I have been confused on the subject of jitter for a while and recently came across some answers that i though i would post here in case it helps others (or maybe everyone knows this already). If i am wrong let me know!
There are two types of jitter the Squeezebox users should be aware of: (1) Jitter introduced to the CD when it is ripped due to errors in the digital audio extraction. You can hear this clearly as clicks in the playback. Programs like EAC and dBpoweramp should remove jitter to some extent and will report it back to you as checksum errors in the rip. (2) Jitter introduced by the SPDIF cable when you attach your Squeezebox to an external DAC. I recently bought a 1995 DAP Little Bit Dac and connected it to my squeezebox but found the playback quality much lower than my modern Yamaha CDR-HD1500 hard-drive / CD player. Inside the music I could hear faults, added confused complexity that was clearly incorrect. A more modern DAC I bought didn't have this problem. from: http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/825/index.html > The standalone digital/analog converter emerged as a product category in > 1987 with the appearance of the Arcam Black Box and the Marantz CDA-94, > closely followed by the PS Audio Link. The idea was that putting the > sensitive D/A-conversion and analog stages in a separate enclosure with > its own power supply would maximize the sound quality when compared with > packing these circuits in the same box as the transport. However, it > turned out that the routing of the digital data between transport and > processor in the form of an S/PDIF- or AES/EBU-encoded bitstream could > introduce word-clock jitterwhich undid much of the sonic advantages > (See this for more: > http://www.stereophile.com/features/396bits/index.html). By 1997 jitter reduction technology (Digital Signal Processing Techniques) overcame many of the limitations of SPDIF input. However, advances in CD DACs made it extremely difficult for external DACs to outperform quality CD Players and today the external DAC market is quite small. -- willyhoops ------------------------------------------------------------------------ willyhoops's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10563 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35261 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
