What does jitter sound like?

[richidoo]

We hear a lot of gibber about jitter these days. Some say jitter is what prevents digital from sounding as good as analog. When digital is right, it's way better than analog, imo. My new amps have made listening to the jittery Sonos much less enjoyable than with the CDP as a source. I assume I am hearing more effects of jitter than I could before.

On previous amps I only noticed a more pronounced high frequencies, a little tizzy. On the new amps, I can hear a general confusion, cluttery sound in the midrange, along with the tizzy highs. It is not tight and clean. The feeling is anxious and distracted. With the CDP serving up the SPDIF everything calms down, cleans up, relaxes. The music becomes razor sharp and incisive. The mood and nuance come through. Same DAC, same cable, just different transport.  Sonos isn't the only jittery player out there.

What does jitter sound like to you?

[stereofool]

Beats me  !

[lonewolfny42]

What does jitter sound like?

Ahhhh.... like John Wayne.......

[Phil]

Rich,

Are you using any power line conditioner?  Just curious, since the jitter I thought I was listening to was electrical noise.  Still trying to reduce electrical noise.  I suppose jitter is what will be remain after all the noise suppression.

[Carlman]

To me jitter is a removal of things... it shifts things around and pokes holes in an overall 'sound'.  So, it doesn't sound 'whole' any more.  That coupled with oversampling creates a swirly, strange digital distortion that smears all the sounds into an annoying buzz.. with fake effects.  Satellite radio is an exagerated example of that effect.. but in our high-end systems more is revealed.
-C

[westcoastman]

This is all becoming very clear to me. It's probably as easy to understand as understanding "string theory".

It may take me a millennium to understand it but still with that vagueness.

[Bob in St. Louis]

What does jitter sound like to you?

It sounds like you're humming while driving over a cobblestone road in a 1975 Corvette. 

Actually, I wouldn't know jitter if it bit me in the ass.
Maybe I've got jitter, maybe I don't. Personally, I'm not sure if I want to know what it sounds like. 'Cause if I do, I might realize I've got it and would have to spend money to fix it.

Ignorance is bliss. 

Bob

[richidoo]

Ignorance is bliss. 

Pure wisdom from the annals of AN.

Curing jitter's gotta be cheaper than going vinyl? 

Actually Phil, you may be onto something there with the power quality. I never thought about "Well, what causes the bits to jitter in the first place?" I was thinking allopathically, "jitter is inevitable, so what will make it go away." Understanding what causes bits to jitter would be valuable. Is it EMI? Vibration? The type of music? Alien signals transmitted at 44.1kHz from deep space superimposed on our music? I think the jitter in my Sonos is partly caused by a multi-voltage SMPS inside that tiny box. Patches of EMI paper taped on tells me they know its a consideration. I hope so anyway, cuz that can be fixed pretty easily by getting the PS away from the logic and audio circuits.

Gasoline for the fire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jitter

[Bob in St. Louis]

Pure wisdom from the annals of AN.

Thanks Rich.
I'm in this because it amuses me.
I find it fun, entertaining and it keeps me out of the nightclubs.
I'm not here to grab the brass ring of audio perfection, as I don't believe it's obtainable (if it even exists). The only way to hear "perfect" music would be to go hear it live.....And then there will be people who critique the sound, as it's being altered in a negative way by the acoustic properties of the concert hall, venue, their seating position, their state of mind or the mood their in.....etc...etc...

To add to the equation;
I'm also a home theater guy. So when it comes to "reproducing sonic accuracy", the day that someone can tell me the proper frequency range and decibel level I should reproduce for when the alien spacecraft emerges from underneath a New York City street.........
I'll just be content with what I've got.

So.... I do the best I can with the finances I have. When the wild hair strikes me, or I feel I'm getting board with what I've got, I'll go build some new speakers.

So again, "What does jitter sound like?"
Not sure. Someday I'll find out and it'll probably piss me off because I'll be able to "hear it" in my system.
Until that day comes, I'll continue to enjoy what I've got. Maybe tweak a little here and there...just for the fun of it.

Carry on men. Sorry for the OT.

Bob

[richidoo]

Your perspective is never OT! "Who cares" is a valid response, and probably a popular one when it comes to jitter. You can still hear the music, so what's the problem? From someone who hears jitter only on one of four sources I can assure you that Ignorance IS bliss. Severe jitter is annoying. Maybe less jitter is less annoying. SB has about 1/3 the measured jitter as Sonos.  I either didn't know any better or didn't hear it, or my system back then when I used SB did not reveal it as well as my current system does.

I think that is part of the reason for resurrection of vinyl. People hear the problems with digital and long for a simple solution. A least with vinyl you know where you stand, and all the solutions are available in many different price ranges. There's no mysterious force like jitter. A mature technology provides a lot of options. Consumer digital is 25 years old. What was consumer vinyl playback like in 1930-40?

