[Closed] HiFi breakthrough

[i]the sound quality of bit-identical audio ?les' is influenced by their storage medium[/i]

*s****s*

Music industry running out of snakeoil? Need to invent new ones - supressed, directional, tonally pure SSD, anyone? 🙄

The simple answer to that is to boycott Naim for spouting such obvious bollocks.

Fellow computer audio enthusiast (and [b]Naim PR person[/b])

says it all really!

Some edgy grain exaggerated the sampled horns

Sounds woody

Next week:

"Does an optical fibre or twisted copper pair local loop to the exchange make any difference to how a download sounds?"

Is it really possible that the sound quality of bit-identical audio ?les' is influenced by their storage medium before being delivered to the hi-? system's DAC?

In a word, No.

Forgetting the authors complete lack of understanding of how this technology works, it really is completely pointless doing these kind of subjective tests when comparing supposedly identical audio.

Post your ABX logs or don't bother.

wwaswas - Member

Next week:

"Does an optical fibre or twisted copper pair local loop to the exchange make any difference to how a download sounds?"

😆

What the actual f... please tell me this is a spoof?

Back in the day when I bought vinyl LPs it made all the difference which warehouse it was delivered from. If the delivery truck had quality tyres the sound was crisper too....

Not really surprised. This is from the industry that happily sell the advantages of gold-plated optical connectors.

says it all really!

There is a Naim employee on here (and a couple of acolytes - Woppit, I think).

But what I really want to know is: does this storage come with an upgrade path through several power supplies (costing from the price of a decent holiday to a new car) to [i]really [s]make you tap your foot hard[/s] bring the music alive[/i]?

What the actual f... please tell me this is a spoof?

No, standard practice in the [s]ley-line crystal voodoo hoodoo[/s] 'hifi' business.

Claim problem exists (preferably using sciencey sounding words to fool fools).
Tout expensive solution.
Collect loot.

From the article:
[i]"Maybe we can solicit logical explanations from engineers who understand the low-level mechanics and operation of computer ?le and storage technologies, and can suggest specific avenues to explore."[/i]

Good idea. Let's start in the most obvious avenue:

[img] [/img]

Hmmm.. sounds very muffled yet tonally warm...

Standard practice in many industries, n'est-ce pas?

Claim problem exists

Tout expensive solution

I remember experimenting with an "Audio enhancer" from Argos once. It cost £20 and was just a pass-through box: interconnects in one end and out the other with an "Active" button on it. No power. Even to my untrained ears there was a very noticeable difference in the sound coming out the other end. Not better, not worse, but different. Not *quite* relevant to OP but thought I'd share.

Naim worship offers all the disadvantages of traditional religions without any of the traditional 'eternal bliss' type advantages.

And always seems to appeal to the type of person who decares themselves a rationalist in every other facet of their lives.
They provide a Scientology type 'pay to pray' model for those convinced they are above such things.

In a word, No.

The fundamental problem (other than a propensity to talk bollocks) is they're looking at it from a digital audio perspective. It's not digital audio at this level, it's data, and it's either valid or corrupt. The whole discussion is akin to loading up Microsoft Word and claiming you've observed that its title bar is green instead of blue because you're using Seagate hard drives.

I particularly enjoyed this,

Maybe we can solicit logical explanations from engineers who understand the low-level mechanics and operation of computer ?le and storage technologies, and can suggest specific avenues to explore.

Double-blind testing and confirmation bias might be good places to start.

Back in the day when I bought vinyl LPs it made all the difference which warehouse it was delivered from. If the delivery truck had quality tyres the sound was crisper too....

That is well documented actually. Improper storage/transportation combined with excess vibration causes micro-fractures in the grooves which become apparent when played on decent equipment/expensive cables.

[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law ]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law[/url]

phillips must kicking themselves they didn't produce CD+ with directional data storage

so which storage gives better picture quality in a media server ? 😕

Wav sounding better than Flac is also quite commonly reported.

apparent when played on decent equipment/expensive cables.

