Darko's channel is useful for getting pictures of how equipment looks in a living room.

I’m a computer engineer & IT director and I never find fault in your reviews and assessments. Love the work you are doing debunking false conspiracies in audio marketing. Keep up the great work!

To muddle the analogy further, in the EU (where I presume Darko is filming), natural mineral waters are required by law to include measurements of their mineral composition on the label, which is precisely what gives the water its taste.

Funny. Both tap water and bottled water are continuously measured during production to ensure quality and the absence of biological organisms or other contaminents. Regular tasting is done by some companies, but never before measurements (sensor readings and lab testing of samples) confirm it is okay to drink.

Biggest paradox of the purely subjectivist crowd for me that they said measurements are mostly irrelevant and taste is subjective. But their conclusion almost always is that more expensive equipment sounds better. So their logic is that objective measurements don't count but there is one objective parameter which determine sound quality: the price.

Outstanding and essential explanation. So many are confused about the differences, pros and cons, and basics of analog vs. digital that it has opened yet another window for the sale of pseudo electronics like "audiophile ethernet cables" and anti-jitter devices that cost a lot but do nothing. Thanks again Amir for adding to the education of your audio enthusiast audience.

Thanks for this Amir! It shocks the conscience that audiophile reviewers refuse to address all the cognitive biases and flaws of subjective reviews while listing so many reasons objective measurements are flawed.

Thank you for your effort, the clear presentation and the easy to understand visualization.

I can't remember when I last watched a Darko video. I never miss Audio Science Review and I'll leave it right there.

Amazing introductory masterclass on digital audio Amir! You address all the important issues and questions that today's audio consumer will come accross when designing their digital audio sub-system in a very clear, concise and structured manner. All that along with a couple of slap downs at John Darko that naturally arise from the nonsense that he usually blabbers. Your video is a must watch. Furthermore, the analogy that Darko makes about bottled water is more pure nonsense and the analogy with which Darko shoots himself in the foot. Water wells and spring water sources can become contaminated over time with dangerous toxins, which is why such sources are constantly tested and analyzed by governmental environmental agencies, i.e. MEASUREMENTS! Your subjective taste buds won't be able to tell in many cases when the water has become unsafe to drink.

Darko’s channel (and most the others) absolutely relies on support from the audio manufacturers, and maintaining the illusion of some kind of mysticism in hifi. Luckily for the KZfaqrs and hifi manufacturers, there are still enough gullible people with money burning a hole in their pocket to sustain this bullshit.

Darko is a likeable salesman - to me anyway. He is also fun to watch. I don't take what he tries to sell seriously. Most of his review products are out of my price range. Production is very slick , so I think credit is due when earned. If I want real information beyond the subjective opinion I come to this channel . Thanks to ASR , I have learned a lot of good/useful information.

As someone who's been sending digital data back and fore as my job since I left school, often over hundreds of metres of 20+ year old unshelded cable wrapped around 400 volt unshielded power cable buried in asbestos cladding that would make your grandmother cry, this video is a masterclass. Luckily for me I am still within the 30 day amazon prime return window on the 0.5metre £7543 Cat9dd ethernet cable so I think I will be sending that back for a no quibble prime refund. Thanks Amir if I ever meet you I would like to buy you a pint (and let you measure my 30+ year old Wadia DAC though I know I am not gonna like the measurement results!!) :D

Great video Amir! My issue with Darko has always been that he takes money to advertise the same products he reviews which is a blatant conflict of interest not to mention money fueled confirmation bias. So no surprise that he always finds the most expensive brands to be the best performers.

Love the great debunking Amir. As they say... "hater's gonna hate!" So many of us love what you are doing, helping to educate the massively fragmented HiFi community.

I once argued with darko in the comments about expensive usb cables... This guy seriously believes that 1k usb cables sound better than normal ones lol

Excellent conference. Learned a lot! BTW, the other day I had to laugh at an extremely expensive DAC because the manufacturer said that its design helped avoid digital problems that are so subtle that they can’t be measured. I asked myself: If the problems are so subtle that they can’t be measured, how can your “hear” them? As you implied and mentioned, they, as many other manufacturers, rely on the “if it is very,very expensive, then it must be much better” mantra. Thanks for your excellent service.

