@mitch2
To me, the issue is not whether there’s no jitter, it’s whether there’s a substantial difference in jitter across streamers, how much jitter we’re talking about, and the extent to which different DACs reject jitter from streamers.
As I’ve previously indicated, I have found the “lab report” section of HiFi News streamer reviews incredibly insightful. I’ve looked at the results from 10 different streamer reviews over about 4 years; in 5 of them they use a usb connection to a computer as their control scenario vs. the streamer, and then they use up to 3 different DACs with both the computer and the streamer. All 10 of the reviews I’ve pulled feature the Mytek Brooklyn dac, 6 include the iFi Neo iDSD, and 4 include the AQ Dragonfly. Here are some takeaways:
1) The Mytek has low jitter levels itself, and also is very effective at rejecting any streamer-induced jitter;
2) The iFi is a low jitter DAC, but is not nearly as effective at rejecting streamer-induced jitter; and
3) The amount of jitter produced by all 10 of the streamers, priced from £1k to £25k, is very low, and doesn’t vary materially by price.
How did I arrive at these conclusions? Here are several snippets of the data:
- the single highest jitter number, 550 psec, was with the computer/iFi combo, substantially more than the computer/Dragonfly number (300 psec).
- but, when paired with a decent streamer (e.g., the Volumio Riva or Aurender N200), the iFi’s jitter amount was substantially less than the Dragonfly (18 & 9 psec v. 150 & 135 psec, respectively.
- the Mytek’s jitter levels were never above 10 psec, whether using the computer or one of the 10 streamers.
So while a decent DAC, in this case the iFi, may not be engineered to reject jitter from a streamer, you don’t need to spend much to have a very low-jitter streamer. That’s why a Raspberry Pi can sound so good - many DACs, even moderately priced, do a good job of rejecting jitter from a streamer. But to be safe, you can invest a little more than $150 and get a very low-jitter streamer.