If it really made a difference my 'Amstrad Linear Drive Vertical Plays Both Sides' deck would have revealed it. Therefore I declare your 'invisible to the emperors eye' micro cracks a scam 🙂

Is it just me who finds the name of the website totally bloody ironic!!

"enjoythemusic.com" HA! That's the last thing head-up-the-arse hifi nerds do!

[quote=Cougar ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poes_law

I was wondering about that for the article - is impossible to tell whether it's an extreme spoof and they're trying to come up with the most ridiculous thing they can think of to see if the disciples will swallow it, or they genuinely believe it.

It's not digital audio at this level, it's data, and it's either valid or corrupt

Inside your computer are millions of little bits. Each one of those bits can be a one or a zero and as your computer runs programs each one of these bits changes its state, often thousands of times every second.
Understandably, this puts a lot of pressure on your bits and, after a period of time, some of your bits may start to wear out. At first your bits become a little bit cranky and don't change quite as quickly and after much use they may become worn out on the edges.
The Bit Recycler is designed to reconstitute your bits, making sure that your bits are always in top shape.

Bit fatigue is a well known phenomena, hence the need for Bit Recycling

Oh, that is fantastic.

I was wondering about that for the article - is impossible to tell whether it's an extreme spoof...

Me too - but the article title certainly appears on [url= http://www.hificritic.com/uploads/2/8/8/0/28808909/cover-201109.pdf ]the cover of the HiFiCritic eMag[/url] and is [url= http://forum.hificritic.com/yaf_postsm11629_Computer-Audio-deep-thinking--not-scoffing--required---different-sounding-rips.aspx#post11629 ]discussed in the HiFiCritic forum[/url] and [url= http://forums.naimaudio.com/topic/listening-to-digital-music-storage-devices ]the Naim forum[/url].

So apparently it is legit. (Though it raised a few eyebrows even in those devoted places).

[i]Not really surprised. This is from the industry that happily sell the advantages of gold-plated optical connectors.[/i]

As opposed to one that sells the perfect trade off of vertical compliance and lateral rigidity...

Cyclists believe as much (well, nearly as much) pseudo-scientific BS as hi-fi enthusiasts.

[i]Cyclists believe as much (well, nearly as much) pseudo-scientific BS as hi-fi enthusiasts.[/i]

Er, no. No we don't.

we had no idea if we were hearing differences in the processor architecture or between the hard-disk (or solid state) drives

Processor architecture FFS?!!

one that sells the perfect trade off of vertical compliance and lateral rigidity

Although is something physical that is real and can be observed/measured. If it makes any real difference to your enjoyment is another matter....

Dumb Cyclists believe as much (well, nearly as much) pseudo-scientific BS as Dumb hi-fi enthusiasts.

I wonder if NAIM will ever introduce a device that gives the average Hi Fi buff's ears the sensitivity and range of, say, a 16 year old virtuoso violinist.

Perhaps a matrix style socket (gold plated naturally) in the back of the head that bypasses the ears and connects directly with the audio centers in your brain.

Its bound to be worth a try.

So is someone going to release a carbon hifi that runs on 264V AC to help smooth the bumps in the sound out, then someone will release a carbon/ally one that runs on 252V AC to help bring the sound back to life before realising that the sound was perfectly ok and more lively being listened to via a steel hifi that runs on 240v AC? 😆

From that HiFiCritic forum linked above (post #72:

[i]Malcolm Steward has offered to teach how to build a good sounding NAS drive. to be published in the next issue .........[/i]

And so we get to the point.

I've noticed that '1's sound subtly better than '0's on my audio playback rig, though others have noticed the opposite.
I'm developing Bit Bias Technology to change the proportion of '1's to '0's in the output data stream, but I'm having trouble with funding. Would kickstarter be worth considering?

I went for an interview for a production manager at Naim, fantastic sounding system set up in the reception area. I was being walked through the build process and was somewhat skeptical about the fact that certain wires had to bent in a particular fashion in order to preserve the Naim sound.

Do you think they realise that they're talking BS or are they just so evangelically up their own backsides that they're unaware?

From that HiFiCritic forum linked above (post #72:

Malcolm Steward has offered to teach how to build a good sounding NAS drive. to be published in the next issue .........