These videos and explanations are absolutely great. You perfectly describe and demonstrate concepts I’ve internally understood but have been unable to communicate to others for years. Sharing your videos is my new go-to solution for dispelling audio woo and my new tool for reinforcing the concepts you discuss. Thanks!

Amir, Your educational videos are truly on target. Ethan Winer has also debunked much of the hoopla about jitter by simulating jitter in audio files to determine if you can actually hear it. He has posted the audio files on his website. Winer also wrote a recent article in AudioXpress on the topic. BTW, although timing errors seem to not matter much in terms of audibility, what about the DAC's interpretation of audio levels? The reason for R2R DACs is supposedly to eliminate this problem, which is probably also a non-problem in terms of audibility. Anyway, thanks for a very clear and technically accurate video!

👍. Good stuff as usual bud. One of the best parts of all your videos is that you truly don't make your particular perspective and/or critique personal. 👍 Moreover, your articulation of the subject matter is superb. 🏆 Thanks for your efforts.

Amir certainly makes enemies from all other KZfaq influencers that have a vested interest in propagating BS marketing nonsense that goes contrary to basic measurement. Critical ears certainly help, but there is so much hype in high end audio products that it is super valuable to have objective measurement. Can there be rare circumstances where Amir might miss the mark? Sure, but that is science and he would probably be the first to admit a flawed test. That said, I wish there were more Amirs that really tickle my early electrical engineering training when I were a young pup. Solid vetted science usually wins the day. We need a handful more Amirs in this space to measure spectrums and 1's and 0's. Keep up the good fight, Amir!

At this point people need to realise that channels like Darko are just salesmen pitching to you. A lot of channels are like that now unfortunately, We have been duped into watching long adverts.

Absolutely phenomenal work, a great service to all.

Brilliant work Amir..

Thank you for such an excellent overview and explanation. Clear, understandable, valuable information that addresses and corrects most of the misinformation being spread by audio component reviewers and bloggers.

Great explanation, thank you Amir.

I went the rounds with Darko over Ethernet cabling. His solution wasn't to provide better information, it was to delete the information I was providing. He's 1/3 of the holy trinity of bullschiit artistry with Hans Beekhuyzen and Alex Crespi that prompted me to make my own series of videos debunking their claims about data networking as it relates to audio reproduction.

Love your passionate and competent work Amir, is a fortune there are competent and trusted people like you (and other moderators) and fora like ASR who can educate us in choosing the best gears (or simply learn how to evaluate the performance of our gears). Keep going on this way please. Best regards from Italy !

Brilliant vlog much needed in this muddied world of doctored sound

Thanks for explaining jitter so well. I didn't really understand it before.

Love this content; great work, Amir!

Thank you for your time, prof. I'm very thankful and glad you make these videos. Your knowledge is very valueable and I appreciate it.

Another great video. Well done.

Some very good stuff here, I'm already on the forums for 2 months or so and enjoying the discussions with people, subscribed...!

Amir you’re the audio reviewer we need but don’t deserve! 34:45

Brilliant explanation.

You have admirable patience

Thank you. Very educational.

Nicely explained!

Amir, well done on continuing to confuse the issues with the facts. I wonder though, how many lay people will pay attention. I love that ASR continues to educate people on the quality aspect of expensive “snake oil”. Keep up the great work, and thank you.

One additional point on where not all "bits are bits" is that streaming SERVICES usually have an automatic feature to throttle the data throughput on slow connections. And the client/server connection is often finicky: if there's some small hiccup or sudden burst of other network traffic between your device, router, or ISP and the service's cloud storage, it may to automatically switch, mid-stream, to sending you a worse-quality, smaller audio file (albeit still a bit-perfect copy of it). The same reason Netflix, Prime Video, and (especially) HBOMax go all blurry sometimes. This might be user-defeatable, like on Spotify's phone and desktop apps there are multiple things to turn off in the settings, but you have to look for it. With some streamers, e.g. my AVR with Spotify Connect, there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it from throttling if something triggers the internal software to think it has a slow internet connection. So, -sometimes- people are hearing legitimate-yet-subtle differences between streamers, but not for any reasons that the manufacturers advertise. And the real problem is probably that cheap little wifi router that Comcast gives you that's sitting on the floor on the far side of the house.

