Poopie gurgled:

You mean audiophools surely

Does this count as an "audio post", Poopie?

"George M. Middius" wrote:

Poopie gurgled:

You mean audiophools surely

Does this count as an "audio post", Poopie?

Yup !

Graham

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 07:33:44 -0500, in rec.audio.tech , "SimonLW"
in wrote:

"Paul L" wrote in message
. com...
My DVD player and my digital reciever have both coaxial and optical jacks.
Which connection should I use to get better sound quality or are they all
equal?

Its all digital right? Unless there is a design flaw, I would think all the
digital 1s and 0s would arrive in the same order either way. I don't know
the protocol in these, but on a computer network, the protocol checks to be
sure the data arrives exactly as it was sent for if a single bit got
changed, the data or program could be trashed.

Network transmissions allow for re-send of packets, audio does not.


--
Matt Silberstein

Do something today about the Darfur Genocide

http://www.beawitness.org
http://www.darfurgenocide.org
http://www.savedarfur.org

"Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop"

Matt Silberstein wrote:

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 07:33:44 -0500, in rec.audio.tech , "SimonLW"
in wrote:

"Paul L" wrote in message
. com...
My DVD player and my digital reciever have both coaxial and optical jacks.
Which connection should I use to get better sound quality or are they all
equal?

Its all digital right? Unless there is a design flaw, I would think all the
digital 1s and 0s would arrive in the same order either way. I don't know
the protocol in these, but on a computer network, the protocol checks to be
sure the data arrives exactly as it was sent for if a single bit got
changed, the data or program could be trashed.

Network transmissions allow for re-send of packets, audio does not.

I think spdif has a parity bit - but that's your lot !

Graham

In rec.audio.tech Pooh Bear wrote:


mc wrote:

You *can* have the exact same datastream with audible differences.

What is the cause of the differences, then?

That's like saying, "You can hit the exact same keys and not type the same
words."

I always though that it was a missed marketing opputunity that disk drive
manufacturers didn't claim that *their* magnetic coatings could make your
letters read better.

Nah. The drive manufacturers have other ways of lying to the public. How much
is a megabyte again? And how big is the cache on the drive?

Colin

"Pooh Bear" wrote in message
...


Matt Silberstein wrote:

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006 07:33:44 -0500, in rec.audio.tech , "SimonLW"
in wrote:

"Paul L" wrote in message
. com...
My DVD player and my digital reciever have both coaxial and optical
jacks.
Which connection should I use to get better sound quality or are they
all
equal?

Its all digital right? Unless there is a design flaw, I would think all
the
digital 1s and 0s would arrive in the same order either way. I don't
know
the protocol in these, but on a computer network, the protocol checks to
be
sure the data arrives exactly as it was sent for if a single bit got
changed, the data or program could be trashed.

Network transmissions allow for re-send of packets, audio does not.

I think spdif has a parity bit - but that's your lot !

Yes SP/DIF supports parity, but if the parity is wrong, there are few
alternatives but to mute or conceal the erroneous data.

Matt is correct as far as SP/DIf goes - if an error is detected the only
alternative would be to try to conceal the error as is done with CDs, since
SP/DIF and AES-3 have no protocol and lack a bi-directional connection for
retries.

One major difference between ripping a CD on a computer, and playing it on a
CD player, is that most ripping software supports retries.

When digital audio data is encapsulated in other protocols, such as the
protocols between a computer and its disk drives, then the protocol
encapsulating the transfer can and often does support retries.

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:34:54 GMT, Colin B. wrote:


In rec.audio.tech Pooh Bear wrote:


mc wrote:

You *can* have the exact same datastream with audible differences.

What is the cause of the differences, then?

That's like saying, "You can hit the exact same keys and not type the same
words."

I always though that it was a missed marketing opputunity that disk drive
manufacturers didn't claim that *their* magnetic coatings could make your
letters read better.

Nah. The drive manufacturers have other ways of lying to the public. How much
is a megabyte again? And how big is the cache on the drive?

You think calling 1000000000 (10^9) bytes a gig is a form of lying?

Never ascribe malice to what can be just a easily explained by ignorance and
stupidity.

Disk drive makers call 1000000 a million. Imagine that! Not 1024*1024.
They also call 1000000000 a gig, not 1024^3.

