BMXTRIX said:
Yup: I understood exactly what you meant [...]
Meh - good luck on a serious answer - I've never found one.
Finally a delightfully clueful answer
. Thanks a lot for the input (even if disappointing).
As you can also read btw the lines above, I'm very computer centric myself ("anal" about "specs" comes w/o saying).
However, after a bit of thinking (for a change ...
) I came up to the realization that the sorry state of things pretty much makes sense. Not that it is acceptable, just (pitifully) understandable. IMHO it all boils down to this:
While in the "computer world" "we" are used to demand specs, standard compliance, internal components, chipsets, schematics -- the works -- it doesn't seem to happen that much in the "electronic consumer world" for a very simple reason: we are talking "consumers" i.e. "folks" that are extremly confused by "well, my panasonic camcorder has firewire, my canon camcorder has firewire, why doesn't it `just work` between them ?"
Case in point:
When buying a PCI Firewire interface card for the 'puter, "we" are used to check things like chipset, OHCI compliance, buffers, etc, etc. If you want to go over the top you can even ask for a __schematic__ for the internals (if you have who, and a chance/hope you will get it)
OTOH can you say the same about an A/V receiver ? Can you please tell me e.g. which exact Silicon Image PanelLink chipset is used for the HDMI interface on the Denon 4806 ? Or the chipset for the Firewire port ? Or (*gasp* !!) the schematics for this ports ? Or the data processing stages for these ports, with up/downsampling from/to which format, etc, etc ?
Well, you got the point. While the above "we" vs "consumers" is grossly exagerated (I hope it doesn't sound too "smartass") I can understand (but not accept) the sorry state of things in the "consumer electronics world". Especially for the mid/high end devices. However, since more an more products start coming with "advanced" digital feats, I think it's inevitable that this kind of questions will start showing up more and more.
In the mean time we have to settle for things like "marantz receivers sound a bit more mellow than their yamaha counterparts..."
'Nuff tongue-in-cheek. Thanks for the answer. Needless to say, if you/anybody get any more related infos, I would highly appreciate.