evilapa

Yes, it seems that much is clear. I just think it's a shame because I believe these ideas are harmful to the hobby and might suppress actual improvements to audio quality. Instead of technical achievements, companies like Acoustic Revive develop snake oil like pure silk absorbers and cable lifters.

I got into this discussion knowing full well that it would be like going to church and trying to explain to attendees that their entire belief is based on fiction created by man. But I just couldn't refrain. Your remark is a logical fallacy. It is not up to me to refute these claims—it is up to you to prove them. You have a theory that makes no sense whatsoever from a scientific perspective, hence the burden of proof is on you. (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: if I were to claim that keeping a pebble submerged in whiskey would eventually turn it to amber, you'd probably think that I'm an idiot and demand an explanation. I would need to prove to you this new alternative theory; you wouldn't have to disprove it.)

Suppose you were right and there is, in fact, a technical reason that the sound differs between components: what is the scientific explanation behind this phenomenon? What is causing the bits to change, and at what point in the chain do they change?

This thread was an embarrassing read. This is the kind of voodoo that gives the hi-fi hobby a bad name. Of course, there's no difference in audio playback between different HDD vendors, and of course, there's no difference in the audio quality coming from an uncompressed wave-file and a lossless FLAC file. The reason is simple: the data is exactly the same in both cases. The data does not change between HDD brands or (non-lossy) file formats. For some people, however, there may indeed be a perceivable difference in audio quality, which can easily be explained with placebo. Placebo is a very real effect, which is why you might experience improved audio quality, but please don't claim there's a technical explanation to the ostensible variation in sound between HDD brands and lossless audio formats. There isn't.