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Re: What's up with Stereophile?

Posted by John Atkinson (R) on January 14, 2007 at 06:31:01

In Reply to: Re: What's up with Stereophile? posted by Charles Hansen on January 13, 2007 at 12:47:42:

>>the point I wanted to make that even though I was feeding the
>>Transporter 24-bit audio data over my home WiFi network, with all
>>the possibilities for degradation that might offer, its analog
>>output resolution was close to 20 bits, which is pretty much state
>>of the current art.
>
>I don't think anyone is arguing that using wireless transmission
>causes a loss of bits, or even enough measurable noise to translate
>to an effective loss of bits.

There are still the local jitter-related spuriae and analog noise
spuriae that could degrade resolution. In my reviews of conventional
hi-rez digital playback devices, there have been some that produce
noise levels as high as the 16-bit floor when processing 24-bit data.
The inexpensive Pioneer universal player I bought to have on hand as
reference is one such, for example.

(And to clarify for others, I wasn't arguing that the communication
link causes the loss of 4 bits of resolution; I was describing the
fact that to produce an analog signal with a broad-band noise floor
almost at the 20-bit level from 24-bit digital audio data is about as
good as it can get at present, measurementwise.)

>I don't think that the fact that a wireless system can achieve a high
>level of measured performance means much.

It does reveal good engineering, I feel.

>In fact I think it would be safe to make a blanket statement that no
>matter how good the Transporter sounds, it would sound even better if
>it were hard-wired instead of wireless.

I suspect that that might be the case. I will do some serious
listening in that mode when I get a sample of my own to audition.
I only listened to Wes's review sample in WiFi mode and he wanted it
back pronto.

Wes' Transporter review will be in our February issue, which went in
the mail Friday.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

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