It works like that for every LED. So the data for LED 1536 in a set of 6 ganged 8x32 arrays goes through all 1535 preceding LEDs! It's a miracle it works at all given the amount of stages, you'd expect that at some point there would be some noise but there really isn't, it's rock solid. The 8x32 is arranged such that it's 32 LEDs in one row (or actually, 96+a tiny processor) and then it moves to the next row so they serpentine across the board. Daisychaining multiple board just extends the serpentine further, it's all still one string. That's also why you need to treat odd and even rows a bit different during pixel addressing.

sure, in the led 1536, but the older panels we're talking about were multiplexed, so the data would only have to go through the (shift registers for the) previous leds on the same row

you obviously know a lot more than i do, so maybe i'm missing something, but in either case i wouldn't expect noise or reflections, the signal levels and timing get restored at every shift stage, even low voltage cmos usually has more than a volt of noise margin, the traces are pretty short, and we're talking about longwave to shortwave frequencies, not microwave frequencies

> but the older panels we're talking about were multiplexed, so the data would only have to go through the (shift registers for the) previous leds on the same row

True, but those tend to flicker because of that, they are not on steadily and that robs you of a lot of potential to create shades (and you'd need RGB individually, these WS2812B's are 3 LEDs in a single package).

Each LED decodes, stores and regenerates the signal to preserve integrity, that's why it work, there is about 200 ns lag for every LED that you add to a string.

yup, completely agreed, except isn't it 300ns