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Jitter Correlation to Audibility

Jun 24, 2013 at 3:39 PM Post #61 of 361
I kind of wonder how different people listen to music, what they focus on.

What I'd think are the most key aspects: pitch, rhythm, tonal relationships (between simultaneous sounds), progression of lines, dynamics, etc. are almost entirely not affected by audio system fidelity. Problems with fidelity are mostly manifested by uneven or otherwise shifted tonal balance and then maybe the timbre of sounds and low details (noise floor, distortion products) around the edges, so to speak. Not that those aren't important either, but are those the main focus?

That said, as far as I can tell, audiophiles have repurposed some terms like rhythm and dynamics. Either that, or... actually, I don't even know what people are talking about sometimes.

But I'm not going to fault somebody for wanting to improve the sound they get. If you don't have to be distracted by something sounding off, then good. I personally wouldn't recommend hunting for things to be upset over, but that's just me.
 
Jun 24, 2013 at 7:40 PM Post #62 of 361
Quote:
mikeaj said:
But I'm not going to fault somebody for wanting to improve the sound they get. If you don't have to be distracted by something sounding off, then good. I personally wouldn't recommend hunting for things to be upset over, but that's just me.
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Shouldn't there be something sounding off in the first place before I get distracted?  I'm one of those folks who think modern gear, even at reasonable prices, can be silly good compared to what people used to enjoy and brag about.  Yet for some it still brings no enjoyment.  I get irked by people with perfectly good systems being told there is something wrong with it but the problems can be cured by purchasing additional gear that no one can actually demonstrate does anything audible at all.  "Trust your ears!"  I agree with you and the others who note that listening for problems sort of defeats the point listening to your music in the first place.  I just think that with modern equipment, at some point (and sooner than most audiophiles would suspect) your electronics are good enough and that the only meaningful change you'll be able to make to the sound in your room is by altering your transducers and your room acoustics.     
 
Jun 24, 2013 at 7:52 PM Post #63 of 361
100%

Randomly swapping progressively more expensive equipment in isn't going to get you anywhere. Before you can correct a problem, you have to identify it. Too many people just go shopping for "something better" with no idea in their head about what's wrong with their system.

I see a TON of equipment churning at Head-Fi. People replacing DACs with more expensive DACs for no reason, multiple headphone amps, etc. None of that gets them anywhere but broke.
 
Jun 24, 2013 at 9:31 PM Post #64 of 361
Quote:
bigshot said:
100%

Randomly swapping progressively more expensive equipment in isn't going to get you anywhere. Before you can correct a problem, you have to identify it. Too many people just go shopping for "something better" with no idea in their head about what's wrong with their system.

I see a TON of equipment churning at Head-Fi. People replacing DACs with more expensive DACs for no reason, multiple headphone amps, etc. None of that gets them anywhere but broke.
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Very true, words of wisdom.
 
Jun 24, 2013 at 9:47 PM Post #65 of 361
Oh, people have "ideas in their heads about what's wrong", all right. Just maybe not the right ideas. And often not the right solutions.

Though really, what's wrong may frequently be more along the lines of (1) hey, the music isn't to your tastes, (2) hey, the recording kind of sucks, or (3) hm, need to relax and optionally down some of your preferred drink.
 
Jun 24, 2013 at 10:15 PM Post #66 of 361
I think most people subscribe to the theory that more expensive = better. It's very hard to convince them otherwise because they aren't willing to do the legwork to verify for themselves what is better and what isn't. It's an act of faith for them. Faith in the long green dollah!
 
Jun 24, 2013 at 10:24 PM Post #67 of 361
I meant no disrespect to you, mikeaj.  I was just trying to point out that sometimes folks get so twisted around the idea that they might be missing something that they forget to pay attention to what is right in front of them.  I agree with you: people do have "ideas in their heads" but those ideas have no effect on the actual pressure waves in the room.  Different ideas may make different people respond differently to the pressure waves, but the pressure waves themselves are indifferent to what people think about them.  A lot of the problems with audiophilia arise from the conflation of these two issues: what is going on in our minds and what is going on in our rooms.  They are two separate issues but people keep behaving as if they are one and the same.  I'll agree that our minds can change what we "hear," or how it "sounds," but our minds cannot change the pressure waves coming out of our transducers. 
 
