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To what degree is jitter audible? - Page 2

post #16 of 32
12/11/09 at 5:02pm
Two chief engineers of well-known mfr companies, I know, differ on this subject radically. Both are at the top of their field. Both spend large amounts of effort and money dealing, and not dealing, with jitter.

And they both talk like they were the last word on the subject. Why should we worry when there are people like them who will do it for us?
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post #17 of 32
12/17/09 at 5:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Punnisher
Quick question:

Why is jitter even an issue? Couldn't the device simply cache the data for a short time to negate the effects of even severe jitter? Some kind of buffer I suppose.
You can lock onto the master clock of the digital signal, this is important in the recording audio world but for home use and with only one digital connection and one DAC stage it is irrelevant.
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post #18 of 32
1/10/10 at 7:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Punnisher View Post
Quick question:

Why is jitter even an issue? Couldn't the device simply cache the data for a short time to negate the effects of even severe jitter? Some kind of buffer I suppose.
For this purpose, in principle, I use a battery powered, solidstate drive netbook. Setup with digital caching to RAM before being accessed to cpu. I believe this setup should compete reasonably to an audiophile grade transport. I think PS audio has one in pinciple but its expensive.
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post #19 of 32
1/21/10 at 1:20pm
is there anyway i can purposefully induce absolutely craptons of jitter into my stream? i mean, if it hurts the music then tons of it will clearly degrade the sound right :P
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post #20 of 32
1/21/10 at 2:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SP Wild View Post
For this purpose, in principle, I use a battery powered, solidstate drive netbook. Setup with digital caching to RAM before being accessed to cpu. I believe this setup should compete reasonably to an audiophile grade transport. I think PS audio has one in pinciple but its expensive.
Do as much caching and other cool stuff on your computer as you want, but the jitter still will come e.g. from the usb controller, the dac ...



Btw, there's already jitter on the recordings, isn't there? So in the end the timing errors should cancel each other out, right?
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post #21 of 32
1/21/10 at 5:43pm
Door no 3 for me.
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post #22 of 32
2/15/10 at 7:24pm
From the personal experience I've had with it(my USB>SPDIF converter supposedly has a good amount of jitter), there's almost no audible effect. If I AB between my CD transport and my computer through the converter, I struggle to hear any difference. I sometimes think I hear a little more extended highs coming from the CD transport, but it could very well be placebo.
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post #23 of 32
2/16/10 at 6:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by googleborg View Post
is there anyway i can purposefully induce absolutely craptons of jitter into my stream? i mean, if it hurts the music then tons of it will clearly degrade the sound right :P
Wouldn't that sound the same as if the CD was skipping?
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post #24 of 32
2/16/10 at 1:58pm
If you take an optical output from your transport or computer and jab the cable into your eye, you can see the jitter. You have to make sure you don't blink at all, or you'll miss it.
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post #25 of 32
2/16/10 at 4:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nick_charles View Post
Door no 3 says, hey relax your bog-standard audio kit has such low jitter anyway it is not worth worrying about, why go looking for problems unless you are obsessional.
Nick is spot on once again.

"Jitter" could be replaced by a number of things - and 'Door #3' should be the door of choice much more often ...
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post #26 of 32
2/16/10 at 4:28pm
Best way to reduce jitter is to rest a bit and have your ear check out.
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post #27 of 32
2/16/10 at 4:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Punnisher View Post
Quick question:

Why is jitter even an issue? Couldn't the device simply cache the data for a short time to negate the effects of even severe jitter? Some kind of buffer I suppose.
It would seem that even a modest buffer would take care of so many "theoretical" problems. But aren't "buffers" in some guise already used, like in skip protection?

Also a buffer would totally dimsiss even the possibility of sonic differences some claim to hear between playback from a lossless format like FLAC and uncompressed wav - as if today's computers aren't fast enough to decode (or it takes so much more processing power to restore the compressed data, as it does to read and convert the uncompressed d/a to an audible degree.....) in a transparent - read inaudible - manner.
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post #28 of 32
2/16/10 at 9:24pm
Not to be a smart ass, but that's why I perfer Vinyl........ I can handle some "WOW and Flutter" Really damn near the same thing!!! When you have a top shelf player with a speed controller and set up properly "Wow and Flutter" is 99% gone..... also.....I can not hear Jitter MORE when I unplug my "Dip" Jitter remover......from inbetween my dac and trans.....in my digital system
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post #29 of 32
2/17/10 at 1:05pm
i am a newbie to audio, but when i heard about jitter it honestly seemed like an excuse for consumers to throw, often, thousands at a problem they don't have a clue about nor any understanding of how it even affects the sound or even if it can affect sound. I certainly don't have a CLUE about it.

I've asked and looked around using google but nobody seems to knows what jitter sounds like, or what effect it has on music.

OCD consumerism yeah.
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post #30 of 32
2/17/10 at 2:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by googleborg View Post
i am a newbie to audio, but when i heard about jitter it honestly seemed like an excuse for consumers to throw, often, thousands at a problem they don't have a clue about nor any understanding of how it even affects the sound or even if it can affect sound. I certainly don't have a CLUE about it.

I've asked and looked around using google but nobody seems to knows what jitter sounds like, or what effect it has on music.

OCD consumerism yeah.
You can't hear the jitter. The jitter will affect the output. What you hear is a distorted sound which jitter already affected. If you heard only the bad transport with poor jitter performance, then that's what you remember as being your reference. Once you get a good transporter + DAC, then you started to notice that you hear things clearer with more depth, etc, etc, etc than before.

With that said though, most DACs have a good jitter correction, so these so-called transport with sub xxx ps performance is mostly marketing, imo.

I heard some nice DACs and poor, and the differences AREN'T night and day difference, TO MY EAR.
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