jitter


I am pretty sure I understand jitter generated by streamers and/or DACs. My question  is, when a digital recording is created, can there already be jitter in the digital data itself from the ADC? If so, can this ever be corrected during playback, either by the streamer or DAC?

128x128jw944ts

No device is completely immune to jitter, but it did get remarkably better after the year 2000.  Any device can be overwhelmed by upstream jitter, and testing with medicore reclockers have shown this.

In general I will say that a good streamer with multi-second buffers should have vanishingly low jitter to add to a DAC's output.

No current DAC can remove jitter that was embedded in the file by the ADC when the recording was made. This is the same as trying to "fix" a recording where the wrong mics were used or poorly placed, or bad mixing, balance, EQ and other decisions were made during production. The latter items impacted many analog recordings beginning decades before digital recording was used.

The best a DAC can do is not add any more jitter and make the situation worse.

One can use tone controls or EQ to improve things, but you'll never totally fix a poor recording any more than you can unscramble a scrambled egg.

I suspect at some point a sophisticated AI could improve things, but even then, it would still be a guess as to what should have been done in the studio years or decades ago.

Hopefully though, we can enjoy the music itself for what it is rather than obsessing over recording quality and technical what-ifs. Good stereos are nice and I certainly enjoy mine, but I can still have a lot of fun and enjoyment listening to a good tune on the car's factory radio. For those of a certain age, think about al lthe great times you had as a teenage listening to the top-40 tunes on your AM radio.

Jitter results from timing errors both in recording and reproduction. Top studios therefore run superior clock sync. In reproduction clocking (Ocxo or rubidium) can make a major difference if the dac allows for it. This particularly applies if dac and server are linked via asynchronous USB. The assertion that modern dacs don‘t create jitter is non-sensical; stanalone quality master clocks alone cost in excess of $7K, those are not contained in $3-5K Dacs.

"Jitter is a non-issue solved decades ago! Present day DAC's and streamers are immune to jitter. No need for re-clocking devices, despite what the neurotically obsessed will claim."

*sigh*

Your ignorance is absolutely monumental, @jasonbourne71 

Anyway, back to the OP's question.....you can't fix/remove jitter if it is embedded in the original recording, but you can certainly minimize it during reproduction in your system by using quality equipment.

my new DAC exhibits dropout on a few HD tracks that my old DAC does not. The manufacturer of the new DAC says it is from excessive jitter being received from my streamer, and will adjust the buffer....I will see if this is correct when I try a new streamer next week....I also wonder if  the buffer is adjusted will this affect  the overall sound on  tracks that do not have dropout?

I presume the reason the oldDAC does not have dropout is a "better" buffer?