them would say they prefer the less transparent, lower frame rate. And if you asked them which seems most [edit] more transparent, I think there would be confusion. Many people on the web ask "Why does high frame rate looks so strange"? Like these two:

So a real world example of where 'transparent' is *not* preferred, and seems "unnatural".

I really really like tv, love them (I have an almost 1000€ Sony xf90 tv, recently bought) I really find interesting comparison with tv image on tv and sound on audio equipment's Thinking your vision about it, I wanna point first a thing, the motion interpolation artefact caused is conditioned by the tv itself, on their chip i think, for example Sony ones have one of the best interpolation and soap opera effect, In my tv is very good, you can see artefact if you Watch closely, sure, but for most content the game worth absolutely the candel, for real, i'm still flabbergasted from the first time I used it few months ago, It's so SMOOOOTH, real life like, you might know Here's the point.. You compare the slow frame rates (24 or 30hz) to motion interpolation and soap opera effect with less distortion/transparency, but if i give it a better definition, I think slow frame rates in audio terms correspond to Upsampling to higher depth of dynamic range, to give it a more ''real life-like'' perception, but that can cost to an higher distorsion (Right? In sound upsampling don't match with higher distortion?) in sound (artifact in tv's).. That could be my perception, tell me what you think So, while you give trasparency in sound a higher frame rate in tv's, I would say that trasparency on sound, is color accuracy, apl accuracy and that kind of things I think that make more sense ahah

 

[Viper Necklampy]

I understand all the things you are posting in this post are something of common knowledge among audiophile press. It is just they aren't so. They are old wive's tales.

Toslink always causing lots of jitter:

Look at this post where I test a coax vs a toslink from the same device. There is no difference.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...l-converters-introduce-jitter.2279/post-62262

Even JA at Stereophile has shown an excellent eye-pattern using 15 ft of cheap toslink.

View attachment 21110


Expensive cables don't do anything at audio frequencies that inexpensive cables can't do. Why do we think that? Measured results. Maxwell's equations. People who know about signal transmission know of no reason for it to be a problem. Audio frequencies are really low compared to all the things we do with radar, microwaves, cell phones, cable TV etc. etc. You can carry 100's of channels of TV, and internet over miles to thousands of people for cable TV using solid well made RG6, but it isn't good enough for audio over 1 meter? Roll that around your head for a bit. Does that make sense?

Recording studios that normally make all the music we get to hear, they overwhelmingly don't use exotic cable? Don't you think if anyone could hear the difference and find it worth doing it would be those people?

I don't know of it, but maybe they can be difference if only the circuitry of spidf optical and coax don't share the same input like opa1612, if i don't fail to remember some measurements of that type were different in coax vs optical, i hear someones says Coax sound better than optical, or maybe i'm just wrong!!
Cables don't do anything about frequencies: .. Mhhhhh, as i said in other forum, my 60€ qed toslink sounded defenately better to me instead of the 10€ Ivanky after few hours of testing them, they replied me it's all in my head, there aren't differences, only my fantasy, and i could do a blind test, as i can tell, i think a blind test could be even easier to catch the differences of those cables, but Anyway.. User reviews of expensive cables can talk too, a vast majority of users give them 5stars and report those 'expensive' cable can make huge differences in : improved soundstage, separation, smoother high, mids, lows, trasparency and that stuff.. Actually even reviews of specialized sites like Whathifi etc. who target award winning ones, says those cable writes differences of that kind, sound signature etc.. Just to point it out. . Now, here i have interesting video of an Italian guy who measured two RCA cables, one cheap 10€, and one very expensive, with beast shielding etc. of about 200-300, look, It can be very interesting with what are we talking!

At 12:00 he figure out the measurements, i don't know which graphs are them, i hope you can catch his Italian words to understand lol At 13:15 come very interesting, on his graphs, you could see substantially difference on SPL, higher 0,3db of SPL, (0,4% Higher SPL!) on the expensive cable vs cheap! And you could see almost huge differences in frequency response graph!! Look At that, i mean, we are talking around 3dB. differences in 60db graph!!!! That's a lot i think, you can see smoother lows and highs.. That could be one prove that out there cables really make a difference, i mean.. Look At that.. Tell me what you think, I would really like to know About recording studio guys, i Wonder where to find what they really think about cables, and if they use it or not Hope to be clear because my English is not perfect ;]

 

[Viper Necklampy]

How TOSLINK jitters is highly dependent on the used receiver module and above all the data processing behind it.
When you look at the eyepattern of the receiver signal things may not look as nice.. when you look at the signal after de-jitter process it looks fine.

