Is Digital Audio Transmission Really Analog ?

[Tranquility Bass]

For those fake review websites and infuencers that keep promoting "audio-file" network switches please get your facts straight and stop spreading mistruths and propaganda just because it is profitable for you to do so. That is no excuse to do it.

Unlike these fake reviewers and as someone that has actually designed DAC and DSP hardware all I can say is that once those 'ones' and 'zeros' are re-assembled inside a buffer within a DAC or DSP, the electronics does not care where they came from. Whether it's an S/PDIF, Toslink, USB or ethernet connection via streamer and network switch etc it makes no difference to the DAC hardware how they got there as long as there are no errors in the data then each source will produce an identical result and this can be measured as well !

And there in lies the rub. These fake review websites rarely measure anything if at all. Instead they will come up with a whole lot of lame excuses as to why they should not measure anything which is contrary to the people who design the hardware and/or the silicon used in most modern electronic devices. None of their lame excuses stands up to any scrutiny which should be a red flag to anyone reading it. What these people are doing is sending the industry back to the dark-ages and promoting a whole new industry of snake-oil merchants, snake-oil products, scam artists and spivs.

The only caveat here is that different devices may use different levels of isolation with the possibility of passing noise into the connecting device. However this all should be clearly measurable but of course if you don't measure anything then how would you know ? Of course this aspect which is usually the focus of most of these fake reviews has no bearing on the end sound quality. And changes in someones subjective interpretation of sound-stage is certainly not a reliable performance metric !!