Oxia - I believe I can easily hear jitter in the 300psec range and so can you, depending on the spectra. (This is very difficult to measure accurately BTW). Here's why:
I had a mod for the AE some time ago, including power supply improvements, new S/PDIF output circuit and upgraded clock. It was called the Off-Ramp WiFi. The power and S/PDIF output mods improved the sound, but changing from the stock oscillator to a Superclock made the largest improvement. The only thing changing here is the clock and the jitter associated with the clock. The improvement in detail and image focus due to ONLY changing the clock was obvious in my system. Changing only the clock has no other effect than jitter.
Changes to the clock and other things that ONLY affect jitter is what leads me to the conclusion that jitter is the problem with the AE. I ultimately discontinued making the Off-Ramp WiFi because the jitter even with the Superclock, power supply and S/PDIF mods was still worse than even my USB converters. It is obviously audible in comparison.
Besides, with the AE, technically there is nothing else except jitter. With AE Toslink output, there is no RFI, no ground-loops, no other mechanisms. The data is bit-perfect.
The Toslink output from the AE can also be reclocked through a Pace-Car reclocker and this makes an even bigger improvement. One only has to listen for a few seconds to "get it".
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