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
:
: "mc" wrote in message
: . ..
:
: "Arny Krueger" wrote in message
: ...
:
: In the service manuals for certain digital preamps, Sony
: instructs that the adjustment for harmonic distortion
: must be performed with a signal source delivered by the
: coaxial input. This shows that in some cases, the digital
: input receiver can suffer with an optical connection, in
: a measurable way.
:
: No excuse for this kind of flaw at all.
:
: Indeed, because of the elimination of EMI with optical, if anything Sony
: should be recommending the use of the optical input for critical
: adjustments.
:
: I was wondering the same thing. If it's digital, why isn't it absolutely
: bit-for-bit identical both ways?
:
: Every digital signal is received as an analog signal. The conversion to
: digital can be a point where difficulties arise. An ideal digital receiver
: is immune to noise and timing problems with its input signals, but nothing's
: perfect.
:
: The optical input would be immune to electromagnetic noise, and that
: should be the only difference.
:
: Agreed. In fact any grounding problems that may exist can be exagerated by
: common kinds of tests that are done on power amps. *A*
:
: Normally they should be indistinguishable because electromagnetic noise
: strong enough to disrupt a digital signal is rare.
:
: The digital signal in question is not as robust as it might be. It's in the
: 1-2 volt peak-to-peak range. Really bad grounding problems can add noise in
: the same voltage range. *B*
:
Elsewhere in this thread, you recommend coax for longer (30 ft.) stretches,
that is inconsistent with A and B, Arny :-)

With respect to welldefined edges, optical is clearly superior - even the
plastic 850 nm home variety - to coax.

Rudy

"Ruud Broens" wrote in message
...

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
:
: "mc" wrote in message
: . ..
:
: "Arny Krueger" wrote in message
: ...
:
: In the service manuals for certain digital preamps, Sony
: instructs that the adjustment for harmonic distortion
: must be performed with a signal source delivered by the
: coaxial input. This shows that in some cases, the digital
: input receiver can suffer with an optical connection, in
: a measurable way.
:
: No excuse for this kind of flaw at all.
:
: Indeed, because of the elimination of EMI with optical, if anything
Sony
: should be recommending the use of the optical input for critical
: adjustments.
:
: I was wondering the same thing. If it's digital, why isn't it
absolutely
: bit-for-bit identical both ways?
:
: Every digital signal is received as an analog signal. The conversion to
: digital can be a point where difficulties arise. An ideal digital
receiver
: is immune to noise and timing problems with its input signals, but
nothing's
: perfect.
:
: The optical input would be immune to electromagnetic noise, and that
: should be the only difference.
:
: Agreed. In fact any grounding problems that may exist can be exagerated
by
: common kinds of tests that are done on power amps. *A*
:
: Normally they should be indistinguishable because electromagnetic
noise
: strong enough to disrupt a digital signal is rare.
:
: The digital signal in question is not as robust as it might be. It's in
the
: 1-2 volt peak-to-peak range. Really bad grounding problems can add noise
in
: the same voltage range. *B*
:
Elsewhere in this thread, you recommend coax for longer (30 ft.)
stretches,
that is inconsistent with A and B, Arny :-)

Not at all. The usual spec'd limit for consumer Toslink is 10 meters. That
means that it can turn into a pumpkin about 30 feet out and you have nobody
to blame but yourself. Thus for runs longer than about 30 feet, your choices
are coax and oh by the way, coax. Either that or do something exotic to
stretch Toslink beyond its usual limit. Exotic would be signal boosters and
esoteric optical interconnect.

OTOH good solid copper core coax can take SP/DIF past 100 feet, quite
easily. However, watch that grounding!

With respect to welldefined edges, optical is clearly superior - even the
plastic 850 nm home variety - to coax.

It turns out that the bandwidth of coax inputs and particularly outputs is
limited inside the box so that FCC Part 15 limits are not violated. Usually
a little transformer is used that limits the bandwidth to from 8 to 15 MHz.
That helps keep the nasties out of TV-Land. Thus the bandwidth of the
cable, which is usually far greater, isn't the limiting factor.

"Ruud Broens" wrote ...
With respect to welldefined edges, optical is clearly
superior - even the plastic 850 nm home variety - to coax.

For 2-3 feet, maybe. But for long distances, not clear whether
any light at all makes it through those cheap plastic extruded
"lightpipe"?

OTOH, if you're talking about proper glass fibre, yes
indeed, it beats coaxial cable over long distances. But
the OP was asking about cheap plastic Toslink.

