It’s not about good or bad but if there is actually a difference between the one and the other.
It’s more Silent Bonn…And Chord is not Naim.
Exactly, and proper science needs an open mind about measurements being wrong or not measuring the right things. (That’s what I meant in an earlier post regarding the popular version of the skepticist movement. It’s more like bad old religion in a scientific mask)
German hifi mags are traditionally full of measurements, in particular in the past. They often did not take devices seriously if they did not measure perfectly, such as Naim’s amp roll-off. Very often they forgot to give the sound the weighting it deserves. This seems to have changed after 2000 or so, they still have measurements (and nothing wrong with it) but they understood that what they measure is not the complete truth
My point was to say that you can’t rely on measurements, specially in audio.
Certainly, that is very important. But one problem with the current discussion is that there is zero evidence that would actually support the claim, not in any shape or form. That is a problem i think. There are many ‘believers’ but apparently no one is able to provide at least half decent proof that these things actually make a difference.
Even Chord as we saw earlier was slapped on the wrist by the ASA, because they couldn’t provide any evidence that the stuff does anything, besides telling that ‘customers were happy’. I think that’s pretty far out really.
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I am not at all disagreeing with your statements in this post. But, also like in another earlier post, Anne-Sophie Mutter was unable to provide evidence that a Stradivarius sounds better than a beginner’s violin. Which leaves us this interesting conundrum.
That’s completely in the analog realm ofcourse…
We are still talking about highly regulated and insulated digital cables that feed into a digital device. We have no evidence of anything taking place that could have a significant (as in ‘people can clearly hear it’) effect on the audio output.
I thought we were talking about what gets measured out of the DAC. I am not going to put up an argument about bits and error correction. Obviously!! 
Oh yes, i meant the Stradivarius is completely analog and played by a human… 
But yes, so far all the measurements we do have – which may or may not be accurate enough – seem to suggest that the output from a DAC is nearly identical regardless of the ethernet cable or switch. At least to a degree that would be impossible to hear as a human or describe as significant.
It was indeed. I looked for the TV show video online, but could not find it. It was “Stern TV” on RTL a few years ago.
P.s. also remember that the only pathway we still have for any effect at all, would be through the ethernet equipment picking up EM interference from the environment, passing it through to the streamer through the ethernet port, and then via the DAC over to the analog output stage. This is a highly specific path, but also one that can be quite easily measured in terms of jitter or noise.
Other potential pathways such as changes in the actual digital data were already debunked earlier, since tcp/ip and ethernet have excellent safeguards for that.
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I know, I know! I am a digital person, you know that. Yet I plugged an EE in and I thought the sound was noticeably better. Utterly baffling. However, I obviously don’t trust myself for the good reasons you described in previous posts. Yet I don’t have the time or inclinations for rigorous listening tests, plus I don’t necessarily even trust simplistic tests (hence the violin test example).
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Yup, I sometimes find it instructive to argue rationally with people who seem to be ideologically fixated on an unreasonable stance, and observe the intellectual squirming and contortions they perform to maintain their position against the forces of common sense and logic! 
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I can understand. Enjoy so 
Like everything in life, if you can’t measure it, or the measurement is the same, then it probably means its so low it can’t be measured and so not noticeable or its the same.
That is unless what you are measuring it with isn’t good enough to measure it lol
What ever i haven’t a clue lol
Treading carefully as all the digital stuff is double Dutch to me.
I was reminded by the reference to Stradivari violins, how someone apparently computer modelled and built a replica, ignoring the fact that none of the materials could be obtained, provoked an equally lengthy dispute.
Fifty plus years ago, schoolboy physics. The teacher’s favourite demonstration was an oscilloscope showing a “perfect” sawtooth waveform when a violin was bowed. Never mind it was a crystal microphone, the violin was a toy with a plywood soundboard. It was brought out each year regardless that we had seen it before.
There was a change in rules and demonstrations had to be performed by the lab tech. It just so happened that the lab tech was a fiddle player (his definition as he was in a folk group). He brought his own violin and demonstrated that whilst the waveform was sawtooth, the two instruments sounded different. The physics teacher couldn’t hear it, thirty odd teenagers could. We had no idea what he was going to do, I am sure no expectation, but the vote was unanimous amongst the pupils.
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No reason to be baffled, there is a logical, plausible explanation for what is happening, as expounded before - and its nothing to do with zeros and ones!
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Not really. There are hypotheses
This is not a religion and we don’t have to convert one another to our cult. If you hear a difference and are happy then.enjoy, if you don’t hear a difference then don’t buy one. If you get goosebumps from how an amp measures then read the data otherwise just enjoy the music in whatever way makes you most happy. I once read that the best hifi upgrade was a glass of red wine and it made sense to me.
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