Even with perfect square waves there will be jitter in a clock recovery circuit, due to the stochastic nature of the bit stream. Buffering the data and reclocking with a nice stable clock avoids the jitter problem, at the expense of some relatively long term drift in average sample rates to accomodate changes in the data transmission clock rate. If done properly (i.e., large data buffer, low loop bandwidths), then the time constant would be on the order of seconds. A $49 Discman CD player with "skip free" circuitry does this. So does my Levinson 360S. Now we just have to get audio manufacturers to work on the price points in between. :-)
Why do digital cables sound different?
I have been talking to a few e-mail buddies and have a question that isn't being satisfactorily answered this far. So...I'm asking the experts on the forum to pitch in. This has probably been asked before but I can't find any references for it. Can someone explain why one DIGITAL cable (coaxial, BNC, etc.) can sound different than another? There are also similar claims for Toslink. In my mind, we're just trying to move bits from one place to another. Doesn't the digital stream get reconstituted and re-clocked on the receiving end anyway? Please enlighten me and maybe send along some URLs for my edification. Thanks, Dan
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- 291 posts total
- 291 posts total