But in the spirit of audionervosa (the disease, not the forum) jitter is an interesting topic for those who enjoy pursuing perfection for the fun of it. Digital is the present and future, and jitter remains the bane of sanely priced digital playback.  I don't want to spend thousands of dollars to make it go away, but I don't want to be relegated to used mail order record stores that don't have any new music.

How about a new question?
Who cares about jitter?    Is anyone else aware of it to the degree that you think about finding a reasonably priced solution?

[Bob in St. Louis]

From a serious perspective, there's > a long thread on AC < that will push you into the deep end of the 'jitter pool'. "enter if you dare"....

There's also a good article on > Stereophile < about the subject.

But here's the way this layman understand it: It's that all of those "one's" and "zero's" don't arrive at the same time, or the "accuracy" of their timing has been altered by one component or another. Too many digital components in the chain will make things worse, as each component adds it's own "flaws". The end result (what comes out of your speakers), is inaccuracy. An audible effect that tends to smear what's on the original recording.

Can I hear it? -- Not sure. Like I said eariler, I wouldn't know if it bit me in the ass.
Do I care about it? -- Well.... ...Yea, I do....But I don't want to.
Well, yes I do. I'd like to fix it.
But I like the way the system sounds, so I don't have any. Or do I?
Well, sure I do, but is it enough to worry about?
Yes?
No?
I don't know. 

Dammit.

[richidoo]

Just another happy ANer.   

I couldn't have said it any better myself. I can hear it, or at least what I think is jitter based on other's descriptions of it, and whatever I am hearing I want it gone for less than $100.

Thanks for the links. I'm sure that will make for some interesting reading.

[mdconnelly]

I tried something recently just to see how much a digital IC can affect the sound.   My system has been sounding remarkably good of late and with all the recently cable comparisons at my place and Carl's, I feel that my ears have become far more attuned to differences.  So, I decided to swap the digital IC between my Duet and Tact in the hopes of hearing clear differences.  In doing so I tried:

-- relatively cheap ($100) digital IC I picked up on A'gon awhile back
-- a Grover digital IC (which is what I've been using for quite some time)
-- a relatively cheap glass Toslink cable (< $50)
-- a JPS SC3 digital IC (borrowed from Shane)

I thoroughly expected to a) hear differences and b) expect a yin/yang shootout between JPS and Grover.

Guess what?   Except for the Toslink cable, I could NOT hear a difference!  The Tact makes it extremely easy to swap & compare cables and yet - nothing.   There were times I thought I heard something but upon replay, I just couldn't.  I even asked my wife to listen since her top-end hearing is better than mine - but nope, she just thought I was crazy for even thinking it.  I will say that the Toslink was clearly less resolving but I expected that.

Just for kicks I also compared a Grover digital XLR IC against the JPS digital XLR IC on my Oracle transport.  Surely there ought to be a difference there - right?   Nadda!  (although it did consistently sound better than the Duet).

What to make of this?  Dunno - maybe my ears just aren't attuned to the difference digital ICs can make (but I'll tell you that I can clearly hear differences between analog ICs).  Or maybe, just maybe jitter is not an issue (to my ears in my system .  And if not jitter, what other difference could a digital IC impose?   

So I'm with Bob on this... if there is a difference, it didn't bite me in the ass - or at least, I didn't feel it.  And I'm good with that! 

[_Scotty_]

I think jitter has become a catch-all term for for what ever might be going wrong during digital playback.
I have heard the sound change markedly between one media player and another on a Windows platform. The music showed a large improvement in transparency, resolution and three-dimensionality when different media players were used. I suppose the jitter could have varied enough between the players to produce the observed effects but it would be nice to have some measurements to confirm what is happening.
Scotty

[richidoo]

Don't you need some pretty fancy gear to measure jitter?  Agreed it's the only way to confirm if jitter's related to changing sound quality.

Mike, maybe the Tact is reclocking the data it receives so jitter at the input is irrelevant. Something about asynchronous, but I forget what that means.   It would be interesting to connect a known jitterbugger to your tact and compare to a transport with low jitter to see if there's any sound difference. I think the Duet is supposed to be pretty low jitter too. My Altmann DAC is supposed to reduce incoming jitter by a limited amount. It seems to work well on mild cases like my cheap CD player or SB, but the Sonos seems to be too much for it.  Altmann suggested it was noise coming over the coax ground, and I should try optical input. Too bad I don't have toslink option

I think with DACs that have less jitter rejection the cables should make more of a difference. rollo said there was a big difference in cables with my DAC. I was surprised to hear that because of the jitter filter supposed to remove jitter, but obviously some still gets through.

I just received the parts for Buffalo32 DAC which is supposed to be jitter proof <1pS like the new Bryston BDA-1. Hopefully I can get it running before next g2g.  Board looks nice, about 1/3 the size that it seems in their website. Tiny little bugger!