Digital audio is a very complex subject, one most of us don’t really understand at a level deep enough to make a reasoned technological change.
Yes, we can change cables, equipment, programs, and even formats and hear the differences. But most of us aren’t able to dig deep into circuitry and programming to make those changes.
Our changes are broader—surface level as opposed to digging deep into the machine.
As someone on the other side of the fence (with just enough deep knowledge to be dangerous), it’s always a balancing act helping people get to where they want to go by separating fact from fiction as best I can.
For example, in our ongoing quest for getting better sound out of our digital audio systems we work with cables and purifiers to improve the resulting audio. And it works! But why?
Lower noise? Less jitter? Better signal shape?
Without a clear understanding of what we are actually attempting to control or improve, most of what we do is more of a crapshoot than a reasoned approach.
I suppose the point of all this is that as we delve deeper into the benefits of galvanic isolation—benefits we will all have access to when we soon release the new DirectStream MK2—it might set a lot of folks to scratching their heads as to why those fancy cables and purifiers have so much less of an impact.
Once you know where to look it’s easy to see.
