Do I have to use a streamer/renderer to play music from an NAS?

As I noted in an earlier post:

I was under the impression that jitter was handled by “modern” DACs or by using an external master clock.

I'm really trying to understand "jitter" and it's impact on streamed music.  I use the following components for streaming:

NAD M12 preamplifier/DAC w/BluOS MDC (I don't use it's DAC)
NAD M22 v2 power amplifier
sonicTransporter i7 for Roon DSP (no storage)
Innuos Zenith MKII media server
Mytek Liberty DAC

My Roon setup is Wireworld Cat7 Ethernet from a wall jack to a 5-port switch

• sonicTransporter and Zenith are plugged into the switch using Wireworld cables
• Zenith is plugged into DAC using a Wireworld USB cable
• DAC is plugged into a NAD using Cardas RCA cables

I could use Ethernet from the Zenith to the M12, eliminating the USB cable.  I like the Mytek DAC better than the M12 DAC, and the Mytek DAC allows me to play native DSD files.

To me and my friends, the SQ is excellent.  In my system, native DSD sounds best; MQA second; and Zenith FLAC files upsampled to DSD 128 last.

If I have a jitter problem, I cannot hear it.  So my question is, how can you tell?

to oldschool1948

Steve has more bench experience with these so I wont even comment on his figures or claims. But I’ll provide a couple of data points that are useful to anyone trying to digest why jitter is worse in A than B.

First, SPDIF and its variants (including AES/EBU and toslink, which are merely physical layer manifestations) have the DAC as the SLAVE to the MASTER clock in the sending device (transport, CD player, adapter, streamer, whatever).

USB and Ethernet are asynchronous. the sender sends bits to a buffer until told to hold on... and the DAC clocks things out on its own, using whatever clock circuitry it has.

Beyond clock specs, we have to deal with detection of that clock, which might be on the lead (cab;e) on the internal bus, whatever. Lead lengths may vary, thresholds for detecting a clock pulse may vary, noise may interfere -- many functions can interfere with timing by small (to us) but large (to the music) amounts. Remember that the entire sample time slot for a 44k signal is 20 mSec (1/44000 sec) - yea simplified for illustration.

I suspect noise is a significant contributor since linear power supplies seem to improve sources in subjective testing and we KNOW (due to error correction) when there are errors and that the base clock was the same. I conclude that this ids also why the same signal over AES is reported to sound better than over Coax. We KNOW that optical toslink has a big jitter component, but the advantage of ground isolation (due to, well, no ground)

G

Oh, a second answer - to your very last question: "how can you tell".
Well, given "one equation (or test) to one unknown" - you need to compare lower to higher jitter.  Otherwise, you are hearing a system. Experience and training may tell you that sound X is related to cause Y, but that's tenuous.

Jitter is often blamed for the digital sound - the hard to define harsh un-naturalness that we've all heard.  I will say that I have been able to compare a CD on a modest transport to the same CD, ripped ALAC, and played back through a MacBook Pro, bitperfect, and a well-thought-of but modestly priced USB--> SPDIF converter. All this thing can do (good anyway) is reduce jitter. The sound was less digital (ok, whatever that means) and more transparent.  While levels were identical (duh) it sounded more dynamic, and more effortlessly so. There was more space between sounds. But it was very clear to all who heard it. It was also very clear when i got a bad feed into it switching back and forth, so that was a bit of a sanity test (sounded like crap, some USB weirdness).

Now this was not a super high end solution either, so there's more to be had. DAC was my "once upon a time it was a MSB Gold Full Nelson" Frankenstein test bed. Also the trusty old Theta that I've had for two decades.

@kumakahn.   But, do I have to have the Cambridge or some other device to just play the digital music from the NAS to start?

Once you store files on your NAS, you can play them using JRiver, iTunes, Logitech Media Server, and if your NAS is powerful enough to run Roon core, you can use Roon.  I'm sure there are other "front-ends" that you can use.

I'm going to PM you.

Of the different software out there to use what do you think is the best? Jriver? Roon? Something else?