And so we get to the point.

Mmm, yes, I wonder how 'close' it gets to NAIMs UnitiServe NAS/Ripper at a bargainous £2200

[quote=gobuchul ]

one that sells the perfect trade off of vertical compliance and lateral rigidity

The disciples don't believe the measurements (which show a distinct lack of any vertical compliance) any more than the hifi disciples believe the measurements which show a complete lack of difference from expensive digital components. Bicycles and expensive hifi share the lack of compliance to known laws of physics, apparently.

I found my kit sounded different depending on which electricity company I used, my [i]current[/i] one is quite expensive but you get what you pay for.

From that HiFiCritic forum linked above (post #72:

Malcolm Steward has offered to teach how to build a good sounding NAS drive. to be published in the next issue .........

And so we get to the point.

[url= http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showthread.php?t=167021 ]Even the usually sensible* people of PFM (the STW of hifi forums) have managed to rack up 6 pages on this topic.[/url]

*for hifi people.

[i]my current one is quite expensive but you get what you pay for. [/i]

I've been dithering over using solar electricity, wind power or fracked gas.

I'm probably going to go down the fracked route as you get a much earthier bass and the wind power stuff makes the flutes sound a bit breathy.

The disciples don't believe the measurements (which show a distinct lack of any vertical compliance) any more than the hifi disciples believe the measurements which show a complete lack of difference from expensive digital components. Bicycles and expensive hifi share the lack of compliance to known laws of physics, apparently.

aracer - I'm sorry I don't understand what you mean. Can you explain?

The point I was highlighting was that the movement, bending and flexing of a bike is fairly simple engineering that could be quite accurately modeled or measured. It will also change depending on the type and quantity of materiel used in the construction. This will change how a bike feels or responds.

A directional interconnect on a hifi set up will not make any difference regardless which way you plug it in.

gobuchul - Member

The point I was highlighting was that the movement, bending and flexing of a bike is fairly simple engineering that could be quite accurately modeled or measured.

go ahead and measure it then.

like this:

1: remove the tyres from a hardtail.
2: measure the BB height (from the floor)
3: ask your heaviest friend to get on the bike.
4: measure the BB height again.

(for extra science points, measure the BB height with respect to the hub-heights)

From PFM

It is obvious that SSD is far better than HD. But what only few people know is that the memory chips in SSDs can be modified for even much much better sound.

By the way, devices with MAC address FF:00:00:FF:00:00 also sound better.

That's only one post from page one!

does that MAC address not give you an idea of how serious the writer is being?

My word.

You do get a lot less background noise from Write Only Memory (WOM).

I vote all Naim employees and devotees to be passengers on the B ark.

I remember experimenting with an "Audio enhancer" from Argos once. It cost £20 and was just a pass-through box: interconnects in one end and out the other with an "Active" button on it. No power. Even to my untrained ears there was a very noticeable difference in the sound coming out the other end. Not better, not worse, but different. Not *quite* relevant to OP but thought I'd share.

Erm...

I've got one of these on my desk, just delivered this morning. It cost a good slice more than £20, and it doesn't even have an "Active" button. However, it apparently "provides an award winning audiophile experience far beyond [its] price level."

We shall see.

I remember experimenting with an "Audio enhancer" from Argos once. It cost £20 and was just a pass-through box: interconnects in one end and out the other with an "Active" button on it. No power. Even to my untrained ears there was a very noticeable difference in the sound coming out the other end. Not better, not worse, but different. Not *quite* relevant to OP but thought I'd share.

That's just a graphic equaliser without any external adjustment (other than the 'on/off' one)

A NAIM representative allowing his name to be used in conjunction with this twiffle is an indication that the ghost of Julian Vereker has finally left the building and that the indications are that the lunatics may indeed have taken over the asylum.

A black day indeed. 🙁

QNAP2 rendered the same song more tunefully. It was more organic and made more sense

Obviously.