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

Not at all. The usual spec'd limit for consumer Toslink is 10 meters.
That
means that it can turn into a pumpkin about 30 feet out and you have
nobody
to blame but yourself. Thus for runs longer than about 30 feet, your
choices
are coax and oh by the way, coax. Either that or do something exotic to
stretch Toslink beyond its usual limit. Exotic would be signal boosters
and
esoteric optical interconnect.

Toslink signal boosters aren't "exotic". They're a Toslink receiver and a
high output LED with very little inbetween. I picked up one of these on
clearance at Radio Shack for $3.99. At full price, you should pay under
$30.

OTOH good solid copper core coax can take SP/DIF past 100 feet, quite
easily. However, watch that grounding!

With optical, no worries about grounding or electrical interferance by doing
something like running the cable in parallel with other electric cables.

Digital is digital. Either you get a good signal, or you get garbage than
even the tone deaf can identify (but I've found that usually the receiving
end will indicate loss of digital signal).

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

Yes SP/DIF supports parity, but if the parity is wrong, there are few
alternatives but to mute or conceal the erroneous data.

Matt is correct as far as SP/DIf goes - if an error is detected the only
alternative would be to try to conceal the error as is done with CDs,
since
SP/DIF and AES-3 have no protocol and lack a bi-directional connection for
retries.

One major difference between ripping a CD on a computer, and playing it on
a
CD player, is that most ripping software supports retries.

When digital audio data is encapsulated in other protocols, such as the
protocols between a computer and its disk drives, then the protocol
encapsulating the transfer can and often does support retries.

While this is true, you're likely to need retries reading data from the
media (i.e. CD). Error detection and correction are done in the CD player.
That's why you have players running the CD's at a higher speed than 1X, so
the data can be read many times to support error detection and correction.

By the time the digital data leaves the CD player through a digital coax or
optical digital connection, the likelihood that you're going to need error
detection and correction is very small. Your digital connection between the
player and the receiver will either work, or it won't.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...
: "Ruud Broens" wrote ...
: With respect to welldefined edges, optical is clearly
: superior - even the plastic 850 nm home variety - to coax.
:
: For 2-3 feet, maybe. But for long distances, not clear whether
: any light at all makes it through those cheap plastic extruded
: "lightpipe"?

Heh. I know, attenuation is measured in meters as opposed to
miles in proper fiberoptics. Attenuation is gross, but constant
over the frequencies we're talking about here, so waveform is
preserved pretty well.
:
: OTOH, if you're talking about proper glass fibre, yes
: indeed, it beats coaxial cable over long distances.

yep, eg. synchronous 40Gb is considered so-so if more than a handful
of biterrors occur in 24 hours over a 100 km distance - usually the result
of 'seismic' activity, as in _construction work_

: But the OP was asking about cheap plastic Toslink.

Rudy

"Jeff Findley" wrote in
message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

Not at all. The usual spec'd limit for consumer Toslink
is 10 meters. That means that it can turn into a pumpkin
about 30 feet out and you have nobody to blame but
yourself. Thus for runs longer than about 30 feet, your
choices are coax and oh by the way, coax. Either that or
do something exotic to stretch Toslink beyond its usual
limit. Exotic would be signal boosters and esoteric
optical interconnect.

Toslink signal boosters aren't "exotic". They're a
Toslink receiver and a high output LED with very little
inbetween. I picked up one of these on clearance at
Radio Shack for $3.99. At full price, you should pay
under $30.

I saw said signal booster at the local RS for $3.99 a couple of weeks ago
and picked one up.

OTOH good solid copper core coax can take SP/DIF past
100 feet, quite easily. However, watch that grounding!

With optical, no worries about grounding or electrical
interferance by doing something like running the cable in
parallel with other electric cables.

I agree that optical solves a lot of common problems. The length issue
rarely comes up in consumer systems.

My main system has 12' of toslink between the DVD player and the digital
processor. This eliminates the possibility of all kinds of noise and
grounding problems with the audio system. In essence there is no electrical
connection between the audio and video domains.

Digital is digital. Either you get a good signal, or you
get garbage than even the tone deaf can identify (but
I've found that usually the receiving end will indicate
loss of digital signal).

Well in times of old when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was young and
handsome, not every digital receiver was as good as so many of the ones we
see today. ;-)

For example, I have an Denon DA500 DAC which I use mostly as test equipment.
I've been able to make the thing give music a delightful vibrato effect by
mixing an appropriate interfering signal with inbound digital data. In
contrast, the same data played perfectly with a Technics SHAC-500.

DACs sold as high end products in the 1990s have an especially checkered
reutation for technically incompetent digital receivers.