You can certainly analyze any electrical waveform using methods for measuring analog signals (I did it intensively as an electrical engineering student when the world was largely analog) and it does make it possible to understand it, you can do things with digital signals you can't do with analog signals. You can restore its shape using s Schmitt trigger. You can restore its timing errors after transmission using dejittering and reclocking circuits. You can turn it into a series of light pulses and send it through a fiber optic thinner than a human hair for thousands of miles without degradation. You can transmit data from beyond pluto yielding crystal clear images. You can send many hundreds of digitally encoded high definition video signals over long distances with a fiber optic and then a few hundred feet with a coaxial cable. With analog you'd be lucky to send even one NTSC analog channel much over a mile or two with a wire. And you can detect and correct errors in the rare circumstances they occur. Another advantage of digital signals is they almost always work perfectly or they don't work at all. Therefore I reluctantly had to admit that for many reasons signals in the digital domain could be far preferable to using the analog domain, especially for the transmission, storage and retrieval of analog waveforms. And one more thing you can do with digital that you can't do with analog, you can set arbitrary limits to performance that you can meet. One thing untrained audiophiles in the fields of electrical engineering including information theory and information theory don't understand is that there is a finite limit beyond which improved performance while technically possible is of no value to them and only adds to cost. Another is that in the process of converting analog to digital and digital to analog there can be variances in the analog domain that are audible and often correctable using the very powerful tool of equalization which can be performed in either the analog or digital domain. The analog methods of analysis using frequency response, noise, and distortion still are valid. Based on my analysis RBCD standards meet all these criteria for audiophile applications in the digital domain.

This educational series of videos is the absolute bomb (much more interesting to me than individual product reviews - though they have an important role too). I'd be interested to hear an explanation into more of the details of how digital audio is communicated over a S/PDIF connection, what bi-phase mark encoding is and that the samples sent over an S/PDIF connection are actually arranged into blocks with control words sent with each block. Such information is of no real practical use to the consumer, of course, yet it makes it much easier to realise what utter rubbish many (most) audio salesmen & industry apologists spout when trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.

Darko starts his video with a logical fallacy. So no real reason to go any further with his video.

Fantastic video! Thank you, Amir! Keep up the excellent work!

First, yes I want my water measured to ensure it doesn’t have stuff it should not have in it. Yeah preferences vary but there should be no harm. Second, yes measurements of mineral contents etc can inform how water will taste if you know what the correlations are. Third, if the water claims health benefits, I want to know if there is any basis for it and if so if the water actually has the ingredients that cause that benefits. All are analogous to why measurements are needed in audio.

Master class! Well done Amir!

John Darkos channel is useful to view when considering buying equipment, alongside other reviews on KZfaq and in the specialist press etc. On the one hand he does have a valid point with the water in that its what the gear sounds like that matters rather than how it measures, but on the other hand there is far more difference in audio gear than in mineral water and, fundamentally, the water is most definitely measured. It has to be analysed for content before being allowed to be sold! You are at odds with him because your channels validity is based on measurement. Nothing wrong with that of course. There are similarities with buying a new car. You check out the specs then drive it and if you like it, try to get a good deal. You don't rely of specs alone.

You opened my eyes with many videos as well as others who were deceived about what really is high-quality audio accessories. Thank you Mr. Amir

Thanks so much for educating us lay people on digital audio. It's amazing when one's experiences at simply listening to music does not jibe with audiophile notions. I constantly hear that computer audio is terrible and running it over USB just makes it worse. However, I can play my CD player using it as a transport and sending the signal to my SMSL SU9 DAC and then play the same song using on my computer from a FLAC file over USB to the DAC and guess what, each song sounds virtually the same. If computers and USB are so bad, shouldn't I easily be able to hear all the problems with noise, power supply, and jitter that my computer is giving off?

Delivered as usually!