When you look at jitter tests performed by Amir then it should be obvious in most cases there is no added jitter seen in those plots whether it is USB, TOSLINK or SPDIF. The reason is called jtter reduction circuitery. The link itself is of less concern.
The audibility of jitter depends on more than just a number. It is quite complex as there is more than one type of jitter and they have a frequency spectrum as well.
Jitter reduction circuitery (should) take care of this. As far as I am concerned jitter is of no concern, certainly not with the DACs currently available.

So, if toslink has high jitter, but connected to a RECENT DAC with jitter reduction technology, it come close/the same as coaxial and most important usb, toslink can be considered a high quality connection method today, right? I Wonder about this Graphs of jitter from Topping d50 on s/pdif, looks awesome, now, he say is s/pdif, but s/pdif can be coax or optical toslink, so I Wonder if he used coax or optical for the measurement, and if it is coax measurement, if he have optical ones, can you respond about this D50 measurement @amirm ?

 

[Killingbeans]

User reviews of expensive cables can talk too, a vast majority of users give them 5stars and report those 'expensive' cable can make huge differences in : improved soundstage, separation, smoother high, mids, lows, trasparency and that stuff.. Actually even reviews of specialized sites like Whathifi etc. who target award winning ones, says those cable writes differences of that kind, sound signature etc.. Just to point it out.

Hans Christian Andersen wrote a story about that phenomenon: The Emperor's New Clothes.

If you want to hear a difference, you are very likely to hear one. Even if there is non.

Now, here i have interesting video of an Italian guy who measured two RCA cables, one cheap 10€, and one very expensive, with beast shielding etc. of about 200-300, look, It can be very interesting with what are we talking!

I don't understand a word of Italian. Can you elaborate on his method and conclusions?

Hope that power cable is only part of it all as some sort of spiteful joke.

About recording studio guys, i Wonder where to find what they really think about cables, and if they use it or not

I think I've spotted at few studio guys around here. If you are lucky, they'll chime in

So, if toslink has high jitter, but connected to a RECENT DAC with jitter reduction technology, it come close/the same as coaxial and most important usb, toslink can be considered a high quality connection method today, right?

Yes, precisely. And if there is a difference, it's thoroughly below audibility.

 

[solderdude]

I don't know of it, but maybe they can be difference if only the circuitry of spidf optical and coax don't share the same input, if i don't fail to remember some measurements of that type were different in coax vs optical, i hear someones says Coax sound better than optical, or maybe i'm just wrong!!

bla bla bla bs bla bla

Only people that lack understanding of how it (analog and digital electronics) work and what measurements actually mean, say stuff like that.
Doesn't make them right, regardless how 'noted' and 'trustworthy' some may be in their eyes.
Even some technical folks, that have stuff to sell you, sometimes tell nonsense just to generate sales.

There is more misinformation/stupidity/nonsense found on the web (about any subject really) than accurate/truth stuff.
There are more gullible people on this planet than those that really know about subjects in question.

 

[sergeauckland]

I appreciate that the word "transparent" is abused, and that it's impossible in practice to define it with absolute precision. But "distortion free" is not a useful term IMO. No device is distortion-free, so it's not appropriate to call it so. What's important is whether any distortion (or noise) is audible. This is the important concept captured by "transparent".

Indeed. My definition of 'transparent' is that the device passes a straight-wire bypass test. If a device can't be distinguished when in or out of circuit, then it doesn't matter how low or high distortion or noise is, how flat the frequency response is etc etc. They are all sufficiently low that a statistically valid number of tests can be done showing 'transparency'.

It has been shown time and again that 16/44.1 is transparent both in a digital system DAC-ADC or in an analogue system ADC-DAC. When I was designing analogue routing switchers for broadcast, one test was to route the signal through multiple passes of the switcher and it had to be transparent even though it had gone through the switcher multiple times, typically something like 8 or 16 times depending on the size of the router. This was in the mid 1970s, and although one could measure the noise build-up on each additional pass, the result on programme material was still transparent after all that.

S.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I don't know of it, but maybe they can be difference if only the circuitry of spidf optical and coax don't share the same input like opa1612, if i don't fail to remember some measurements of that type were different in coax vs optical, i hear someones says Coax sound better than optical, or maybe i'm just wrong!!
Cables don't do anything about frequencies: .. Mhhhhh, as i said in other forum, my 60€ qed toslink sounded defenately better to me instead of the 10€ Ivanky after few hours of testing them, they replied me it's all in my head, there aren't differences, only my fantasy, and i could do a blind test, as i can tell, i think a blind test could be even easier to catch the differences of those cables, but Anyway.. User reviews of expensive cables can talk too, a vast majority of users give them 5stars and report those 'expensive' cable can make huge differences in : improved soundstage, separation, smoother high, mids, lows, trasparency and that stuff.. Actually even reviews of specialized sites like Whathifi etc. who target award winning ones, says those cable writes differences of that kind, sound signature etc.. Just to point it out. . Now, here i have interesting video of an Italian guy who measured two RCA cables, one cheap 10€, and one very expensive, with beast shielding etc. of about 200-300, look, It can be very interesting with what are we talking!