In rec.audio.tech AZ Nomad wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:34:54 GMT, Colin B. wrote:


In rec.audio.tech Pooh Bear wrote:


mc wrote:

You *can* have the exact same datastream with audible differences.

What is the cause of the differences, then?

That's like saying, "You can hit the exact same keys and not type the same
words."

I always though that it was a missed marketing opputunity that disk drive
manufacturers didn't claim that *their* magnetic coatings could make your
letters read better.

Nah. The drive manufacturers have other ways of lying to the public. How much
is a megabyte again? And how big is the cache on the drive?

You think calling 1000000000 (10^9) bytes a gig is a form of lying?

Never ascribe malice to what can be just a easily explained by ignorance and
stupidity.

Disk drive makers call 1000000 a million. Imagine that! Not 1024*1024.
They also call 1000000000 a gig, not 1024^3.

I do call that lying, given the context. Maybe you weren't paying attention
when they made the change.

For some decades, _all_ manufactures of computer equipment used kilo and mega
to refer to intervals of 2^10. That was a de-facto standard before 8-bit
words were standard. Hard drives were sold in megabytes, where 1MB=2^20B.
Then when people were buying hard drives based on MB/$ and availability, one
manufacturer changed their definition of a MB--I think it was Western
Digital, but I'm not sure--to mean 1000000 bytes. Suddenly, they were selling
drives that were about 5-7% bigger than the competitors, for the same price!
Who wouldn't want free space? They didn't advertise it, but if you read the
spec sheets you discovered the truth. The computer media went after them to
find out, and they said that the marketing department recommended the idea,
to 'avoid confusing the consumer' (by using the same units as everyone else?
Sure!). Of course sales went up for them and down for the rest, so almost
overnight, the switch was made.

It's not ignorance or stupidity, it was clear and deliberate malice. In the
context of the computer industry at the time, I still say it was lying.

Colin

"Sander deWaal" wrote in message
...
"mc" said:

Indeed, because of the elimination of EMI with optical, if anything Sony
should be recommending the use of the optical input for critical
adjustments.


I was wondering the same thing. If it's digital, why isn't it absolutely
bit-for-bit identical both ways? The optical input would be immune to
electromagnetic noise, and that should be the only difference. Normally
they should be indistinguishable because electromagnetic noise strong
enough
to disrupt a digital signal is rare.


A common mistake.
The S/PDIF signal is analog in nature.
Just as with RF signals, an incorrect termination might cause
reflections ( "a bad SWR") which, in turn, are said to cause jitter.

SP/DIF is an early, optical method, using a crude plastic fiber, that
actually has limited bandwidth. The resulting fuzziness of the transitions
creates more uncertainty for the input receiver chip. In the case of a
typical input receiver, using a single phase locked loop, the additional
uncertainty causes additional jitter, over the jitter inherent in recovering
the clock from a NRZ encoding scheme.

Because the plastic fiber is a large diameter multimode, the path length
actually is sensitive to distortion of the fiber by mechanical vibration. No
such artifact occurs with coaxial cable, which is modeless at the
frequencies under consideration.

Jitter doesn't have to be a problem per se.
When the incoming signal in e.g.a DAC is reclocked for instance, the
jitter must be very extreme to have any effect at all.

Yes, but reclocking is still not done as a matter of course.

If that extreme is reached (not likely), the result will be silence,
not degraded audio.

Yes, and with any input receiver consisting of a single PLL, the designer
must choose a time constant that is a compromise between low jitter, and the
possible failure to lock.

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...
"Ruud Broens" wrote ...
With respect to welldefined edges, optical is clearly superior - even the
plastic 850 nm home variety - to coax.

For 2-3 feet, maybe. But for long distances, not clear whether
any light at all makes it through those cheap plastic extruded
"lightpipe"?

OTOH, if you're talking about proper glass fibre, yes
indeed, it beats coaxial cable over long distances. But
the OP was asking about cheap plastic Toslink.

I believe that he was. Toslink has nothing in common with the performance of
glass fiber.

"Colin B." wrote in message
...
In rec.audio.tech AZ Nomad wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:34:54 GMT, Colin B.
wrote:


In rec.audio.tech Pooh Bear
wrote:


mc wrote:

You *can* have the exact same datastream with audible differences.

What is the cause of the differences, then?

That's like saying, "You can hit the exact same keys and not type the
same
words."

