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phaedrus

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  1. That would be the ideal. Any changes to those bits of audio data before they are turned into sound would mean they are not bit perfect. CD transports may be performing some interpolation on the incoming data or jitter correction on the data stream from the laser, or what have you that may make for a slight alteration, I'm no expert on the inner workings, but the ideal goal for the equipment manufacturers should be to preserve the data on the disk exactly as it is, much in the same way you would want your software audio player to output a bit perfect stream of data to your sound card, or DAC without messing about with it.
  2. The thing is though, the NAS and network cable are sending digital data and not an audio signal, that doesn't get created until it passes through the DAC. The potential for jitter between the decoding PC and the DAC is also not present during the transmitting of data. Saying that a NAS can sound different is saying that 100110101101 does not equal 100110101101 which is non-sense. Flipping even a single bit would lead to a pop or click. That isn't to say that hard drive storage is perfect. There is still the chance for corruption and bit rot, but that's different than the notion that there can be subtle audible distortions of the sound.
  3. Sorry I pulled a post and run, but I had to catch a plane. I tried to come up with a more elegant explanation, but gave up and then discovered someone has already done it for me. http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/BitPerfectJitter.htm Please do give it a read and see if it clears anything up for you. the rest of the site is quite excellent as well.
  4. Next I'll read an article comparing the sonic difference of different brands of ram. This whole topic shows a real lack of understanding in how digital data transmission works and how that data is stored and processed. If you are playing a file via a PC, no matter where the file is located, it will end up being played from RAM. The play back software will either load the entire file, or chunks of it directly into ram before it is sent out to the driver. And even then there are several other memory interfaces that that data passes through, such as the ram buffer built into the hard drive itself, or the various caches in the network equipment along the way, or even the ram cache built into the CPU. There are probably 5 or 6 caches between the NAS and the final playback. I sense a conflation of the analogue and digital worlds here. The main virtue of digital data is that it is resistant to interference from electrical noise as it is either 1s or 0s. CRC check summing along the way ensures that the resulting data matches the original data. Any noise introduction is going to come in the crossover from the digital realm to the analogue through the DAC and out to the speakers. Talking about different sounding NAS devices is utter non-sense. Where would that end? Perhaps different serial numbers of NAS devices would sound better than others in the same model range due to slightly different components being used inside, or that we should underclock our CPUs to harmonize their frequencies with that of the DAC. If you are seriously concerned about different NASes sounding different, I would suggest that computer playback of music is not for you. Stick to a dedicated CD transport straight to your amp.
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