Apparently Malcolm Steward has form. This is apparently a deleted post from his blog:

[b]Super SATA Cables on Sale Soon[/b]
Posted by Malcolm Steward on 8/17/10 • Categorized as Audio

Critical SATA

The Super SATA cables I recently tested proved to be real shockers. Every logical thought was telling me that the wires that transmit the raw digital data between a hard disk and the motherboard in a NAS simply could not influence the sound that emerged from the player – after the music has already subsequently passed through metres of CAT5.

But they do.

I listened to the cables in my NAS feeding my Naim HDX/DAC/XPS and clearly identified easily perceptible improvements through my highly revealing active Naim DBL system. Quite what it is that wrought these improvements I do not know. My only guess is that the Super SATAs reject interference significantly better than the standard cables and in so doing lower the noise floor revealing greater low-level musical detail and presentational improvements in the soundstage and the 'air' around instruments.

The most marked and worthwhile difference, I felt, was in the increased naturalness in both the sound of instruments and voices, which seemed more organic, human and less 'electronic', and in the music's rhythmical progression, which was also more natural and had the realistic ebb and flow that musicians exhibit when playing live. In short, recordings sounded more like musical performances then recordings.

As you can see the cables do not look anything special even though they are far more robust than the standard issue flat cables, and they are are irradiated, I am told, to vapourise any moisture that has found its way into the molecular structure of the conductors.

The photo here shows the original, Generation 1 cable but there is now a more advanced, wider bandwidth Generation 2 version that is soon going to be available from the same American manufacturer. They will, of course, be more expensive than 'ordinary' SATA cables – the red and grey insulated flat cables that come free with hard disks or sell for around £2.99. But their superior performance easily justifies the extra expense.

When I have a definite price on the new cables and the URL from which they will be able to be purchased, I will post the information here. I cannot wait: I only have one of the generation 1 cables and wanted a dozen more for other hard disks and SATA peripherals. Now there is a supposedly 'better' version I cannot wait to evaluate it and if it is, as I am told, substantially superior, get my order in for a dozen of those.

I have disabled Comments on this post so that respectable visitors do not have to read the remarks made by a small number of extremely ignorant, rude, malicious and disingenuous individuals who cannot tolerate people expressing opinions that do not concur with their own.

More here: http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=83093

I have disabled Comments on this post so that [s]respectable visitors do not have to read the remarks made by a small number of extremely ignorant, rude, malicious and disingenuous individuals who cannot tolerate people expressing opinions that do not concur with their own.[/s] my completely BS statements can't be picked apart with facts

FTFH

And so we get to the point.

As someone else said, it's hard to know whether they're knowingly talking bobbins or genuinely believe this guff due to their own "far from scientific" testing. The fact that they've borrowed a bloke in PR rather than, say, a sound engineer speaks (sorry) volumes though.

The move to digital has to be a threat to hifi manufacturers. More and more of their lucrative markets are drying up. Time was your average joe who was "into" his AV (like, say, me) would cheerfully drop twenty quid on a high quality interconnect; your serious audiophiles would pay considerably more. With all-digital media streaming over Ethernet the need for a high quality source and expensive interconnects has disappeared overnight. That's got to smart. But as Breatheeasy of this parish suggested earlier, if they can convince the masses that this stuff still makes any difference then they're in like flynn with a branded audiophile NAS with a 1000% markup.

Malcolm Steward has form

He's very careful to make bold statements like

"But they do."

on a line of its own, and then bury backpedalling caveats like "... I do not know. My only guess is that..." in the body text.

After reading that, I'm convinced he's either dishonest or incompetent. And I'm leaning towards the former. Poor show.

the Super SATAs reject interference significantly better than the standard cables and in so doing lower the noise floor

This is smoke and mirrors surely. He's (intentionally?) confusing electrical interference with audio noise. SATA has error checking; what leaves the platter ends up at the host controller, by definition, otherwise data centres around the world would be about as reliable as PC-DOS running Stacker. If there's so much "noise" - ie, interference - that the signal degenerated beyond what ECC could cope with, you wouldn't end up with a loss of depth or a muddy bassoon or whatever, you'd either get an error telling you the source was on its arse, or the whole thing would crash.

Coming soon, a PR rep from NAIM tells us he can hear data collisions on a CSMA/CD network unless they use audio-grade Ethernet cables. Better get an ioniser for the air in the room to increase saturation for the WiFi whilst you're at it.

