The whole audiophile industry is built on stuff which doesn't make any sense

My favourite: "audiophile-grade" audio players which allocate a single continuous buffer of RAM into which they load/decode the whole .WAV/.FLAC file, because supposedly the CPU "jumping" between "fragmented audio" causes audible "jitter".

Of course, they don't know that what looks like continuous memory to user-code is probably discontinuous in kernel/physical RAM.

Didn't check in many years, I wonder if they created kernel level players to account for that, to have "true continuous memory"

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platinumrad 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Don't forget: "most players use malloc to get memory while new is the c++ method and sounds better."[1]

[1] https://www.audioasylum.com/messages/pcaudio/119979/

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lmc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> My favourite: "audiophile-grade" audio players which allocate a single contignuous buffer of RAM into which they load/decode the whole .WAV/.FLAC file, because supposedly the CPU "jumping" between "fragmented memory" causes audible "jitter".

Thanks for the laugh... this is absolutely bonkers. In case anyone is wondering, before sound hits our ears it has to go through a digital to analog conversion, which takes place on hardware independent of the CPU, operating with its own clock and buffers etc.

	▲	justsomehnguy an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Am486DX/100 was enough to decode and listen an MP3 at 22KHz (and maybe mono?) and was more than enough to listen for 44/16/2 PCM. It's 31 y.o. today.
	▲	wat10000 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In addition to that, while it is possible to hit a delay and run out of buffer because memory access is slow (the most obvious would be if the input got swapped to disk at an inopportune moment), but the audible effect is really obvious. This isn't some subtle "oh my music sounds ineffably worse" effect, it's "my computer is glitching and my music is unlistenable."

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billyjobob an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can tell when my CPU usage spikes because it causes a hum through my speakers, so this does not seem that far-fetched.

	▲	justsomehnguy an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It's just means you have a shitty audio tract with not enough shielding. Move to SPDIF/TOSLINK.

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bellowsgulch 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The latter is probably true, but the former does actually happen, and it's easy to accidentally do--lossless or not.