26-Dec-2014, 15:25
I started digital data logging in 1982 IIRC. I had done lots of analogue measuring previously but no analogue recorder was good enough and small enough to put on a F1 car. The nearest was a modified Uher cassette machine with a 4 channel head and using FM recording techniques to get good low frequency results. One of the channels was dedicated to cancel speed variation effects. So we only got 3 channels of useful data.
The digital recorder was better than analogue in terms of data accuracy from day 1 but the data analysis was slow and the hardware very expensive.
Eventually we made our own controller/recorder and things got faster and less expensive but the quality of the data we got hardly improved. It was already hugely better than anything analogue.
I am not sure your analogy is correct. Looking for a 15psi difference in a 1500psi signal is nothing like what we are doing with a digital interconnect.
Digital devices normally work on a nominal 0 to 5 volts. It doesn't matter if these values are accurate since the trigger is the change of state, not knowing what state it is at. It would be stupid, frankly, and abandoning one of the benefits of digital, to try to decide whether the signal was at 5 volts or zero. So nobody does. And nobody bothers too much how close the nominal 5V line is 5 volts is, for example, either because it doesn't matter at all.
In all my 30+ years of digital recording I have never known of a data error due to a non-broken cable.
A timing error may have been there, but it was not important for what I was doing, so I would not have been aware.
Personally I hear no difference between SPDIF cables. But that could be expectation bias.
The digital recorder was better than analogue in terms of data accuracy from day 1 but the data analysis was slow and the hardware very expensive.
Eventually we made our own controller/recorder and things got faster and less expensive but the quality of the data we got hardly improved. It was already hugely better than anything analogue.
I am not sure your analogy is correct. Looking for a 15psi difference in a 1500psi signal is nothing like what we are doing with a digital interconnect.
Digital devices normally work on a nominal 0 to 5 volts. It doesn't matter if these values are accurate since the trigger is the change of state, not knowing what state it is at. It would be stupid, frankly, and abandoning one of the benefits of digital, to try to decide whether the signal was at 5 volts or zero. So nobody does. And nobody bothers too much how close the nominal 5V line is 5 volts is, for example, either because it doesn't matter at all.
In all my 30+ years of digital recording I have never known of a data error due to a non-broken cable.
A timing error may have been there, but it was not important for what I was doing, so I would not have been aware.
Personally I hear no difference between SPDIF cables. But that could be expectation bias.
Devialet Original d'Atelier 44 Core, Job Pre/225, Goldmund PH2, Goldmund Reference/T3f /Ortofon A90, Goldmund Mimesis 36+ & Chord Blu, iMac/Air, Lynx Theta, Tune Audio Anima, Goldmund Epilog 1&2, REL Studio. Dialog, Silver Phantoms, Branch stands, copper cables (mainly).
Oxfordshire