I learn so much from your videos. Thanks!

Thank for making these videos! All thumbs up!

This explains why high quality vinyl recordings on KZfaq still retains that beautiful "analogue sound" playing through my audio interface, to my vintage amp and speakers.

Another great class. Thank you Amir!

...SHOTS FIRED...

It's very helpful to understand where things start and how to remedy them if necessary. Keeping in mind there are still misconceptions and false myths.

Darko is a 🤡. He made a video a few years ago in which he basically told people they should not question audio experts such as himself.

Bout time to bring this Darko guy down. Having a preference is all good, denying and down playing measurements arent. Dont need to be an extremist on either side, but the importance of measurements have to be established. He disables comments after dissing measurements, easy way out. Its not hard to say "I like a lifted treble response, neutral sounds mostly boring to me" but dont claim that lifted treble is neutral. Horse poop.

1:00 My father was a Chemist. Not needing to measure water is total nonsense. pH, surface tension, PPM, etc. are all useful stats to know about water purity. Just because taste is subjective does NOT imply that we should just blindly ignore the goal of trying to objectively measure water to help understand WHY and HOW water tastes the way it does. i.e. When you have water filtered through an Reverse Osmosis System it will taste a certain way. My father suspected that even the bond angle on water showed variation because he was getting a *non-associative property with different kinds of water* which demonstrated that there are large variations in water that we still don’t understand. Darko unfortunately completely ignorant about Chemistry. He should stick to topics he knows about.

Don't know if it's mentioned in the video since I didn't watch it all but modulating a digital value into an analog signal doesn't mean that noise or distortion will translate into the data getting corrupted, that's precisely the point of sending digital information in the first place. Digital transmissions are not a flow of the raw data you want to transmit but they're encoded with error detecting and correcting systems. These are just mathematical tricks used to detect data corruption, like (in the simplest form) adding a parity bit: if one bit is flipped during transmission then the number of 1s won't be even anymore so it's clear that that package needs to be resent. There are much more complex codes that not only allow for error detection but also correction. So a high number of transmission errors would result in a slower data rate due to more bandwidth being used to resend the same package multiple times. You can check this yourself by looking at the status information of a data connection: the lower the signal intensity is, the lower the available bandwidth. Low quality signal means more error rate, and thus a lot of retries that take time that could be used to send more packages with less tries per package. But the data is either valid or resent, not mistaken by valid when it's corrupted.

There is only one channel about audio playback that I trust implicitly; it is yours. Some are unenlightened jibberish using arcane jargon. They are the lay preachers. Some are by folks whose most serious foray into music is a stadium rock concert. I call that the metal head drive. Some channels are really intended to appeal to those who, on a substance high, once experienced something in music that they will die trying to reproduce. I call that the meth high audience. There are some who are forever striving to impress acquaintances with their shiny stack of costly equipment. I call that the Bentley bunch. Some are endlessly seeking some improvement in playback quality, valid or not. These are the OCDers. Some channels are in it entirely for the income; it's a living, or close to one. They are likely to have lots of sponsored links, and are patreon recruiters They are the panhandlers. Lost in the noise are those remaining who just want to hear music with minimum annoyances that distract from the evoking of a real musical performance. And, mostly obscure, are those who are tinkerers, the intensely curious, and the mathematicians, who live to get to the bottom of the well, not just drink the water. And then there are the carnival barkers. As Mark Twain once said, so well: “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

Good stuff Amir! Good to bring Darko back to reality.

Thank you, Amir.

Amir - friend and champion of the common man, most hated reviewer of most audio companies. Thank you again for helping us appreciate what is what.

Another good video. I can report that in my home system, I have a 10 meter (~30 ft) digital coax cable connecting one of my integrated amps to a source, and I can report that I never had any noticeable data error, even in that distance - after almost a year of regular use.

Terrific episode. Learned a lot. Is it possible to upload a sample of how exactly jitter sounds like?

