two possibilities: 1) actual corruption of the bitstream, 2) jitter -- i.e. 1) are the bits being changed en-route? 2) are the right bits getting to the DAC, but not at the right time?
to test for bitstream corruption, take a DTS encoded audio disc (e.g., the moodys blues "days of future past") and rip one track to a WAV file, just like you'd rip a normal CD track to a WAV file. play that thru the squeezebox, and run the S/PDIF output from the squeezebox to an A/V receiver that recognizes a DTS bitstream. WARNING - TURN THE VOLUME CONTROL WAY DOWN FIRST!!! if you get a correctly decode DTS bitstream, you'll hear music, and can conclude that the bitstream is intact. if you get white noise at a loud level (which is why you must turn the volumn down first), somewhere along the way the bits are being changed. in my experience, any change to them will be audible as degradation, usually a a muddying quality, felt most as adding edginess to the treble. but if the bits are intact, it would be down to jitter. a jitter reducer (like the monarch DIP classic) can be beneficial to clean things up, because it re-clocks the bitstream prior to sending it to the DAC. also, different digital interconnect cables can effect jitter. and the RCA S/PDIF output will likely have lower jitter than the toslink output. hope that helps... -- apeman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ apeman's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=13533 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=39113 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
