Flaws in this chain?
But here's a question....why don't device makers, at least high end device makers, include some method for decreasing jitter in the device itself?Most do in fact. And as for the Chromecast. Still 'jittery' but less so than the ATV?Actually, its jitter measurements are rather poor. That being said, the CA sends an unmolested digital stream (via optical) to your DAC, which should clean it up rather nicely. Same with the ATV except the ATV sends a re-sampled (molested) stream to the DAC .. not good. Re-clockers like the SPDIF iPurifier can do wonders for jittery streams feeding DACs with less-than-stellar jitter reduction, but not so much feeding higher-end DACs which have been engineered to do so. The Chromecast Audio is by no means perfect, just damn good for $35. A couple of things about using the CA with Tidal on Apple:
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But here's a question....why don't device makers, at least high end device makers, include some method for decreasing jitter in the device itself? Many DAC's have reclockers and FIFO's inside to minimize jitter. The problem is that IME most of them do a poor job of it. This is why I recommend a DAC with no reclocker on the coax input, like Metrum or Audio Note. USB interfaces also have a Master Clock in them, but most do a poor job of achieving low jitter in the USB interface as well. You can get an external USB converter with lower jitter, but you will also need one of these to achieve good SQ with USB: https://sotm-usa.com/collections/sotm-ultra/products/copy-of-tx-usbultra-regenerator-1 Without this, you might as well stick with S/PDIF coax and a reclocker. It will sound better. Steve N. Empirical Audio |
I use an Apple TV in my system and I can't tell the difference between it and an Airport Express, which does not resample my signal. When I plug in my laptop directly to the DAC it still sounds the same to me. Of course, I am limited to 16/44.1, but unless I am using headphones I can't really tell the difference between the set ups. So I leave the Apple TV in the system and have moved on to other things. As far as hi-res, I struggle to find a difference between it and 16/44.1. Now I CAN hear the difference in mastering, and a lot of the hi-res music out there has been re-mastered, and it does sound better, but the same remastered hi-res files sound just as good (to me) when downsampled in my system to 16/44.1. As far as jitter goes, I have yet to figure out what that sounds like. I've run directly from my MacBook Pro into a Benchmark DAC 3, and it sounds the same to me as when I run the same DAC using an Airport Express (didn't have the Apple TV for comparison). Still using 16/44.1 files, maybe it is a hi-res thing. I dunno. I figure if I can't hear it, it's not worth going down that rabbit hole. I probably need better equipment if I really want to hear jitter. Apple TV>Schiit BiFrost MB>Odyssey Candela>Odyssey Khartego>Harbeth P3esr. Groneberg interconnects, Kimber 4TC speaker cables. AEX>Schiit Modi MB>Schiit Vali>Sennheiser 650 headphones. Also run Grado 325e headphones with Little Dot 1+ (that combo is a blast)! |
