What does Jitter sound like?

Shadorne,
I know what you mean. There is a point after which it really is just a silly excess. I've had just as much emotional involvement with my music through the years of upgrades, as I do with my car system. ALl the upgrades have never changed my response to my favorite music. For me I have come to the full realization that it has (always)been more about a fascination/obsession with awesome hardware than as "the" medium to profound musical enjoyment. I have acheived what I think is a great "sound" but I could hear "Blue Sky" (ABB) or Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on an AM radio and get just as passionate about it, as I do on a high dollar system.
I would argue that 99.99% of the audiogon community is also motivated by the same hardware obsession (why else are you here,eh?). Sure there is something to sitting in the sweet spot, in your space but that's all just initial conditions to the hardware equation. But it's all good, as I clearly prefer this to most other money sucking fascinations. TGIF.

Shadorne, Feb. Stereophile is one of the better issues in recent memory, with entertaining assaults by Atkinson & Fremer on the "MP3 as indistinguishable from CD" fiction propagated in the mainstream press. At the opposite extreme there are (finally) several less-than-superlative reviews of megabuck products (e.g. Escalante Fremont & BAT Rex.)

Of course you won't believe it, but RBCD on my tweaked CDP and vinyl on my tweaked TT run neck & neck. Making comparisons across analog & digital media raises the bar & can be helpful in measuring progress. MP3 sounds great doing an 8 minute mile on the treadmill.

First off wantd to congratulate soem of our members here for their incisive and descriptive talents.
It has been propven without a doubt that Jitter is very perjudicial to our music, there was a test done in which a panel of well versed and auditioned audiophile and musicians listened for a litle while to a CD of first cut recording direct (to avoid missinterpretaions or wrong intent) then to listen to the same part of music but the 100th generation of recorded music on CD as well.
Same data, same bits no data error, same thing, what was the differnece between those two recordings?
you guessed it!!! much Jitter, not enough to trow you off but enough to sound degraded and lacking compared to the 1st generation recording, that point established i can tell by own experience that i have heard lossles compresion played on a Macintosh computer through a $150 USB DAC into a Audible Illusions modded preamp into Quicksilver Audio monoblocks into Vandersteen speakers sounded A LOT!!! better than a very good source of playing the same CD version going though a Benchmark media or Classé DAC going though the same pipelines.
So even though MP-3 is sonically inferior to 16 Bits also 16 bits are very rudimentary when compared to 24 bits 96 Khz or 192 KHz material.

That is my 2 cents here.
Losless compression might be the way to go for playback, still discs are required for portability and to take it to your car, boat, aprty or friends house ofr a listen to his/her new toys, etc.

Also when evaluating new components or speakers this still is the batter way to go.
Long like to CD's thank God DVD audio is here also. . .

God Bless!

gonzalo

Gonzalo,

In Digital copy generations, there is no more Jitter in the 2nd generation than there is in the 100th generation, since every time you repeat the loop you go back to the hard disc and all the Jitter that the laser added is again gone. Jitter only has meaning during the real-time ADC procedure or the real-time ADC procedure. Other than that, you can send Digital files to CD's, Flash Drives, up to the Mars Rovers and back again, and then burn your CD and it will have the same amount of Jitter if burned under the same circumstances as your first copy.

Actually, many people burn copies of CDR's because they are making a copy which is even BETTER than the original white CD, because after they burn it, the CD playback mechanism reads it (for various reasons) with less Jitter, given a signal to the DAC with less Jitter, which sounds better.

These various reasons include the substrate material, reflections, focussing, vibrational issues, etc.

Liudas

Liudas,

True. Physically Jitter can ONLY exist once there is some form of clock or timing device...so a CD cannot have any jitter, however, if there is difficulty for a CD player to read a disc then perhaps oscillations in the drive motor power or lens focussing power might somehow cause the clock to be in error or more jittery (say for example they share the same power supply which happens to oscillate due to lens motor fluctuations, as it struggles to read a warped or uneven disc).