Holographic imaging

You think great DACs are realtively immune to the transport use? And if so, is that a recent development? Seems like a while back, the transport was viewed as being just as important. In a review of my Accustic Arts DAC, the reviewer found that whatever source he used with it seem to have little effect - he was sure the compoany did not want to hear as they sell a fairly expensive transport as well (that I happen to own). I always naively[?] felt thgat a good DAC should be able to deal with whatever jitter the source might present; maybe we are there.

Pubul57,

This is getting a bit off topic, but...

What jitter sounds like, if present, and whether it matters to an extent that is significant is a very nebulous thing still to me.

I think the only way to conclusively know how two different digital sources sound through a particular DAC and whether there is a difference that matters, is to compare and listen and share your findings.

Listen with a reference source first then another source for comparison and see if a difference can be detected.

So far, in my case both Denon player and Roku Soundbridge sound more alike than different running through the same DAC. Both sound way different and I think better as well to me now running through the tubed DAC than they did running through their own built in native DACS prior. Also prior, through each units own internal DAC, each sounded very different, particularly in regard to dynamics.

You think great DACs are realtively immune to the transport use? I always naively[?] felt thgat a good DAC should be able to deal with whatever jitter the source might present; maybe we are there

Interesting question - I wonder what experts think?

I suspect some DAC's are becoming relatively immune to digital source and jitter. Clocks and algorithms continue to improve so inherent jitter reduction is improving also (we went from PLL to double PLL's to buffering and asynchonous sampling). However not all forms of jitter are the same so the quality of the rejection may vary depending on what the source is creating. Some will reject a greater variety and a greater level of jitter than others so in essence they might sound the same with most transports. Of course some combinations, even older ones, may just happen to work really well, as the transport jitter is just the type that the PLL loop can deal with.

An old AES paper showed that certain forms of 20 nanosec jitter were inaudible - this is a huge amount by modern standards - so if people hear jitter artifacts then it may not even be an issue of "how much jitter" at all but a more sinister issue of "what type of jitter". If you consider source music and jitter may be related to eachother (IMD) then there are probably an infinite number of combinations. Added variables are that one may not be able to hear it, or your speakers may hide/mask it, or the track may be hypercompressed (other distortion dominates), or the track was recorded with a jittery A to D in the first place (so nothing can fix it)

I suspect we are way closer to jitter immmunity to the point of inaudibility than we were in the 80's and even the 90's. I wonder what others think - Are we really there?

I don't know if we're there yet categorically but I am of the opinion that there is no good technical reason I know of why it should be a big problem these days.

My ears may not be the gold standard, but in general I am not hearing sound issues with digital sources that I can clearly attribute to jitter.

Poor or at least flawed recordings seem to be the culprit in most every case where I hear clear deficiencies IMO, and this has been getting better over time as well.

>>Running my $180 Oppo through my Playback Design MPS-5's DAC makes the Oppo sound better than an Emm,<<

Right.

And putting a set of Corvette tires on your Ford Pinto makes it handle like a Porsche.

LOL