Robin Bowes wrote:
Jitter does not fall into the same category as other "snake-oil" audiophile accessories - it is a well-defined and relatively well-understood engineering phenomenon. Suggesting otherwise is rather disingenous. Believe it, it exists, and can be easily demonstrated.
I didn't say that jitter doesn't exist. I could demonstrate what it sounds like in large amounts by writing some software to intentionally jitter PCM data. And I can certainly see some jitter on real signals with a scope that has its horizontal sweep rate turned all the way up.
But that's not the question here. The question is whether the level of jitter found in ordinary digital audio equipment is so large that it can *actually be detected by the human ear*. I've seen no proper scientific evidence that this is so; just a lot of laudatory anecdotal testimonials about a high priced gizmo that will solve this "problem". Given that similar glowing testimonials have been written about everything from magic speaker wire to to small passive devices you put near your speakers to rings that you place on your CDs, please forgive me if I don't find such testimonials very convincing.
One thing I will say is that the effects of jitter can be very subtle, only noticeable in relatively high-end equipment, i.e. the inadequacies of run-of-the-mill hifi equipment will mask any jitter-induced problems.
Ah, another one of Langmuir's classic signs of pathological science: the "effect" in question is extremely small and always at the limits of detection no matter how many experiments are run. See http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/Langmuir/langmuir.htm
--Phil _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
