SoftwireEngineer wrote: > Looks like the jitter sidebands are way below 100db in most of the DACs. > Does that mean we don't hear jitter at that level or is it some other > distortion/parameters in the DAC that is responsible for the sound other > than jitter ? (there are examples of DAC with high jitter but considered > good sounding). Confusing ..
And therein lies the question! If we confine the issue to jitter, are these (apparent) miniscule picosecond timing anomalies ever audible? IMO, they are not - or at least I personally have not felt they are significant. I can say that using test tones, I can easily detect 10ns simulated sidebands on good equipment (VERY OBVIOUS with my Sennheiser HD800 headphones); but I have run this test with older audiophiles and know for a fact that many cannot tell the difference despite what IMO is obvious to me. At least this suggests to me that my hearing at age 41 isn't too bad afterall ;-) Also, remember that jitter is more problematic in the higher frequencies, so as we get older, in general, our susceptibility to this should diminish. (This is one reason I think it's useful to know something about the reviewers like their age in order to get some sense of their perceptual context). As for equipment - I have run across very expensive gear where I can't discriminate that 10ns simulated test tone anymore. There was an Avantgarde horn speaker system with Airtight tube amp (forgot which CD player) I auditioned 3 years ago which sounded decent on music but was short on resolution and this was one of the effects I noticed. I don't believe this has to do with jitter itself but rather the fact that price isn't a guarantee for "accuracy". If you want to see reviews of CD players which measure badly for jitter, just look at Stereophile's reviews of the AudioNote CD-4.1x or the Zanden 5000MKIV. These have jitter sidebands at ~-95dB or so with clearly >1ns measurements yet the subjective guys seem to give a "thumbs up"! Not surprisingly, the rest of the measurements for these players are IMO crap as well... What seems very rare IMO is a "thumbs down" subjective review of expensive gear where the measurements concur. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Archimago's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2207 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97950 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