I always though that it was a missed marketing opputunity that disk
drive
manufacturers didn't claim that *their* magnetic coatings could make
your
letters read better.

Nah. The drive manufacturers have other ways of lying to the public. How
much
is a megabyte again? And how big is the cache on the drive?

You think calling 1000000000 (10^9) bytes a gig is a form of lying?

Never ascribe malice to what can be just a easily explained by ignorance
and
stupidity.

Disk drive makers call 1000000 a million. Imagine that! Not 1024*1024.
They also call 1000000000 a gig, not 1024^3.

I do call that lying, given the context. Maybe you weren't paying
attention
when they made the change.

For some decades, _all_ manufactures of computer equipment used kilo and
mega
to refer to intervals of 2^10. That was a de-facto standard before 8-bit
words were standard. Hard drives were sold in megabytes, where 1MB=2^20B.
Then when people were buying hard drives based on MB/$ and availability,
one
manufacturer changed their definition of a MB--I think it was Western
Digital, but I'm not sure--to mean 1000000 bytes. Suddenly, they were
selling
drives that were about 5-7% bigger than the competitors, for the same
price!
Who wouldn't want free space? They didn't advertise it, but if you read
the
spec sheets you discovered the truth. The computer media went after them
to
find out, and they said that the marketing department recommended the
idea,
to 'avoid confusing the consumer' (by using the same units as everyone
else?
Sure!). Of course sales went up for them and down for the rest, so almost
overnight, the switch was made.

It's not ignorance or stupidity, it was clear and deliberate malice. In
the
context of the computer industry at the time, I still say it was lying.

Grab lance, mount horse, tilt at windmills.

It ain't a lie when the facts are well-known and readily knowable for
everybody who cares to find out the accepted conventions.

"Robert Morein" wrote in message
...

"Sander deWaal" wrote in message
...
"mc" said:

Jitter doesn't have to be a problem per se.
When the incoming signal in e.g.a DAC is reclocked for instance, the
jitter must be very extreme to have any effect at all.

Yes, but reclocking is still not done as a matter of course.

Reclocking is done as a matter of course, for example in sub-$200 appliance
store stereo receivers. Reclocking is done in every CD player, even the
$39.95 boom boxes, $19.95 portables and CDROM drives. Every MP3 player, even
the $39.95 cheapies that run on a single AAA battery reclock the audio data
as a matter of course.

Arny Krueger wrote:

"Robert Morein" wrote in message
...

"Sander deWaal" wrote in message
...
"mc" said:

Jitter doesn't have to be a problem per se.
When the incoming signal in e.g.a DAC is reclocked for instance, the
jitter must be very extreme to have any effect at all.

Yes, but reclocking is still not done as a matter of course.

Reclocking is done as a matter of course, for example in sub-$200 appliance
store stereo receivers. Reclocking is done in every CD player, even the
$39.95 boom boxes, $19.95 portables and CDROM drives. Every MP3 player, even
the $39.95 cheapies that run on a single AAA battery reclock the audio data
as a matter of course.

I just noticed this Cirrus receiver chip that rather neatly avoids the
data-dependent clock recovery jitter issue too.

" In addition, the PLL has been designed to only use the preambles of the AES3
stream to provide lock update information to the
PLL. This results in the PLL being immune to data dependent jitter affects
because the AES3 preambles do not vary with the data."

http://www.cirrus.com/en/pubs/proDat.../CS8427_F3.pdf page 54

Graham

"Pooh Bear" wrote in message
...


Arny Krueger wrote:

"Robert Morein" wrote in message
...

"Sander deWaal" wrote in message
...
"mc" said:

Jitter doesn't have to be a problem per se.
When the incoming signal in e.g.a DAC is reclocked for instance, the
jitter must be very extreme to have any effect at all.

Yes, but reclocking is still not done as a matter of course.

Reclocking is done as a matter of course, for example in sub-$200
appliance
store stereo receivers. Reclocking is done in every CD player, even the
$39.95 boom boxes, $19.95 portables and CDROM drives. Every MP3 player,
even
the $39.95 cheapies that run on a single AAA battery reclock the audio
data
as a matter of course.

I just noticed this Cirrus receiver chip that rather neatly avoids the
data-dependent clock recovery jitter issue too.

" In addition, the PLL has been designed to only use the preambles of the
AES3
stream to provide lock update information to the
PLL. This results in the PLL being immune to data dependent jitter affects
because the AES3 preambles do not vary with the data."

http://www.cirrus.com/en/pubs/proDat.../CS8427_F3.pdf page 54

Neat! Patented?

