Digital Audio Replay - What Can Be Improved?

Graeme, I think you probably know the answer.  Almost certainly not.. I think there is much to develop in audio replay still... It's probably more in the area on how we listen to things rather than performance  specifications.. But I suspect things will keep advancing. If you see the regular stream of AES papers things are certainly not standing still.

Simon

It's the performance angle I was particularly thinking of Simon, so interesting that you imply not much is still to be gained there.

G

Apparently the humble switch 'sounds' different. For sure to the audiophile at least there is always room for perceived/imagined improvements.

Graeme, on the performance front, perhaps some of the greatest innovation will be bringing the performance to lower price points ... But in some respects that could be like turkey's voting for Christmas.

Yes of course it got a way to go,  isn't that like asking the same question of vinyl replay in 1970’s, who would know that CD was just around the corner.  My guess is that what we have now will be old tech in a few years.  Meanwhile I suspect even higher res sample & bit rates requiring a NAS the size of a house will be the ultimate audiophile must have.  The question is, will our ears be up to these rarified levels of SQ, and then that leads to question are they up to what we have now.  

It’s easy to get cynical or drawn into fine tuning this digital streaming stuff, to me its the same old audiophile fine tuning thing;  dare I mention cable dressing? 

To some readers it’s extremely boring, but to those with an interest it’s the other way; such are forums. 

Re: the humble switch, wanna see obsessive?  go take a look at Lejonklou (forum)  switches are Netgear or nothing & they even have a list of best to worse tested versions of 5 & 8 ports.        

On the digital side taken in isolation, I feel that we are starting to hit the point of diminishing returns.  On the analogue side immediately following the DAC, well I think there's still a lot of room for improvement.  Of course the analogue side is affected by the operation of the digital side, and the interaction of the two is complex, so this is be an area where the possibility for improvement could be substantial.

The main issue I perceive with digital replay in my experience is the more you throw at it to improve sound the 'cleaner' it gets until such point as its cutting your ears off. 

I am detecting this with remasters of old stuff as well, presumably because the mastering is being done by old men or something I am not sure. Or perhaps its just me. 

One way or another there is a balance to be had but I don't think that balance will be found on the end of a 50 quid switch regardless of what you want to make yourself believe.

to my mind there is a lot to be done, but I think it will take some adjustment in the eq to be frank, perhaps this is why DSP is becoming popular?

I am 100% certain that everything can improve.

Great news the weather really has been terrible for August. 

I heard a rather stunning digital source yesterday -- the dCS Vivaldi system.  It would require my finances to improve rather exponentially, as it's $109,000 +/-.  But I was floored at what I heard from recordings I know very well.  Really really amazed.

The rest of the system was Spectral amplification and Magico Q7 speakers; they didn't hold back the source certainly.

I heard some great sound from Magico Q3s last week, but the source was vinyl.  It was Anne- Sophie Mutter, a classical demo standard i suspect, and it reminded me strongly of the last time i heard classical music in a large studio.

There is an assumption that some blurring of the sound is a good thing and that high end and therefore more detailed digital is grating.  I have had the opposite experience.  The better the playback the better everything sounds. Compressed recordings are shown to be not great but they don't sound worse than on a lesser system.  They just sound shut in compared to the good stuff.

I totally agree; for my personal tastes, I've yet to hear a vinyl system that can compete with good digital replay.  I'm very sensitive to HF distortion, surface noise and lack of detail, hence my personal taste in replay systems.

But then we're speaking against the opinion of a very vocal group who've been around for a long time.

There is plenty of room for improvement on the content-delivery side of things, and certainly the usual digital design and analogue output / power supply domains gain much from a bit of attention to detail. But it is fair to say that, with a good, competent DAC and amplification, it is possible to put together a decent digital streaming source for not a lot of $, if not a bit of one's own time.

In fact, it could easily be said that much of the experience has devolved into the same issues one has with a large record collection: how to organize, find and put together collections (much easier in the digital domain, perhaps, but subject to the same biases in approach)-in other words, we're back to library science!

The dCS Vivaldi includes a box dedicated to "upsampling."  Is this per se expected to improve playback?

My uninformed starting point is that upsampling 'can't add in something that wasn't there in the first place.'  Someone will tell me why I'm not understanding the technology and what it can bring to playback I'm sure

The good news is that right now I am being floored by Fleetwood Mac 'Say you will' at 96/24. This from a Qnap NAS , which sounds better than the same from a WD Mybooklive. There's huge life in the tweaking aspect of our hobby (obsession?) yet. 

It never ceases to be exciting!