Scientific reasoning.... especially when applied without taking into second order effects often yield incorrect conclusions. That is why all 'Theories .... no mater how scientifically 'thorougher" need to be verified with actual experiments and observations.
I am list a few such erroneous conclusions:
1. Since Digital Data Consists simply of On & off ( Yes or No ), hence:
a. Data sent Must be the same as data received.
( That would imply: All transmission is perfect. There are no transmission errors, there is no jitter during transmission !)
b. A compressed File, when stored, transmitted and decompressed must be a Bit perfect copy of the original uncompressed file.
( This would imply that there are no errors in the compression and decompression process. Also there are no errors during storage, transmission and retrieval. The storage & transmission medium are perfect .... no drop outs, no noise, just purrr fect !

)
c. Any program can be used to convert FLAC to Wav files. The results will be the same
( I have posted on this, a couple of weeks ago, on this forum
Then ofcourse there is the classic 'scientific' howler:
The Bumble bee is aerodaynamically a very bad shape. Hence it cannot fly.
Ofcourse the bumble bee does not know that .... it just continues to fly.
... ... ...
First, let us deal with the bumble bee argument. This is nothing but smoke from the burning snake oil. It gets in the eyes and stings horribly.
I'm not sure if it is a myth, or if science really did consider the bumble-bee's weight/shape/size ratio impossible for flying. I do know that, until the necessary research on aircraft wing shape was conducted, science did not understand why and how a boat could sail to windward. However, they were very well aware that it could, just as they knew bumble bees fly.
What science didn't understand 150 years ago has nothing whatsoever to do with this.
Science understands the network cable. Science developed, designed, and created the standards for network cables. Improvement is possible
within the realms of networking. That happens and new products, cables, methods get accepted, certified and made available. In other words...
That is why all 'Theories .... no mater how scientifically 'thorougher" need to be verified with actual experiments and observations.
This happens
for years with these things that are, as I pointed out before, now an essential part of the commercial world. Do you think network cables grow on trees, waiting to be discovered? Bumble bees, on the other hand...
Now, a couple of erroneous understandings...
Data sent Must be the same as data received.
This has nothing to do with whether it (ok, they

) is ones and zeros. If sent over a reliable system, data received
will be the same. There are different protocols on the internet. Hopefully, when sending music over a LAN we use a reliable one. If not, all bets are off!
A compressed File, when stored, transmitted and decompressed must be a Bit perfect copy of the original uncompressed file.
Yes, it must. If not there is a problem. Actually,
you are supposed to be a part of the system that ensures this, by examining the checksum

hyeah:
Any program can be used to convert FLAC to Wav files. The results will be the same
Smoke screen again, anyway: we are not talking about uncompression of music files, we are talking about LANs. LANS like, as has been mentioned, banks, military, hospitals use. Yes: they are good. You don't think "good" is enough? How many errors do you think Gigabyte ethernet gives you room to correct?
Science has not stopped. Of course it is still trying to explain things, and of course it continues to find it got things wrong, but here, we are not really talking about science, we are talking about off-the-shelf technology.
nobody is going to shock-horror-announce, "Hey, Ethernet doesn't actually work." any more than they are going to announce that a lawn mower doesn't cut grass.
Galileo's stones worked according to the laws of science. So do ethernet cables.
And even if this was all wrong, what you makes you think that some audiophile cable company can come up with something better?
I'm not a scientist, but sat through enough sales and management meetings to recognise good arguments from bad.
That doesn't need blind testing (Hmmm... wait...

)
...That is really not true. there are levels of performance, even amongst cables.
That is why I said "within the same category." Of course the different types of cable/transmission technologies deliver different speeds and maintain reliability over different distances: that is what the whole ethernet evolution is about.
captrajesh said:
I'm not able to understand why there are Cat 5 Cat 6 and Cat 7 cables? Pardon my ignorance, what is the difference.
Just that. They have been evolved to get more data, more reliably, over longer distances. Mowgli80 covers the technical details far better than I am able to.
I do not have much idea on how as complex analogue thing as music comprising of a large number of harmonics is converted to seemingly simple 0s and 1s and converted back to analogue, I'm not so sure.
Then what you are doubting is the principles of digitising music, rather than the principles of networking --- you would not be the only one, but it is a very different discussion.
The crux of the argument here is that networking handles
data as data and it doesn't matter what the data is. There is some room for argument with, say, Firewire, or even USB, because they are dealing in specifically
audio (when used for audio) but ethernet is, categorically, not. If it can't get your music right, then it can't be relied upon to get anything else right! And there is a vast, vast amount of it in the world saying that it can.
He he he Thad, that is going overboard.
:lol: Yes, probably. It takes a better man than me to remain cool in the face of $600 purple flyleads

hyeah:
when I told my cousins that my total system costs 4 odd lakhs, they exclaimed, "don't your neighbours complain! They would've gone deaf by now"
Ha ha... I asked you almost the same question! But not based on the cost of your sytem. Come to think of it: I didn't ask you what your system cost!
The point I want to make is, in the first instance, the measure of car is not the luxury but seating capacity. In the second instance, the measure of music system is the decibel level and not SQ.
But on the internet (nobody can hear you scream

) there is no luxury data, or loud data... just data.
(actually, some of that is not strictly true, and someone like Mowgli80 could probably tell us about techniques that prioritise one kind of content over another (QOS?) and also that,
I think (but I'm far from sure) that something like YouTube probably does not use a reliable protocol, because a probably-invisible-anyway glitch in a cat video is not very important, and the error checking and retransmits would simply increase costs. --- but this is stuff for the techie pedants: your LAN, with certified cables, is working as well as any network in the world. Unless you wind your cables round florescent tubes, in which case the fact that they are purple won't save you.)