Re: SATA cables improve sound?
Reply #8 – 2017-03-11 17:10:16
The only reason why a SATA cable could be an improvement over another (which I am not saying to be the case) is if the worse cable somehow produced much more electical radiation that the audio (hardware) components could capture them and amplify them enough to be on an audible level. As for the argument of timing: There are some issues with timing that can affect audio playback, namely DPC Latency, as said by Thad E Ginathom, but which root cause is most of the time caused by software, not hardware. But If we really want to test the hypothesis that a SATA cable can improve AUDIO timing: playback_loop is Has_the_soundcard_consumed_one_of_the_buffers_that_i_fed_to_it? Yes_it_did: Allright_do_part_two_described_below No_it_didnt: Fine_lets_wait_some_more continue_loop_if_we_are_not_finished end loop part_two_is read_another_fraction_of_audio (internet stream, mp3 from USB drive, WAV from SDD drive with a magical SATA cable...) if_needed_decode_it fill_the_audio_buffer_of_the_soundcard_that_became_free_above end_part_two The only way that timing could affect that scenario is that "part_two" didn't finish in time when the soundcard consumed the last buffer it had. And that has a name: Buffer overrun (or underrun, depending if one sees it as a continuous line or as a container), and sounds as a skip, or momentary pause. Again. DPC Latency has a major role in there, with other factors like decreasing the audio buffer sizes to latencies that the system, API, driver or hardware is not capable of reaching. Edit: Just as an addenum: The speed at which audio is consumed by the souncard versus the speed at which a typical hard drive can read data is so much worlds appart, that the only way to make them closer would be to save each single bit of a WAV file into a different file in a HDD disk and get a player to read that. That would be reading more than 1 million files each second.