At 12:00 he figure out the measurements, i don't know which graphs are them, i hope you can catch his Italian words to understand lol At 13:15 come very interesting, on his graphs, you could see substantially difference on SPL, higher 0,3db of SPL, (0,4% Higher SPL!) on the expensive cable vs cheap! And you could see almost huge differences in frequency response graph!! Look At that, i mean, we are talking around 3dB. differences in 60db graph!!!! That's a lot i think, you can see smoother lows and highs.. That could be one prove that out there cables really make a difference, i mean.. Look At that.. Tell me what you think, I would really like to know About recording studio guys, i Wonder where to find what they really think about cables, and if they use it or not Hope to be clear because my English is not perfect ;]

I don't speak Italian either. So skipping around and looking is he swapping this cable and then recording via an SPL meter or his portable Zoom recorder? No, just no. Okay speaker cable can effect frequency response a little bit even enough to be audible. The other cables shouldn't matter. Recording over a microphone can be used for some purposes, but there is too much noise and other issues for something like cable comparisons. This is just someone looking for a method with enough variability they can make it look like there is a difference.

If I spoke his language I could probably figure out more about what he is doing.

 

[Viper Necklampy]

I don't speak Italian either. So skipping around and looking is he swapping this cable and then recording via an SPL meter or his portable Zoom recorder? No, just no. Okay speaker cable can effect frequency response a little bit even enough to be audible. The other cables shouldn't matter. Recording over a microphone can be used for some purposes, but there is too much noise and other issues for something like cable comparisons. This is just someone looking for a method with enough variability they can make it look like there is a difference.

If I spoke his language I could probably figure out more about what he is doing.

I'll try to traduce what he do, ho got this 300$ Phonic PAA3 which have measured with some pink noise, 10x times per cable, which was determinating the complessive SPL valuation.. And he take the song "Behind the sun" from Transatlantic with the Zoom H1. Because he wanted to see his change in frequency response in his ambient with his type C weighing, and the Wave form how could vary in 4 different situations: 1Without ricable cable ; 2 Only with power cable ; Power cable and signal ; Power cable, signal and power supply.. Sorry if things are not fully connected, i don't know that stuff, I tried to traduce it for you maybe to figure it out

 

[Blumlein 88]

I'll try to traduce what he do, ho got this 300$ Phonic PAA3 which have measured with some pink noise, 10x times per cable, which was determinating the complessive SPL valuation.. And he take the song "Behind the sun" from Transatlantic with the Zoom H1. Because he wanted to see his change in frequency response in his ambient with his type C weighing, and the Wave form how could vary in 4 different situations: 1Without ricable cable ; 2 Only with power cable ; Power cable and signal ; Power cable, signal and power supply.. Sorry if things are not fully connected, i don't know that stuff, I tried to traduce it for you maybe to figure it out

This is a far from optimum way to measure the effects of cable.

As a baseline I'd like for him to do this say three times with stock cables changing nothing. This would give us an idea of how variable the results are. I think you'll find all of his results are within this window of variability.

If I measure response of a speaker cable at the speaker terminals the result will have nearly no variability. If I measure with a microphone you'll get more variability especially in the lower frequencies. At a minimum he'd be better off using REW letting it do sweeps. He'll get FR, and distortion to work with and get it more consistently than what he appears to be doing. REW is free software.

Further this guy hasn't uncovered some previously unnoticed result of cables. If someone wishes to convince themselves (which is fine I do that myself), there are better methodologies to use.

 

[Viper Necklampy]

This is a far from optimum way to measure the effects of cable.

As a baseline I'd like for him to do this say three times with stock cables changing nothing. This would give us an idea of how variable the results are. I think you'll find all of his results are within this window of variability.

If I measure response of a speaker cable at the speaker terminals the result will have nearly no variability. If I measure with a microphone you'll get more variability especially in the lower frequencies. At a minimum he'd be better off using REW letting it do sweeps. He'll get FR, and distortion to work with and get it more consistently than what he appears to be doing. REW is free software.

Further this guy hasn't uncovered some previously unnoticed result of cables. If someone wishes to convince themselves (which is fine I do that myself), there are better methodologies to use.

In comments he says he's addicted to learning, he speaks that are variable results, but difference with the 2 cables there are, and audible too.. I'm out of that, because i have no competences lol A lot of comments on him talked about the bad measurements he did, in this forum too, so.. I guess who do good measurements of cheap vs expensive cable recoverable and reliable on the internet, just to have a point of view in more