That MOMENT at around 4:22~ ... instant realization of " WHY " Digital ... 0 and 1 ...on and off ... resilience LOL Amir i am certain you don't even realize how good you are at simply explaining things ... I seriously just realized WHY Digital is so good, simply watching you explain stuff that is probably very basic and low level for you . ( ok i'm late commenting sorry ..watched it the day it got out forgot to comment ) Again another superb video, with plenty of learning spread through it all. Thanks for taking time of making this !! Much appreciated !!! 👍👍👍

The best analogy I can come up with is imagine someone reading you a math problem. It doesn't matter if I tell you to add 10+4 or James Earl Jones asks you. You're still going to come up with 14. And at some point if the speaking is so distorted that you cannot understand it, you're not going to come up with 14.00001 or 13.9999, you're just not going to have an answer at all. That's VERY similar to how digital audio works. Sure, the voice itself is analog, but the answer isn't dependent on the precision of the analog signal until it becomes completely unrecognizable.

Should we drink distilled water or swamp water? Please Amir, save us!!!! Taste is subjective....so....

As I recall, several years ago there was something of a scandal when one of the great, French bottled waters contained clinically significant levels of benzine, despite the fact that the taste was not apparently affected. So the most important thing about testing is knowing what the test you are doing actually measures and whether that is relevant to the outcome.

I quite like measurements of water. So i dont die if they're poisonous etc

Another very very interesting and full of enlightenment session. Bravo Amir!!! I am using the chance to raise a topic. Recently, I got an iFi Pro iDSD - it is a wonderful device, a superb dac, and has upscaling capabilities. I cannot decide if I should do upscaling or not. For example PCM audio file - is it good (better) to upscale to DSD512 or even DSD1024; what is the value of doing that if I am not sending the signal to another dac and I am listening with headphones from the iDSD? I can understand the upscaling of 'old audio files' that are just 16 or 20 khz but should I upscale 44.1 or 96 khz to DSD512/1024. Frankly, sometimes upscaling makes changes that are audible - smooths the sound or makes some tones more full of body or sharper. I think lots greenhorns will appreciate if you do a review on that?

I used a RPi with an Apple dongle for my speakers. DSP room correction and equalisation. Works for me. With USB/network you usually know when there's a problem. It's not subtle.

Science vs Religion. The discussion will keep going for as long as people believe/prefer in fiction over fact. And just like the TV evangelists, money drives the religious factions.

Thank you Amir. Yet another great presentation. In engineering we have simple paradigm : knowledge->methodology->discipline-> verification. You show expertise across all. Others sell voodoo based on subjective opinions, especially in HIFI.

19:40 thanks for talking about GPU noise I have been dealing with that with my topping DAC and AMP, i have been searching for way to deal with it without throwing away my setup

Excellent as always!👍🙏

thanks for starting to clean up the German audio believer scene. About time some real engineering knowledge is used to tone this guy down a bit.

Another really good video just like being at school many thanks as always. I will say this I have some heavy well made gear but I still know that a cheap CD player used as a transport is not going to sound worse than a high-end transport, I do chuckle when reviewers say this transport sound better than that one...

Many thanks! Well done. I've learned a lot from to very informative video. I'm looking forward to your next videos

This video is brilliant. Thank you for explaining.

Thanks again, an excellent thoughtful and informative presentation.

I am still listening to a Marantz 2325 , Klipsch k- horns, with Klipsch Belle’s running in back on B so I run A+B speakers and I’m sure everything comes out as analog . I can tell the better the source the better the sound but it is still coming out as analog ! Sounds fantastic, you can only hear so much anyway. I don’t plan on any up grades !

19:55 I would say the bits are still bits, but the analog portion of the DAC (its in the name, after all) is still subject to the same issues as any other analog device. If noise bleeds into it, it will naturally get through to the audio. Stating it this way at least makes it clear that its not the data itself that is to blame per se as audiophiles might suggest, but poor analog design and interference via ground loops, PC bus noise, etc. In my mind I always segregate the two when diagnosing noise or interference since a PC always follows my speakers around, but the general audio community seems to conflate them together. Noisy DAC = Digital audio bad. Tubes and record player good! But the reality is designing quiet analog circuitry is a pain. Designing quiet analog circuitry that has to share real estate with a DC-DC switching converter and a bunch of digital circuitry takes that to another level. Of course there can be issues with the digital portion of the design as you elaborate on, but usually its the part where it turns into a squiggly wave that we can hear that most of the issues crop up.