Of course, we'll never know how many times this IP from the 8427 shows up in
other chips that receive digital audio data.

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 02:29:19 GMT, Colin B. wrote:


In rec.audio.tech AZ Nomad wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:34:54 GMT, Colin B. wrote:


In rec.audio.tech Pooh Bear wrote:


mc wrote:

You *can* have the exact same datastream with audible differences.

What is the cause of the differences, then?

That's like saying, "You can hit the exact same keys and not type the same
words."

I always though that it was a missed marketing opputunity that disk drive
manufacturers didn't claim that *their* magnetic coatings could make your
letters read better.

Nah. The drive manufacturers have other ways of lying to the public. How much
is a megabyte again? And how big is the cache on the drive?

You think calling 1000000000 (10^9) bytes a gig is a form of lying?

Never ascribe malice to what can be just a easily explained by ignorance and
stupidity.

Disk drive makers call 1000000 a million. Imagine that! Not 1024*1024.
They also call 1000000000 a gig, not 1024^3.

I do call that lying, given the context. Maybe you weren't paying attention
when they made the change.

For some decades, _all_ manufactures of computer equipment used kilo and mega
to refer to intervals of 2^10. That was a de-facto standard before 8-bit
words were standard. Hard drives were sold in megabytes, where 1MB=2^20B.
Then when people were buying hard drives based on MB/$ and availability, one
manufacturer changed their definition of a MB--I think it was Western
Digital, but I'm not sure--to mean 1000000 bytes. Suddenly, they were selling
drives that were about 5-7% bigger than the competitors, for the same price!
Who wouldn't want free space? They didn't advertise it, but if you read the
spec sheets you discovered the truth. The computer media went after them to
find out, and they said that the marketing department recommended the idea,
to 'avoid confusing the consumer' (by using the same units as everyone else?
Sure!). Of course sales went up for them and down for the rest, so almost
overnight, the switch was made.

It's not ignorance or stupidity, it was clear and deliberate malice. In the
context of the computer industry at the time, I still say it was lying.

No. It is using english definitions of the words million and billion.
It sucks that operating system makers took the lazy approach of reporting
a thousand as 2^10 so that they could just to a shift operation instead of
a divide.

"Robert Morein" wrote in message
news :
: "Richard Crowley" wrote in message
: ...
: "Ruud Broens" wrote ...
: With respect to welldefined edges, optical is clearly superior - even the
: plastic 850 nm home variety - to coax.
:
: For 2-3 feet, maybe. But for long distances, not clear whether
: any light at all makes it through those cheap plastic extruded
: "lightpipe"?
:
: OTOH, if you're talking about proper glass fibre, yes
: indeed, it beats coaxial cable over long distances. But
: the OP was asking about cheap plastic Toslink.
:
: I believe that he was. Toslink has nothing in common with the performance of
: glass fiber.

no. you'd be surprised what is out there, eg.:
http://www.semicon.toshiba.co.jp/eng...K_200502_e.pdf

note the TODX2402(F), for instance, Toslink for AV Network ,
250 Mbs 20m, 125 Mbs 50 meter range

;-)
Rudy

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
. ..
It's not ignorance or stupidity, it was clear and deliberate malice. In
the context of the computer industry at the time, I still say it was
lying.

Grab lance, mount horse, tilt at windmills.

It ain't a lie when the facts are well-known and readily knowable for
everybody who cares to find out the accepted conventions.

Of course it was a *LIE* at the time! They chose to disregard long standing
conventions and create their own, simply for a marketing advantage.
Just because this is common business practice in the world of corporate
greed, does not make it right.

The fact that it is *NOW* standard convention, because other companies were
forced to follow suit, is a good example of why the world is going to hell
because of greedy corporations with no ethics or morals.

MrT.

"AZ Nomad" wrote in message
...
No. It is using english definitions of the words million and billion.
It sucks that operating system makers took the lazy approach of reporting
a thousand as 2^10 so that they could just to a shift operation instead of
a divide.

What crap, I have never seen a computer that calculates a thousand as 2^10.
Even a cheap calculator knows the difference between Binary, Octal,
Hexadecimal and Decimal, but naturally you could never expect the same from
a marketing executive.

MrT.

"Mr.T" wrote:

"AZ Nomad" wrote in message
...
No. It is using english definitions of the words million and billion.
It sucks that operating system makers took the lazy approach of reporting
a thousand as 2^10 so that they could just to a shift operation instead of
a divide.