Once again. THIS IS NOT AUDIO. THIS IS DATA. 1 GOES IN, 1 COMES OUT. 0 GOES IN, 0 COMES OUT. If it doesn't do this, it's broken.

It does seem that a lot of audiophiles apply analogue thinking to digital sources.

I note the thread on the NAIM forum has been suspended...

There are at least two folk on that PFM forum that fall for it. (See post #37 and 38).

[i]"I've built my own NAS, following a recipe elsewhere on the net. And found that "small" differences in wiring and fan settings affect the music. As does the operating system configuration. And different UPnP music servers sound different. These differences are all repeatable."[/i]

The fan settings. 😆 Amazing stuff.

@ Mr Nice - quite so. Thought that was rather obvious.

There's a fair bit of audio****tery on PFM, but nowhere near as bad as some of the other places.

And the Naim forum looks like it remains a work of genius. As a friend of mine once said: "You could give them a condom with a hole through it and they'd still tell you it was better than industry standard."

Foo indeed.

It's the biggest BS racket out there. 99% marketing based.

I'm convinced he's either dishonest or incompetent. And I'm leaning towards the former.

Bit fatigue is a well known phenomena, hence the need for Bit Recycling

[i]they have a process of 'massaging' the data to make sure that it stays recorded long term. [/i]

So in a hundred years time there might be a happy ending?

I keep my mp3s on 5.25 inch floppies as the soundstage is so much more open and dynamic, with more presence in the space around instruments.

I have to compress to 96 bitrate but it's worth it.

If there's a difference, it's because one of those NAS units is generating electrical interference which is being coupled into the analog parts of the circuit later on.

(And if it is, then it should probably have failed its EMC testing).

EDIT: or it's nonsense.

So in a hundred years time there might be a happy ending?

I was talking to someone about long term archiving of some historical documents and they were saying that in many ways paper and other physical media last longer than modern media that weren't really designed to last hundreds of years.

It's my understanding that magnetic media is susceptible to this. Data on magnetic storage is, as the name would suggest, basically lots of tiny little magnets all magnetised in a particular way. They're weak enough that they don't affect each other day to day, but what's going to happen to millions of tiny little magnetic fields held in close proximity to each other for a couple of millennia I wouldn't like to speculate.

Optical media has its own problems. It doesn't suffer from EM issues like a tape would, but I've seen cheap media where the data substrate has started to delaminate after a few months, let alone years. CDs etc are quite robust, in so far as the playing side is polycarbonate (the same stuff them make bulletproof glass out of), but the bit that holds the data is a thin reflective layer on the label side and that's relatively delicate.

If there's a difference, it's because one of those NAS units is generating electrical interference which is being coupled into the analog parts of the circuit later on.

people I have seen playing around with different USB drives and similar seem to have reached the same conclusion - one guy reckons that the use of ferrite rings helps nullify any differences.

[quote=Cougar ]Optical media has its own problems. It doesn't suffer from EM issues like a tape would, but I've seen cheap media where the data substrate has started to delaminate after a few months, let alone years. CDs etc are quite robust, in so far as the playing side is polycarbonate (the same stuff them make bulletproof glass out of), but the bit that holds the data is a thin reflective layer on the label side and that's relatively delicate.

The shelf life for recordable CDs / DVDs isn't anywhere near as long as people think. Not sure about the mechanism involved, but I wouldn't rely on it for more than 5-6 years, even on quality media.

The shelf life for recordable CDs / DVDs isn't anywhere near as long as people think. Not sure about the mechanism involved, but I wouldn't rely on it for more than 5-6 years, even on quality media.

a mate did some research on this when he was at the central elec research labs and I think cds could be about 30 years, but that went down to more like 10 years once they have been printed on.

It's my understanding that magnetic media is susceptible to this...

paper tape is the answer...

paper tape is the answer...

The shelf life for recordable CDs / DVDs isn't anywhere near as long as people think.

Isn't that just damage from UV rays?

As long as you store them in the dark they should last a lot longer?

I think that's potatoes.