Phil Leigh;312135 Wrote: > Remember, this is all about clock-recovery /jitter (there is no other > factor that can affect quality - the bits are correct) I beg to differ. There are THREE things I can think of which could affect the quality when feeding a digital signal to an external DAC:
1. The bits. We know that these are routinely 100% correct. 2. Timing jitter. Obviously a possible factor, but: (i) most modern DACs have pretty good reclocking; and (ii) studies have demonstrated that on music signals the effects of jitter are inaudible at levels vastly higher than the jitter from pretty much all modern digital sources. 3. Noise emanating from the digital source (either airborne as EMI or down the SPDIF cable) getting into the analogue circuitry of the DAC. My money is strongly on #3 as the most likely reason that digital sources might sound different when feeding the same DAC. We know for example that the Squeezebox has pretty low jitter, but its stock wall wart PSU sprays all sorts of nasty RFI around. -- cliveb Transporter -> ATC SCM100A ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=48900 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
