DAC's : The missing feature: Signal quality


One thing I wish DAC's would provide is some idea of how much jitter and noise a particular input provides. This is something which I think with a little work could be gleaned from the input circuits.

I want something that tells me "woah, that's a really dirty signal coming in, but i"ll do the best I can with it."

One common source of noise is ground loops. Another may be high jitter from a source like Apple TV. This would also help us evaluate the benefits (if any) of various signal cleaners and reclockers.

Best,
E
erik_squires
Erik:
I always like that you are thoughtful about our hobby and I conceptually like your idea. If a DAC sounded exceptional to me, and it had this feature, and it could be demonstrated to make a difference by allowing the user to rationally react to it, then I would consider it a value add that might affect my purchasing decision. But, it probably wouldn't be a major reason to buy a DAC (for me) and might not survive a company's internal cost benefit analysis, if I am DAC manufacturers' target audience (I'm a 50 something male passionate about audio that owns or has owned more than 6 DAC or CD players in the last 5 years.) As a former R&D guy in an unrelated field, I've seen forwarding thinking ideas die many times because a company didn't think there was an increase in profitability attached to the concept.
Regards
Al     
thank you @astewart8944 - Like I was thinking, maybe this is better as an external gadget.

To put this another way, most of us have no way to tell if a digital source is very poor, mediocre, or great. I'd like a little gadget that could tell me.

Best,
E
DAC's isolate jitter maybe they could have something that lets you know how much jitter they isolated from the incoming stream before sent to the reclocker. If it only added $10 or $20 to the cost might be an interesting doodad to watch .
All DAC's attempt to isolate themselves from jitter, ground loop and noise and do so with relatively different levels of success.

I think given the drop in processing power, cost of excellent clocks and DAC chips, maybe this can take over after everyone is done with MQA. :)

Best,
E