 
Jun 24, 2013 at 11:01 PM Post #68 of 361
bigshot said:
I think most people subscribe to the theory that more expensive = better. It's very hard to convince them otherwise because they aren't willing to do the legwork to verify for themselves what is better and what isn't. It's an act of faith for them. Faith in the long green dollah!
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I don't want to guess too much, but I'm not so certain that it's about more money. A lot of people seem to think that certain products are relatively good deals (value for money) and others are not, and so on. In some eyes, the existence of a market and products gives credibility to their importance. I think it's more like BlindInOneEar said: a confusion of perception and reality. The sound waves produced are just one factor that influences perception. There's too much taking one's perceptions and others and then inferring too much from what information is available.

Big contributing problems include high time lapse between A/B comparisons and lack of level matching... not to mention everything else.


blindinoneear said:
I meant no disrespect to you, mikeaj.  I was just trying to point out that sometimes folks get so twisted around the idea that they might be missing something that they forget to pay attention to what is right in front of them.  I agree with you: people do have "ideas in their heads" but those ideas have no effect on the actual pressure waves in the room.  Different ideas may make different people respond differently to the pressure waves, but the pressure waves themselves are indifferent to what people think about them.  A lot of the problems with audiophilia arise from the conflation of these two issues: what is going on in our minds and what is going on in our rooms.  They are two separate issues but people keep behaving as if they are one and the same.  I'll agree that our minds can change what we "hear," or how it "sounds," but our minds cannot change the pressure waves coming out of our transducers. 
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Hm, I'm not sure if we're having the same conversation here if you have the impression that I'm disagreeing with you! (sorry for the confusion: I mostly meant things sounding off in a general sense, outside the context of this topic... which was supposed to be jitter, right?)
 
Jun 25, 2013 at 12:13 AM Post #69 of 361
I always rack a new piece of gear up right next to the old one, A/B level matched. That tells me exactly what I'm getting.
 
Jun 25, 2013 at 2:28 AM Post #70 of 361
Quote:
mikeaj said:
I kind of wonder how different people listen to music, what they focus on.
Click to expand...

 
I'm deaf, actually, and only keep headphones around out of my penchant for luxury earmuffs. I like to pretend like I'm listening to music so I collect 12" LPs for their large album art; soft electroluminescent cables for their aesthetic appeal; and lots of unwieldy boxes bereft of opamps and biased heavily into class A because I live in the frigid vastness of Minnesota. I select DACs based on their monolithic appearance and grade of anodization, for when I pretend to listen I often need a proper coaster for my many beer steins. I'm also very punctual, so good jitter rejection is a must. I can't have my DAC lagging behind my limited edition solid silver liquid helium cooled Rolex atomic wristwatch.
 
I guess the best answer is that when I "listen" I focus most on my superior taste.
 
Many engineers agree with me on this.
 
Jun 25, 2013 at 3:57 AM Post #71 of 361
Quote:
blindinoneear said:
All this fussing over whether jitter might be causing a problem instead of just enjoying your music!   It's kind of like being so worried that there might be a monster under the bed that you end up forgetting all about that rather attractive person in bed with you. 
 
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If there were trace amounts of asbestos dust in the air in your bedroom and scientists said asbestos is perfectly safe and some snake-oil guy was offering an air purifier for $150 to remove inconsequential asbestos dust some people would buy it etc.
 
Jun 25, 2013 at 4:04 AM Post #72 of 361
Quote:
blindinoneear said:
Shouldn't there be something sounding off in the first place before I get distracted?  I'm one of those folks who think modern gear, even at reasonable prices, can be silly good compared to what people used to enjoy and brag about.  Yet for some it still brings no enjoyment.
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Modern equipment has digital sheen in it.  You need to go backwards to older chips or use flagship stuff like AK4399 to achieve analog sound.  The effect is minimal but when you've listened to digital sheen for over 10 years it starts to get annoying.
 
Jun 25, 2013 at 11:12 AM Post #74 of 361
Quote:
stv014 said:
 
Simulated version:
 

10 pairs of sidebands are included. The noise component is probably not accurate, especially since the FFT size used by Stereophile is not known. The jitter level is ~70-80 ns (peak to peak), most of which is low frequency noise. So, it should be bad enough.
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Okay since nobody else wants to do this here is 26 seconds of a track to jitterize 
size]

 
http://www.divshare.com/download/24249571-638
 
  
 

 
Jun 25, 2013 at 1:23 PM Post #75 of 361
With jitter:
Range_j1.flac (edit: renamed file to avoid confusion with newer version)
Range_j2.flac
Both files have jitter added, but the second one has more. The sample might not make it the easiest to hear any jitter, so I increased the magnitude of the sidebands by 10 times, and the modulation frequency by a factor of 2. In the second file, all jitter is further amplified by a factor of 10.
 
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