[DC5Zilla]

Hello fellow head-fiers! I joined this board back in March and I've started to notice the meaning of "sorry for your wallet" quote. Ever since becoming a membership here, I have bought HD800, DNA Sonett, Pico DAC, and APS V3 balanced cable and RCA interconnect. Roughly about $3,400 in total

Although I have zero regret about the purchasing, the jitter thats coming from my gear is quite irritating. I'm almost 100% sure that the jitter is coming from my USB/PC because plugging usb cord into different usb outlet makes different result.. So far, I've found out that my third usb outlet have the cleanest output. But I still get heavy jitter whenever I use my keyboard. Is there anyway I can reduce the jitter? Or do I have to buy another DAC?

This is my current setup btw

HP Desktop > Foobar/WASAPI > USB > Pico DAC > APS RCA Interconnect > DNA Sonett > Balanced APS V3 Cable > Sennheiser HD800

 

[Effusion]

Interesting situation...

I've never experienced jitter through my USB ports, but I will be the first to say that the sound difference between using my Optical or Coaxial compared to USB is significant; I've always thought it was the implementation of my DAC's USB input, but the verdict is still out...

My understanding is that USB devices are always slaves in the chain, meaning that they don't have a choice when receiving bits and use a Phase-Locked Loop or PLL to estimate the master clock of your computer.

Shooting in the dark, but have you tried updating your USB drivers?

Sounds like they could be the culprit... Have you tried using the Pico with a different computer's USB ports?

 

[anetode]

As per Effusion, try some troubleshooting first. What's wrong with the sound and why do you think it is related to jitter?

 

[Uncle Erik]

Are you sure you have jitter? That was recognized and stamped out years ago. Just what is your system doing?

 

[DC5Zilla]

Maybe I misused the terminology... What I'm hearing is whenever I use keyboard, the music rapidly pauses along with some kind of buzzing sound. It happens only when I "type" and the music plays back again once I stop typing.

 

[m1abrams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DC5Zilla /img/forum/go_quote.gif Maybe I misused the terminology... What I'm hearing is whenever I use keyboard, the music rapidly pauses along with some kind of buzzing sound. It happens only when I "type" and the music plays back again once I stop typing.

That is not jitter as far as most people use the term here. That I would call "stuttering" and is most likely a driver issue or possibly a hardware issue with the computer. Have you tried a different computer?

 

[atothex]

That's not jitter, homey. Your computer is just messed up.

 

[Anonanimal]

I'm going to agree with the suggestions to try and update your USB drivers.

 

[tosehee]

You could also buy a stand alone usb board and try from there.

 

[DC5Zilla]

Thanks for the advice guys!! Though it sucks to hear that my computer is a bit messed up since I've bought it about 2 weeks ago. I will try to update the driver but is there anhy recommendation for the stand alone usb board?

 

[linuxworks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by atothex /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's not jitter, homey. Your computer is just messed up.

lol!!

correct, that is not jitter. its bad usb.

drivers, usb chipset, corrupt windows install, viruses, driver conflict, irq/interrupt issues. all or some of those.

I have a similar situation but even stranger

on an 'unusual' system I have (via epia mini-itx) the usb drivers really suck on xp; yet the same pc when booted with linux works 100%. clearly windows has usb driver issues with my chipset. nothing fixed it. I just wrote it off as a not-very-well-deployed chipset as far as windows was concerned.

if you are set on having that pc do audio, you may just want to give up with usb and install a pci (etc) sound card.

you can also try installing a pci usb card. diff chipset, diff pci slot and diff driver could help.

 

[rjoseph]

Its caused by the usb port. I had the same issue and bought one of these Newegg.com - Koutech PCI to USB2.0 Card Model IO-PU520 - Add-On Cards and the problem disappeared.

 

[Pricklely Peete]

Get yourself a PCI sound card using the latest Creative based chip, for example the Auzentech Prelude which will give you SPDIF COAX and TOSlink optical as options from the same jack (a standard size RCA). I have this card and use it strictly as a transport to feed my outboard DAC.

It does a great job for an under 200US solution. It's also a good gaming and HT/Movie card FWIW.

Peete.

 

[linuxworks]

I would advise *underspending* on the pci sound card

cmedia 8738 or 8768 (more current, same basic driver) is a good bang for the buck. typically $20 or $30 for the card, if even that. if you can find an old envy24 card, even better.

creative can suck. they often force resamping on their mid and lower end cards. I don't ever advise going creative brand unless you really know the card is bit-perfect.

avoid things that say 'gaming'. you really don't want that for audio. its 'engine' stuff that really adds no value and actually could detract from the audio-only job we need it to do

 

[Pricklely Peete]

That is why I said to get latest Creative card linuxworks since it is indeed bit perfect and does not resample the signal like the E-MU based cards did before it.

Peete.