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iPhone 5 - the audiophile quality music player

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The problem with Ken Rockwell's site is that it is hard to tell what is fact and what is fiction.

This is from his ABOUT page:

"I have a big sense of humor, and do this site to entertain you (and myself), as well as to inform and to educate. I occasionally weave fiction and satire into my stories to keep them interesting. I love a good hoax. Read The Museum of Hoaxes, or see their site. A hoax, like some of the things I do on this website, is done as a goof simply for the heck of it by overactive minds as a practical joke. Even Ansel Adams kidded around when he was just a pup in the 1920s by selling his photos as "Parmelian Prints." I have the energy and sense of humor of a three-year old, so remember, this is a personal website, and never presented as fact. I enjoy making things up for fun, as does The Onion, and I publish them here — even on this page."

So maybe his measurements of the iPhone 5 are actually a hoax - who knows.

He also said this about CD:

"100.0000% Bit-Accurate

Some people forget today that the CD is a 100% bit-accurate medium. It puts the same data on the disc in multiple places, and using various kinds of error correction and detection and eight-to-fourteen modulation, so no matter what happens, you get everything back exactly as it was recorded. You can even drill a small hole in an CD, and the data will be recalled with 100% accuracy, since the CD player simply pulls the data from different sectors."

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure this is wrong.
 
The problem with Ken Rockwell's site is that it is hard to tell what is fact and what is fiction.

This is from his ABOUT page:

"I have a big sense of humor, and do this site to entertain you (and myself), as well as to inform and to educate. I occasionally weave fiction and satire into my stories to keep them interesting. I love a good hoax. Read The Museum of Hoaxes, or see their site. A hoax, like some of the things I do on this website, is done as a goof simply for the heck of it by overactive minds as a practical joke. Even Ansel Adams kidded around when he was just a pup in the 1920s by selling his photos as "Parmelian Prints." I have the energy and sense of humor of a three-year old, so remember, this is a personal website, and never presented as fact. I enjoy making things up for fun, as does The Onion, and I publish them here — even on this page."

So maybe his measurements of the iPhone 5 are actually a hoax - who knows.

He also said this about CD:

"100.0000% Bit-Accurate

Some people forget today that the CD is a 100% bit-accurate medium. It puts the same data on the disc in multiple places, and using various kinds of error correction and detection and eight-to-fourteen modulation, so no matter what happens, you get everything back exactly as it was recorded. You can even drill a small hole in an CD, and the data will be recalled with 100% accuracy, since the CD player simply pulls the data from different sectors."

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure this is wrong.

He's got the mechanism very wrong, that's not how error correction algorithms work, but he's got the end result right. The error correction algorithms will fully recover the bit accursate data up to a certain (suprisingly large) level of data loss.

Chris
 
He's got the mechanism very wrong, that's not how error correction algorithms work, but he's got the end result right. The error correction algorithms will fully recover the bit accursate data up to a certain (suprisingly large) level of data loss.

Chris

Which surely means that his proclamation that CD is 100.0000% Bit-Accurate is false.

I think we can safely say that his measurements of the iPhone 5 leave some room for doubt (based on his own admissions) and that until someone else verifies his measurements they should be ignored.
 
Which surely means that his proclamation that CD is 100.0000% Bit-Accurate is false.

I think we can safely say that his measurements of the iPhone 5 leave some room for doubt (based on his own admissions) and that until someone else verifies his measurements they should be ignored.

Not really. If CDs werent 100% bit accurate, you couldn't use them for data storage.

Oh, they can go corrupt, but that is not the same thing at all.

Chris
 
Not really. If CDs werent 100% bit accurate, you couldn't use them for data storage.

Oh, they can go corrupt, but that is not the same thing at all.

Chris

So is this wrong:

"CD is not 100% bit-accurate, which is why it has interpolation and muting strategies when faced with uncorrectable errors! It can be made 100% bit accurate by increasing the forward error correction overhead, but that eats into playing time."
 
So is this wrong:

"CD is not 100% bit-accurate, which is why it has interpolation and muting strategies when faced with uncorrectable errors! It can be made 100% bit accurate by increasing the forward error correction overhead, but that eats into playing time."

Any CD stamper which did not produce 100% accurate copies should be picked up immediately by the manufacturing QC procedures.

However, they can be damaged, and they can sustain a suprising amount of damage before the error correction algorithms can't cope & interpolation or masking kicks in.

So the CD is 100% bit accurate unless you mistreat it very badly.

