Comment by dist-epoch
4 days ago
The whole audiophile industry is built on stuff which doesn't make any sense
My favourite: "audiophile-grade" audio players which allocate a single continuous buffer of RAM into which they load/decode the whole .WAV/.FLAC file, because supposedly the CPU "jumping" between "fragmented audio" causes audible "jitter".
Of course, they don't know that what looks like continuous memory to user-code is probably discontinuous in kernel/physical RAM.
Didn't check in many years, I wonder if they created kernel level players to account for that, to have "true continuous memory"
Don't forget: "most players use malloc to get memory while new is the c++ method and sounds better."[1]
[1] https://www.audioasylum.com/messages/pcaudio/119979/
> My favourite: "audiophile-grade" audio players which allocate a single contignuous buffer of RAM into which they load/decode the whole .WAV/.FLAC file, because supposedly the CPU "jumping" between "fragmented memory" causes audible "jitter".
Thanks for the laugh... this is absolutely bonkers. In case anyone is wondering, before sound hits our ears it has to go through a digital to analog conversion, which takes place on hardware independent of the CPU, operating with its own clock and buffers etc.
In addition to that, while it is possible to hit a delay and run out of buffer because memory access is slow (the most obvious would be if the input got swapped to disk at an inopportune moment), but the audible effect is really obvious. This isn't some subtle "oh my music sounds ineffably worse" effect, it's "my computer is glitching and my music is unlistenable."
Am486DX/100 was enough to decode and listen an MP3 at 22KHz (and maybe mono?) and was more than enough to listen for 44/16/2 PCM. It's 31 y.o. today.
I remember playing 44khz 16-bit stereo MP3s encoded at 128 kbit/sec on a 133 Mhz 486.
It gobbled like 90% of the CPU and I had to make sure I gave it a pretty large buffer so it didn't stutter when an app claimed CPU for more than a second, but it worked.
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I can tell when my CPU usage spikes because it causes a hum through my speakers, so this does not seem that far-fetched.
It's just means you have a shitty audio tract with not enough shielding. Move to SPDIF/TOSLINK.
I have an external audio card, if I put it on a laptop I can hear the modem-like sounds. I wonder why it is so sensitive, should not DAC produce strong signal that cannot be easily affected by radio waves?
Also my headphones are extremely sensitive. I can touch the ring and sleeve of a jack with a finger, and touch a metal bed frame with a tip and I hear quiet clicks as I move the tip along the metal. Sometimes I do not even need to touch the jack with a finger. It doesn't work with small objects like a knife though.
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audiophiles (https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/turntables-with-pace....) also claim that turntables can be rated on "timing, rhythm, and pace" in which supposedly the timing of the music can be affected by the turntable's mass and other properties.
How this would occur without also producing grossly audible pitch distortion never seems to be discussed.
The latter is probably true, but the former does actually happen, and it's easy to accidentally do--lossless or not.