[gooberdude]

Thanks!

[DTB300]

Here is some information from another company on Jitter and how they "attack" it.

http://www.customanalogue.com/terra_firma.htm

[ultrafi]

Other than some providing some useful linkage, no one other than Richidoo has really addressed the question presented.  Allow me to expand on what Richidoo said and perhaps provide a bit of another perspective.

Think of jitter kind of like smoke filling the room - uniformly (I'll come back to this uniformly in a minute).  You can see and tell everything is still there; but, you can't pick it out in fine detail.  The amount of jitter is proportional to the amount of smoke.

Now, rather than uniformly, imagine that the smoke flows in bottom of the room and builds upward.  Not unlike on of those cheesy smoke machines you saw at a Kiss concert as a kid - but not anywhere near that much smoke. The density of the smoke vertically is now also proportional to frequency.

The density of the smoke is proportional to the amount of jitter in the system, again, as I said above.

Now, at today's levels of jitter, we ain't talking' 'bout dense smoke by any means, it's just a little, little bit misty.  Kinda of a little bad vacuum tubby, warm, syrupy....

Which brings me to a point.  Imagine you have a system that is a little bit on the bright side.  Said another way, let's says maybe you didn't spend big bucks or haven't really developed your system well yet.  Or, it just has a few problems that you're aware of.  Some things are jumping out at you and are a bit abrasive.

A little dose of jitter may not be such a bad things in terms of system balance.  Who knows?  After all, we've all heard systems that were a bit too resolving and hard to listen too.

I have an extremely low jitter reference here at Ultra Fi.  And, when I'm doing DAC design, I think about the above analogy.  And, naturally I compare any and all DAC designs with and without this low jitter input reference as a benchmark.

Many times, what happens or what I'll do is, I'll listen to the balance of the DAC with receivers having various amounts of jitter and then go back and tweak the DAC so that it sounds right with a receiver that has a little more jitter.  Extremely low jitter receivers, and more so clocks particularly, cost money and not everyone wants to pay for that.  Heck, some don't need to based on what I hear in their systems.

To me, the low jitter scare is a bit overblown and in my estimation, doesn't apply equally well to everyone and all systems.

YMMV, just some food for thought and another perspective. 

[rbbert]

A friend of mine in chicago owns a small recording studio & went to college to be a recording engineer.  His senior year thesis paper was on jitter.  15 years ago if not longer.

Why has it taken so long to be addressed?

It's been a major topic in the audiophile arena for at least that long.  The fall from popularity of the separate DAC in the first years of this century was a result, but now with computer audio / music servers becoming more common, the separate DAC is returning.  The high jitter of most early USB receivers brought the jitter issue back into focus as well.

[Quiet Earth]

It's been a major topic in the audiophile arena for at least that long.

I think Audio Alchemy (and Stereophile) delivered the concept of jitter reduction to the audiophile masses back in the early '90's. Audio Alchemy's Digital Transmission Interface (or DTI) was the beginning of a entire genre of jitter immune DACs and processors.

[amblin]

Mmm, it's like one jiggling one's head so vigorously and rapidly that can be counted in hertz while one is hearing music.  We all know jitter is there, as well as we all know that we'll never be able to keep our heads perfectly still while listening music. It's a problem , but anyways.

[neekomax]

Mmm, it's like one jiggling one's head so vigorously and rapidly that can be counted in hertz while one is hearing music.  We all know jitter is there, as well as we all know that we'll never be able to keep our heads perfectly still while listening music. It's a problem , but anyways.

a-HA! Now I get it! 

[DTB300]

a-HA! Now I get it! 

The biggest issue is one does not know how jitter and clocking affect the sound in your rig until you change things to address jitter and clocking.

Description of improvement have included, but not limited to, "digititis" no more, better sound stage (front/back & side), more detail but not harsh, improvement in frequency extensions, each instrument better deinfed, etc. etc. etc.

A new clock (which addresses jitter), a new output stage (no OpAmps) and excellent power conditioning really helped my playback quality.

[Big Red Machine]

What does it sound like? I'm assuming I have it because my equipment isn't at the level that it has anti-jitter technology. Anyone reduced jitter in their system and can say what the difference in sound it made?

I am glad you asked this question.   I like this question and discussion and now have something else to be paranoid about!!

Wayne, anything done to the EE dac to reduce jitter in your mods?

[richidoo]

The EE Minimax DAC uses the ESS Sabre32 9018 D/A chip, which eliminates jitter internally, so you're all set BRM!

The Digital Lense was available to audiophiles in 1995.  My friend still uses his with excellent results.
http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/824/

[Big Red Machine]

The EE Minimax DAC uses the ESS Sabre32 9018 D/A chip, which eliminates jitter internally, so you're all set BRM!

The Digital Lense was available to audiophiles in 1995.  My friend still uses his with excellent results.
http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/824/

Cool!

A Lens just sold on Agon as I looked at it last night with an asking price of $600.

[amblin]

a-HA! Now I get it! 

  i admit i was more on the joke side.

Indeed jitter can become a problem, just like ultrafi said, a 'mist'.

Jitter happens in the digital domain, it's NOT a consistant sinewave which can easily be heard.  And in good quality, well designed CDP and DACs,  things in the digital domain will either be re-clocked in the buffer and/or have the clock signal sampled out and stabilized with the PLL in the DA processors. So, jitter will be supressed to a very low level, say <200ps unless the designer was really the 'it'll do, let's have a cookie' kind of person like me... So at a level below 200ps in the digital domain, it most likely will not produce measurable effects in the analogue domain.   This is not the zillion dollar 'if-you-see-i'll-have-to-kill-you' kind of stuff only the egg heads in NASA or skunk works can access, it's as common to CDP and DACS as ABS/EBD/ESP to modern cars.

So, IMO, jitter is one of the lesser problems we encounter, the kind of 'little' things which can become very exaggerated and ugly if you are 'too serious'.  But if you have the extra bucks and your source gears can support it, get a seperate clock, the reason is simple and you probably already heard it a million times :' small things build up' . A good quality seperate clock  shouldn't cost too much unless you are looking at those made by dCS.

[decal]

Jitter sounds terrible, as this clip will attest to!!!