Why is digital audio so complicated? Where did it all go wrong?

[Hifi_swlon]

I think that the process and handling of digital data is kind of more difficult than the inventors thought.….

What's curious though, is that digital data seems to work as the inventors intended in every other walk of life and under far more strenuous conditions.   The anomaly (audiophile audio) also happens to be the one where the effects are predominantly measured using devices that are uncalibrated and heavily interpreted by the brain  So, I suppose it's not hard to see why there are so many doubters….

I read all of the John Swenson articles posted earlier, (and some surrounding stuff) but also all the comments - and there are some notable objections to his theories.
The more I've read since the first posting, it seems to be pretty clear that no one today is saying any data gets lost or harmed - this simply can't happen without obvious dropouts as far as I understand - merely that other processes are maybe at play like possibly noise passing along the wire, and it being easier on the DAC to decode a more tightly clocked signal.  These 'problems' aren't inherent in digital audio data transmission per se, and if they have an adverse effect on the DAC should be  dealt with by the DAC itself - as long as the bits arrive safely at their destination it has complete freedom to deal with the data as it wants from its buffers. This doesn't appear to be the case right now though, but hopefully its not far off.

So I'm still not a naysayer, but I'm reaching my own conclusion that digital audio data is fine and works as intended, but that some DACs (or perhaps most DACs) allow themselves to be affected by extraneous noise or whatever coming down the cable.  I can live with that understanding (even though I still don't fully understand it), - at least it fits in with all current science and logic that I've been able to make myself aware of, and doesn't disagree with people hearing differences with front end changes.  I can't really see it justifying a USB cable at several hundred or even thousands of pounds though, but I probably never will

In my opinion there's a lot of unnecessary confusion about digital audio. It seems like things are actually quite simple, and I wonder whether once you've bought a bunch of expensive cables, galvanic isolators, re-clockers, regenerators, diamond tipped cones and whatever else can clean up this noise, you might as well have just gone and bought a new DAC that does it all for you!  Question is, does one exist?

Meanwhile, I foolishly pin all my hopes (at my budget) on the Sonore microrendu, which I hope will bring unprecedented levels realism to my system If not, get in line to try it out via the 'For Sale' pages