Looking for a DAC for the Squeezebox Touch

"Wonder if it's worth to get the Metrum Octave to connect directly to a SB3 through optical link without reclocker?"

K330,

I contacted Metrum with the same question

"While I am waiting for my Octave to arrive I have one question. Some have said that the Octave is very jitter sensitive and that a good quality reclocker between the Squeezebox Touch and the Octave will improve sound quality. Is that possible or even probable? There is so much of what I call 'Voodoo' in the audio industry and amongst audiophiles that is hard to know what to believe. I don't like wasting my money on imaginary benefits ;))

To which they replayed

"Yes there is a lot of Voodoo so be careful. As you know there was a very good reviews from 6moons and the Hificritic where the dac was compared with very expensive units (+ 10000 Euro’s) and it was very close. The Octave has a very low jitter ( below 40 pSec) so there is no need for some extra gear to reduce this. Difference in sound by this gear is mostly created by upsampling and people do not realize that this up sampling methods create ringing in the signal. This is what you hear , pre and post ringing. There is no need for such devices as you cannot create info which is not actually there so please forget such gizmo’s . Only real hig res. material improves the sound."

Bottom like for me is that I am very very skeptical about many (most) of the so called audiophile 'upgrades'. When the manufacture of the product calls upstream jitter reducers (in so many words) a waist of money, I trust them a 1000 times more then any supposed audiophile claims.

Earl

Earlxtr,

Thanks for sharing your communication with the vendor. Same as you I do not want to pay a few hundred bucks for a DAC and then find that I need to spend another couple of hundred to be able to fully take advantage of it. Too bad there is no way to audition this .

I don't know, guys. I have no vested interest in neither answer, but reducing jitter at the source makes sense to me. The way Cees answered the question seems he might be referring to no device needed to lower the jitter introduced by the Octave, why is very low indeed. But I believe the issue at hand is jitter included in the signal supplied to the Octave. Another designer, Steve Nugent from Empirical Audio, is constantly saying he believes reducing jitter at the source (before the DAC) is the single most valuable thing in digital audio - I know, he sells a USB to SPDIF converter, but he also sells asynch USB DAC.

When several users consistently report improvements using USB-to-SPDIF converters, and the better regarded converters consistently outperform the lesser converter+Octave combos...I tend to believe there is something to it.

As far as the Touch (the original subject of the thread) + Octave, in a couple of months I expect to start reading reports about Empirical Audio's yet-to-launch Synchro Mesh placed in between, which is exactly aiming the jitter at the source issue. We'll see what users have to say!

Such interesting times in digital audio! Enjoy!

The manufacturer (Metrum) states that no matter what source is being feed to it, it reduces the jitter to <40ps. (otherwise the 40ps claim is pointless and they would not consider a jitter reducer a waist of money). I would think they know their own DAC better then anybody and would know what would make it sound better.

Since each word of data arrives every 1/44,100 seconds or 22676ps (for redbook material), 40ps is a 0.176% possible variance, which is extremely low. Even if you feed it with a lower jitter source it would likely not improve the actual jitter of the DAC.

IMHO, you can Google "The ten biggest lies in audio" and add reclockers to the list, at least for the Octave.

Earl

Yeah, you are probably right. Bunch of fools hanging around here taking the time to try different USB to SPDIF converters, then taking the time to share their findings with the rest of us. And gets worse: it's group thinking too, as they all tend to agree!

You might want to educate yourself about what jitter is. I don't think a DAC can reduce what jitter is being fed. Might have ways to mitigate the nasty effects of a jittery signal it receives, but can't reduce it. DACs do introduce their own share of jitter, though, and I believe that is what 40 ps is. But you can believe what you'd like...you are likely thinking I'm a fool already! :-)