The Absolute Sound FLAC article
Reply #33 – 2012-01-18 20:14:16
I agree that two bit-identical files should sound the same. However playing back two bit-identical files side-by-side or sequentially might engender some DAC or other digital-domain data handling difference. Just because the files on your drive are bit-identical doesn't mean your DAC is going to play them back exactly the same. The DAC should play them back exactly the same, but I think there's a possibility it might not . Things like jitter, LSB noise, etc can all come into play. Just a guess, but I would think that EVERY TIME you play a file back- whether from CD or hard drive or whatever- it will decode to analog a few parts per million (billion?) differently. What I would like to see is a bit comparison in a pair of buffers to see if two bit-identical files present exactly the same bitstreams to the DAC. Does playing a file back happen without error? It might, I don't know. Does digital=>analog conversion happen exactly the same for each set of data, down to the last microvolt? I don't know. But this is about file playback in general, not about some kind of file conversion loss or file-type-specific effect. If any of these theoretical factors you list here would influence peoples playback so much that it sounds different on every file, on Hydrogenaudio not one abx test could have been done. People always must have heard differences no matter what they test. It is exactly this weird reasoning that make such articles like the TAS one worthwhile for the business with trying to confuse.