What crap, I have never seen a computer that calculates a thousand as 2^10.
Even a cheap calculator knows the difference between Binary, Octal,
Hexadecimal and Decimal, but naturally you could never expect the same from
a marketing executive.

If this is to be a marketing and executive bashing thread may I join in ? They
should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes !

Graham

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:03:38 +1100, "Mr.T" MrT@home wrote:

What crap, I have never seen a computer that calculates a thousand as 2^10.

Your computer however calculates a "K" as 1024. Hence the
discrepancy between advertised hard drive size and reported size.

Pooh Bear said:

If this is to be a marketing and executive bashing thread may I join in ? They
should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes !


You're forgetting the lawyers.

--

"Audio as a serious hobby is going down the tubes."
- Howard Ferstler, 25/4/2005

In rec.audio.tech Arny Krueger wrote:

"Colin B." wrote in message
...
In rec.audio.tech AZ Nomad wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 08:34:54 GMT, Colin B.
wrote:


In rec.audio.tech Pooh Bear
wrote:

I always though that it was a missed marketing opputunity that disk
drive
manufacturers didn't claim that *their* magnetic coatings could make
your
letters read better.

Nah. The drive manufacturers have other ways of lying to the public. How
much
is a megabyte again? And how big is the cache on the drive?

You think calling 1000000000 (10^9) bytes a gig is a form of lying?

Never ascribe malice to what can be just a easily explained by ignorance
and
stupidity.

Disk drive makers call 1000000 a million. Imagine that! Not 1024*1024.
They also call 1000000000 a gig, not 1024^3.

I do call that lying, given the context. Maybe you weren't paying
attention
when they made the change.

For some decades, _all_ manufactures of computer equipment used kilo and
mega
to refer to intervals of 2^10. That was a de-facto standard before 8-bit
words were standard. Hard drives were sold in megabytes, where 1MB=2^20B.
Then when people were buying hard drives based on MB/$ and availability,
one
manufacturer changed their definition of a MB--I think it was Western
Digital, but I'm not sure--to mean 1000000 bytes. Suddenly, they were
selling
drives that were about 5-7% bigger than the competitors, for the same
price!
Who wouldn't want free space? They didn't advertise it, but if you read
the
spec sheets you discovered the truth. The computer media went after them
to
find out, and they said that the marketing department recommended the
idea,
to 'avoid confusing the consumer' (by using the same units as everyone
else?
Sure!). Of course sales went up for them and down for the rest, so almost
overnight, the switch was made.

It's not ignorance or stupidity, it was clear and deliberate malice. In
the
context of the computer industry at the time, I still say it was lying.

Grab lance, mount horse, tilt at windmills.

Oh, I never claimed I was doing anything else. :-) However, Pooh Bear was
suggesting BS that the storage industry could use for marketing, and I just
wanted to point out that they already have.

It ain't a lie when the facts are well-known and readily knowable for
everybody who cares to find out the accepted conventions.

Well it's not a lie now that the conventions have changed. It was clearly a
lie when the marketing division of one company violated decades of convention
to gain an advertising advantage--especially when they expoloited it in their
sales pitch. (5% more space than competitors!)

Colin

Sander deWaal said:

If this is to be a marketing and executive bashing thread may I join in ? They
should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes !

You're forgetting the lawyers.

Only one breed of "professional" would make a statement like the one
Poopie made.

In rec.audio.tech Sander deWaal wrote:
Pooh Bear said:

If this is to be a marketing and executive bashing thread may I join in ? They
should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes !

You're forgetting the lawyers.

Nah. Lawyers, at least in theory, have a useful role. They'll make the top
ten, though.

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 18:47:10 +0100, in rec.audio.tech , Sander deWaal
in
wrote:

Pooh Bear said:

If this is to be a marketing and executive bashing thread may I join in ? They
should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes !


You're forgetting the lawyers.

What do you think we are going to make the walls from?


--
Matt Silberstein

Do something today about the Darfur Genocide

http://www.beawitness.org
http://www.darfurgenocide.org
http://www.savedarfur.org

"Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop"

"George M. Middius" wrote:

Sander deWaal said:

If this is to be a marketing and executive bashing thread may I join in ? They
should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes !

You're forgetting the lawyers.

Only one breed of "professional" would make a statement like the one
Poopie made.

It's a quote from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy you doofus !

Graham

Poopie squalled:

You're forgetting the lawyers.