Here are the rules, turns out for Natural mineral water you do need measurements on the bottle. :) Natural mineral water and Spring waters are required to: Come from a specified underground source which is protected from any form of pollution Be bottled at source Be microbiologically safe without any treatment Comply with the Natural Mineral Water, Spring Water and Bottled Water Regulations Natural mineral water must also: Have a guaranteed consistent chemical and physical composition Have the mineral composition on the label Receive no treatment (with the exception of filtration to remove sand particles)

"Worthless as a fortune cookie" BWAAAHAAABWAAAHAAAAABWAAAAHAAAAAAAAHAAAAAA (my sides still ache)

Amir, the audiophile myth "slayer" 😉.

Thank for another great video I just love the way you explain things and debunk so many of the HiFi pundits.

Great explanation of the digital transport side of a DAC. But, I think where some room still maybe left up to interpretation is in the digital to analog conversion. Say for example the operational amplifier and associated circuitry driving the analog output of the DAC its self. Though I've not experienced a meaningful difference with it my self, there are those who say they have experienced a great deal of difference in the variations here; though, most commonly in input drivers to amplifiers and such. Though like you said that's really where the blind testing becomes necessary. What really gets me is an audiophile's ability to somehow work around our minds inherent tendency to "normalize" what we're exposed to the most.

I’m very grateful to this channel, and a few others, for providing objective measurements and explaining the science behind the technology of the hobby that I enjoy. This information was missing from the hobby space, mostly, until relatively recently, and even when a publication did provide measurements, it was done mostly, in my opinion, as a way to lend credence to the subjective opinions being offered. I don’t mind, mostly, the subjective reviewers, Some of them provide useful information, provided they tell viewers what their preferences and biases are, which a few do. But when they are hostile to science and measurements, or try to “debunk” the validity of measurements, then they open themselves up to rebuttal. I’m again grateful to Amir and others like him (not many!) who take the time to explain whether the criticism is valid or not.

man, i admire the length he goes to to make sure he is fair to any claim, no mater how ridiculus, that is impresive

Greetings from Toronto ❄️☕️ In the end ..we don’t listen to test tones nor frequency sweeps..we listen to music ..literally emotions given form ..and like many other arts ..it’s beauty is in the eye ( or in this case EARS ) of the beholder. Now personally, spending more and more money hoping to find that unicorn that’ll take you to audiophile nirvana…is a fools game . I firmly believe that beyond a certain level of performance that makes you happy the improvement of a few percent ( if that’s even quantifiable) at double the cost ( it’s exponential??) isn’t in the end worth it …that being said get what sounds good TO YOU. A great video 👍👍

Another great educational video, thanks Amir. We know Darko, he is a salesman , cherry picking information to bust sells.

Amir reminds me of Paul Krugman, in a good way. PK uses the term wonkish sometimes when he goes deep down the rabbit holes. Thanks for explanation.

correction : we do ask for mesurement of water, we have the composition of each it helps us choose. I was drinking a water i really like then discovered that there was a lot of sodiuml in it wich could be bad in my case. I would have never known otherwise

"Darko" and "technical", two words that should never be used in the same sentence.

I love your videos. I like to try and find good analogies for digital transmission and error correction to people who just don’t understand digital transmission. Then how to reason with people who claim that £1000 digital Ethernet / switch is better than a £5 one. “If I email myself a Kindle book through super expensive “bibliophile” switch and Ethernet cable does the book read better and make the characters have better depth of feeling and communicate better emotions?” Errrrr No !

It took me many years to understand how the digital audio works mainly because there was so much bull going around. In addition to lots of marketing nonsense, and specially pay more you get more, perpetuated by the high end audio magazines. I wish stuff like you're producing had been around then.

Why have measurements when you can just taste? Consumers can't listen to all of this audio equipment for many reasons. The objective measurements empower consumers where as purely subjective reviews make us slaves to whatever the company claims about their product... or whatever the subjective "reviewers" are incentivized to say.