Strictly Stereo said:
andyjm said:
Indeed. At the risk of leaning on my walking stick, when I graduated (albeit in the dark ages) I designed high speed data communication test equipment. Unless jitter has changed a lot since then, I think I have a decent handle on it.
Why do you think it matters apart from the ends of the chain?
Because jitter can be introduced at various places in the recording and playback chain, not just during AD or DA conversion but in the digital domain as well. What you eventually hear is the cumulative effect of the entire chain, not just the DAC. Why do you think that it only matters at the ends of the chain?
Your own link said so! Here it is:-
“As long as you stay in the digital domain, jitter is not a problem. Computers are designed with jitter in mind and it should be low enough to avoid bit flipping due to timing errors.
Copy a audio file from one device to another is a matter of a bit perfect copy not a matter of a jitter free transmission. Jitter in digital audio only counts when it is converted to analogue by the DAC. A DAC which is input jitter immune saves a lot of problems. In this case the only source of jitter are the components of the DAC.”
That seems to me to be what Andy is saying.
I can can get that we might feel anything that keeps jitter low throughout is ‘better’, because there are often arguments about processors not having to work so hard, etc., but I’m not sure how relevant to the resultant analogue signal that might be.