Chris
 
Any CD stamper which did not produce 100% accurate copies should be picked up immediately by the manufacturing QC procedures.

However, they can be damaged, and they can sustain a suprising amount of damage before the error correction algorithms can't cope & interpolation or masking kicks in.

So the CD is 100% bit accurate unless you mistreat it very badly.

Chris

you're doing it again... its how things are used that changes things...CD are bit accurate when pressed, but then get covered in jam and scratches......
 
Yes much easier for use in a system with airplay.
There are implications for headphone users though, since we now know that the iphones are fundamentally accurate music players with good quality headphone amps. This was certainly not the expectation on hi-fi forums, or the opinion stated in hi-fi mags so perhaps this 644 post epic thread will help encourage more to try.

Though as usual, discussion around the very obvious merits of a product are buried in tit-for-tat game playing by who think everything has to be about which of two labels you wear.

Did you expect your comment to be considered as being tit or tat?

Sorry, I just couldn't resist that one! :D
 
you're doing it again... its how things are used that changes things...CD are bit accurate when pressed, but then get covered in jam and scratches......

Precisely. They can defend the integrity of their content up to a certain point.

Chris
 
SS kit is also voiced to sound as the designer wishes - this is true for the designers I know.

It's interesting to note that level matched testing is not required in your view. I try to make levels at least approximately equivalent otherwise the louder music sounds more dynamic.

You know some bad designers then, if they are calling themselves Hi Fi designers.

Chris
 
You know some bad designers then, if they are calling themselves Hi Fi designers.

Chris

I've never understood what this "voicing" means anyway when referring to an amplifier or CD player. Does it change the frequency response? Does it change the distortion residual, output impedance, what actually changes?

I can understand it in terms of passive loudspeakers, where there are compromises to be made, and one designer could have a different idea of where to place the compromises from another. But amplifiers?

S.
 
I've never understood what this "voicing" means anyway when referring to an amplifier or CD player. Does it change the frequency response? Does it change the distortion residual, output impedance, what actually changes?

I can understand it in terms of passive loudspeakers, where there are compromises to be made, and one designer could have a different idea of where to place the compromises from another. But amplifiers?

S.

Oh god, not that...

ok.

"Voicing" is usually a term that refers to ensuring the tessatura of an instrument is correct to the extremes of its reasonable playing; Good instruments are more stable and predictable at the extremes than bad and the steps taken to do ensure this and subsequent testing to confirm this is known as "Voicing". Much of this work is what takes time which is why expensive instruments are fewer and take longer to make. Voicing is key to an instrument-builder's craft. An instrument's "character" is borne of this process

Now, HiFi companies started using this very... precisely... worded... term in a bid to align themselves with music instrument makers (whom have been mostly unaware of this disgraceful abuse of terminology). I think someone in a marketing department heard the term and decided it would look cool and make the process of slinging a box and a transducer together in an unholy marriage deemed acceptable by the accountant look more work and thereform justify the ridiculous asking price of shocking carpentry and lackluster finishing so started using it, then another decided to copy, and then another and then journalists started including this term (because they simply spat out the PR with more colourful superlatives). Then the Internet happened. The End.
 
Oh god, not that...

ok.

"Voicing" is usually a term that refers to ensuring the tessatura of an instrument is correct to the extremes of its reasonable playing; Good instruments are more stable and predictable at the extremes than bad and the steps taken to do ensure this and subsequent testing to confirm this is known as "Voicing". Much of this work is what takes time which is why expensive instruments are fewer and take longer to make. Voicing is key to an instrument-builder's craft. An instrument's "character" is borne of this process

Now, HiFi companies started using this very... precisely... worded... term in a bid to align themselves with music instrument makers (whom have been mostly unaware of this disgraceful abuse of terminology). I think someone in a marketing department heard the term and decided it would look cool and make the process of slinging a box and a transducer together in an unholy marriage deemed acceptable by the accountant look more work and thereform justify the ridiculous asking price of shocking carpentry and lackluster finishing so started using it, then another decided to copy, and then another and then journalists started including this term (because they simply spat out the PR with more colourful superlatives). Then the Internet happened. The End.

Ah, so it's a content-less word. That I do understand. Thanks for the explanation.

S.
 
Ah, so it's a content-less word. That I do understand. Thanks for the explanation.

S.
As far as I'm aware in hifi the term started out with loudspeakers; tailoring their sound mainly with the crossover. It then spread the the effects of components, eg valves, capacitors etc some of which do change FR or that's how it seems sometimes.
 
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