empirical audio or lynx aes 16 sound card

I think everyone is in agreement that x-axis, or timing, plagues digital audio, and that it ought to be able to be dealt with. Getting bit perfect transport of bits is very much achievable and so regenerating the clock data ought to solve the problem better than expecting perfect cabling and interfaces.

The key issues in digital audio to resolve are:
1. How do you eliminate jitter just before, or in the DAC chip itself, to avoid jitter creeping back in subsequent transmission steps. Ethernet makes the most sense to me, because of how it works. Its just that not many audiophile firms have the knowledge to exploit ethernet so they faff about with USB, SPDIF, AES/EBU etc.
2. How high does the sampling rate need to be to make quantisation error immaterial?
3. How do you deal with digital filtering at half the sampling rate. Use DSD? Increase the original sampling rate? Upsample before conversion? Use a filter, not use a filter? If you filter, then what sort of filter?

It is pretty clear to me that the Playback guys mean dealing with these three issues as being 2-D, with the first issue being x-axis and the second and third being y-axis. Where they are claiming to be different is in the x-axis, ie in eliminating jitter. A claim many have made before them.

The only thing they are being clear about is that you should do it in the DAC, not separate from it. I think they are saying they are mapping jitter to change the bits, which isn't new, except that it is usually done in a separate stage to the DA conversion. It is not clear to me why doing it in the DA conversion step is such a good thing as it is generally better to keep the DA conversion step as simple as possible.

But until the Playback guys tell us a bit more about what they are actually doing this is just guesswork.

I found it curious that in the poll, the importance of the transport was diminished a very good bit... eg., "...walkman, DVD player, etc could be used with such a DAC and provide equal results.".

yet they don't want to use just any transport inside their own $15K CDP, opting for a far higher grade unit than simple run of the mill sorts. Apart from 'read errors', if their DAc is so adept at fixing/eliminating all other erros, why install such an expensive transport?

Perhaps as said above, many claim a thing... yet not all such claims are found to be valid in the end.

..and we're back to the listening event... and setup, despite the technology as the final axis waiting to be addressed.... regardless the claims made or who is making them.

I agree Blindjim. None of these interfaces eliminate all of the jitter created upstream from them, in my experience.

Interfaces?

I thought the DAC was supposed to address the area of jitter. Some do it better than others. Some have been measured by 3rd parties and shown to be better at addressing jitter too.

I've tried two of these tested DACs and could live with either, although one was a lot more jittery as tested than was the one I kept. What I'm saying is let's not beat a dead horse to death, hearing it is why we buy it. After that it's just simple chest beating as to why we did and a lot of the time people will then point to such things. had my needs for my system been different, I'd have bought the lesser expensive albeit more jittery DAC.... because of it's 'Sound'. As sound is all I have at my discretion to judge a thing with.

I found nothing wrong with the tone of either unit.... just one was softer and more refined than the other, and I had too much of a good thing by adding still more of that softer refinement to my system. A good stew needs salt.

If you are using iTunes consider Apple's Airport Express http://www.apple.com/airportexpress/. You can use ethernet cable from your router or even transmit wirelessly via 802.11n (very reliable). AE is very easy to set up, cheap AND has an optical output from the headphone jack. I know optical is often criticized, but I've found it to sound remarked;y good. I've read that AE limits output to 16/44. If it does then a conversion must be occurring somewhere, because I'm streaming 24/96 files that will play. You'll have to configure iTunes and the sound card digital output for your needs. If you are streaming anything but high res files I'd anticipate no problems at all. And even if you're not totally satisfied the AE is a great device to have anyhow. This is the cable you'd need: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10229&cs_id=1022902&p_id=1556&seq=1&format=2