Only one breed of "professional" would make a statement like the one
Poopie made.

It's a quote from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy you doofus !

Oh, of course. And here I thought you were alluding to Shakespeare. My
mistake.

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:11:47 -0500, in rec.audio.tech , George M.
Middius cmndr [underscore] george [at] comcast [dot] net in
wrote:



Poopie squalled:

You're forgetting the lawyers.

Only one breed of "professional" would make a statement like the one
Poopie made.

It's a quote from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy you doofus !

Oh, of course. And here I thought you were alluding to Shakespeare. My
mistake.

Just once removed.


--
Matt Silberstein

Do something today about the Darfur Genocide

http://www.beawitness.org
http://www.darfurgenocide.org
http://www.savedarfur.org

"Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop"

"Laurence Payne" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:03:38 +1100, "Mr.T" MrT@home wrote:

What crap, I have never seen a computer that calculates a thousand as
2^10.

Your computer however calculates a "K" as 1024.

A Kilo bit, yes. Please read what I wrote binary, octal, decimal,
hexadecimal.

Hence the
discrepancy between advertised hard drive size and reported size.

The marketing reason has already been well explained by myself and others.
Try Google if you came in late.

MrT.

"Colin B." wrote in message
...
In rec.audio.tech Sander deWaal wrote:
Pooh Bear said:

If this is to be a marketing and executive bashing thread may I join in
? They
should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes !

You're forgetting the lawyers.

Yep, I'd put them up first with the politicians. Most politicians are ex
lawyers anyway (which is part of the problem)

Nah. Lawyers, at least in theory, have a useful role.

Very funny!

MrT.

"Signal" wrote ...
"Arny Krueger" emitted :
Every digital signal is received as an analog signal.

Hmmm... that doesn't sound right. Digital is, like, the opposite of
analogue, man. A signal cannot simply be "received" from an analogue
signal, it has to be converted. The analogue signal is a continuously
variable quantity, y'see, whereas digital is finite.

It may not sound right to you, but Arny is correct.

The most complex digital chips on the planet are made
in the factory next door to my office. You can be sure
that while the chips may appear to function as digital/
binary on the outside, the device physicists and circuit
designers and process integration engineers spend most
of their time designing and testing in the analog domain.

Perhaps you are not aware that the operating voltage of
complex digital chips has dropped from 5 volts a decade
ago down to 3.3 and 1.9 and even 1.3 volts today. The
prime reason is that it takes a "long time" (many nSec!)
to pull a "long" (several microns!) circuit line all the way
from logic "0" (0 volts) to logic "1" (5 volts). All the time
the chip spends transitioning between zero and one, it is in
the analog/linear domain and that is there where all the
power is expended (and the heat is generated). So anything
we can do to minimize the amount of time we spend in the
analog zone, we can both get the speed faster AND the
heat lower.

In fact, it was only recently that we started designing
fab processes (all the details of how the IC layers are
made, and the dimensions of the transistors, lines and
spaces, etc. etc. etc.) that were optimized (and, indeed
even specified) for both analog and digital use. Because
of the big demand for more and more large-scale
integration of products like cell-phones and pagers, etc.
For all I know, they have an entire cell phone on a single
chip. Maybe that's what is in my new Razr?

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...
"Signal" wrote ...
"Arny Krueger" emitted :
Every digital signal is received as an analog signal.

Hmmm... that doesn't sound right. Digital is, like, the opposite of
analogue, man. A signal cannot simply be "received" from an analogue

It may not sound right to you, but Arny is correct.

He is correct, but he was deliberately misleading in order to get people to
think.

Naturally, the signal going down a digital wire is not "analog" in the same
sense as an analog audio signal. It is not a voltage that is supposed to be
proportional to the displacement of a speaker cone.

But (and this is Arny's point) electricity does not consist of ones and
zeroes. (Well, there are individual electrons, but that's not what we're
dealing with here.) Voltage levels are on a continuum. If you decide that
1 volt is 1 and 0 volts is 0, then what do you do when the actual cable,
with its resistance, capacitance, and inductance, delivers you 0.8 volt, or
0.5 volt? And there are no instantaneous transitions; if you switch
suddenly between 0 V and 1 V at the input, you will see a much less sudden
transition at the end of a long cable.

"mc" wrote...
And there are no instantaneous transitions; if you switch suddenly
between 0 V and 1 V at the input, you will see a much less sudden
transition at the end of a long cable.

Or at the end of a 120 µm IC "line". :-)