Mac AIR v MiND 180 v Auralic ARIES v totaldac d1 server

[ThierryNK]

This maybe "disturbing" when we think that computers have often control on our life, but keep cool, audio is really a very special matter

Hello Thierry - I think that sentence is the nub of it.

My view is: yes, it would be very disturbing if computer systems made those kind of mistakes, but they are engineered not to - otherwise, I for one wouldn't get in a modern car or aircraft! But in the digital domain, audio is not a very special matter (as far as transmitting it from A to B is concerned) - it's the same as any other data so it benefits from the same engineering that makes other computer-based systems work properly. Converting it faithfully from digital to analogue is another matter entirely, though.

Hi thumb5

Do you say that after reading the articles or before?

There are 6 (or 7, not sure) computers in Airbus planes. Each of them with different hardware, with a different OS, and a software developed by different teams, with different languages on the same specifications. Each of this software is "proven" (I do not want to go into more details about software proof).
And even with that, it still happens moments during flights where 2 computers do not give the same outputs with the same input parameters.

If you read the 3 articles above, and the one by Damien Plisson (I gave the link somewhere above), you just realize that general purpose computers with Windows or OSX as OS are not designed to to what we expect them to do in "Computer Audio", voltage references for example, that change upon different loads, and change 0 into 1, and vice versa.

You can add that there is no way to check that what is done is correct when decoding an audio track with Jriver, iTunes, or Audivarna. This is the key point.

One possibility could be to decode the tracks several times simultaneously and take the average of the outputs, as in a Monte Carlo Method, or as in DAC using several chips as Accuphase's ones and others. Because, errors happen in the digital parts of DAC. This has been known for a long time… Just check Accuphase Website and their CD and SACD players documentation.

About our every day life computers, there are Error Controls each time it is possible, on reads, writes, code execution, etc.
And you know what? CRC and other errors controls do serve, because errors happen all the time…

Cheers