bachatero
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- Dec 25, 2023
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I'm interested in the idea of generational losses with regards to overall audio quality. I know Audiophiles (with a capital A) love to harp on tiny differences in THD, IMD, frequency response, and so on. However, it seems like if you have a lot of components with barely imperfect performance, then those losses as a whole might audibly impact the end result.
Here's a potential chain of losses for my gym sound system:
Audio file compression
\/
Phone/player DSP
\/
Bluetooth compression
\/
BT receiver DSP
\/
BT receiver DAC
\/
Analog audio mixer
\/
Speaker ADC
\/
Speaker DSP
\/
Speaker DAC
\/
Speaker amplifier
That's a whopping 10 steps! Compare this to something like a portable wired headphone setup:
Audio file compression
\/
Phone/player DSP
\/
Phone/player DAC
\/
Phone/player amplifier
Only 4 steps! That's a huge W, and perhaps why stuff like DAC THD and lossy compression doesn't matter so much for headphones, because those losses are too small to be audible.
Note that I'm not counting stuff like cables, because those make far too little of a difference to matter unless you have a really long run of unbalanced unshielded cable in a noisy environment, which is almost never the case.
Therefore, I'd like to know the following:
1. If minimal improvements in each generational step improve the end result audibly
2. If it's possible to minimize the number of steps in "complex" setups like the 10 step one above
What do you think?
Here's a potential chain of losses for my gym sound system:
Audio file compression
\/
Phone/player DSP
\/
Bluetooth compression
\/
BT receiver DSP
\/
BT receiver DAC
\/
Analog audio mixer
\/
Speaker ADC
\/
Speaker DSP
\/
Speaker DAC
\/
Speaker amplifier
That's a whopping 10 steps! Compare this to something like a portable wired headphone setup:
Audio file compression
\/
Phone/player DSP
\/
Phone/player DAC
\/
Phone/player amplifier
Only 4 steps! That's a huge W, and perhaps why stuff like DAC THD and lossy compression doesn't matter so much for headphones, because those losses are too small to be audible.
Note that I'm not counting stuff like cables, because those make far too little of a difference to matter unless you have a really long run of unbalanced unshielded cable in a noisy environment, which is almost never the case.
Therefore, I'd like to know the following:
1. If minimal improvements in each generational step improve the end result audibly
2. If it's possible to minimize the number of steps in "complex" setups like the 10 step one above
What do you think?