Patrick Dixon;372146 Wrote: > I think one of the issues is that there are too many variables between > CDPs, streaming devices and DACs to know that you're listening to > effects of jitter alone. Quite so. People appear to be able to tell the difference between identical bit streams from different transports passing through the same DAC. And therefore many conclude that it has to be jitter, because apart from the sample values the only other conceivable variable is the timing of those samples. But this ignores that the act of listening to a digital signal involves analogue circuitry at some point, which is vulnerable to a variety of external influences (eg. noise on the power lines, RFI, etc). I have a sneaking feeling that the audible differences might be as much to do with how the analgue circuitry gets messed up by the EMI characteristics of connected and/or nearby devices as it is to do with jitter.
Patrick Dixon;372146 Wrote: > But if you want to do this, get hold of an SB3 and a Transporter (or > better still an SB+ since it uses exactly the same streaming side as an > SB3), and compare the same music file through each device, into the same > DAC, and the same audio system, using the same digital cable. Would this be a more revealing experiment?: I think Sean has said on these forums that the Transporter's digital inputs don't bother too much about reclocking their incoming signals. Meanwhile, we also know that the intrinsic internal jitter of the Transporter is very low. So how about hooking up a CD player with known bad jitter on its SPDIF output to a Transporter and compare the same track playing from the CD v. streamed from SqueezeCenter. Get someone else to switch between the two sources while the listener tries to distinguish them (blind, of course). I could try this test if I can find a time when my wife is in a charitable enough mood to humour me and do the switching. Problem is I don't have a clue how bad the jitter is on my DVD player, so if I get a null result it proves nothing. Patrick Dixon;372146 Wrote: > Then any differences you can hear, can only be down to effects of jitter > in the conversion process. Not necessarily - for precisely the reasons I outlined in the first paragraph of this reply. -- 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=56425 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
