What does Jitter sound like?

Audioengr,

From either a theoretical or experiential perspective, do you think the phomenenon of speed instability in a turntable is similar to digital jitter?

Shadorne - you are missing the point.

I may have missed something but I think we agree apart from your claim "the positions of the pits in the CD are a form of timing information that can cause jitter as they are read", which is incorrect.

My point was that there is no jitter added or lost by copying CD-R's many times (provided everything remains in the digital domain). The same is true for digital processing - it adds no jitter. ONLY a jittery clock or jittery signal makes jitter. If A CD-R somehow makes life easier for a CD player such that somehow the CD players clock runs less jittery then it will play with less jitter (but this may linked to how warped the CD is or how well centered the hole in the CD rather than "timing from pit spacing", IMHO)

Stereophile test CD # 2 contains an example of jitter. Based on that example, jitter is very, very bad and you don't want it! One would have to wonder if that might not be the largest contributer to listener fatigue in digital systems. Dgarretson's first post above is an apt description of what you hear in the test CD example.

Dgarretson - Wow and flutter exhibit the same results as jitter, frequency modulation, so the answer is yes, although some jitter occurs at rates and changes in ways that a turntable could not physically do.

Steve N.

"My point was that there is no jitter added or lost by copying CD-R's many times (provided everything remains in the digital domain). The same is true for digital processing - it adds no jitter. ONLY a jittery clock or jittery signal makes jitter."

I agree with all of this. However, inaccuracies in the pit locations on the CD or CD-R contribute to the PLL clock jitter in the CD player. This has been demonstrated thousands of times. There were even several products that re-wrote CD's to get improved pit placement. They work with every CD player I have tried.

Steve N.