Time to discuss: the Jitter Thread

This is an exciting idea! I've messed with a USB analyzer a little bit in the past. Maybe I could get one to bring to a meet, or construct a rig to send on tour and collect both USB data and listening impressions from different setups. The Beagle USB 12 is reasonably affordable and probably does everything necessary for analyzing USB audio (but not power).

 

Something from my favourite audio magazine...

Sound on Sound

One of the most interesting things about that article is the date: February 2008. But hey, new-model ears have been introduced since then, right?

It's also a good idea to dig up Jason's chapter on measurements in his Schitt book. IIRC, no he does not treat it as a wholly-solved sector of science, but he puts it in an interesting perspective.

As to the science of it all, I think that audiophiles have a tendency to think of digital audio as being the be-all and end-all of analog/digital/analog stuff. Isn't the real work in the area done by the telecommunications industry, and haven't they been at it since I was a young child spinning shellac?

We are not alone... and we are not even the pioneers!

 

My experience with the Mutec leads me to believe that jitter affects the imaging/soundstage. High(er) jitter is not something I could hear directly but once it was removed the difference was obvious.

 

Chris, how do you know it was jitter, and how do you know it was removed?

I'm not trying to be awkward (it comes naturally ) but it seems to me that jitter is just the go-to word in digital music in recent years.

Audiophools just don't live in the real world, but there are a lot of good, genuine audiophiles that do and have great ears. The next step to hearing a difference is attributing a cause to that difference. All too many just grasp at the thing they think it might be. Or should be.

 

Because the difference was obvious. The Mutec is advertised to remove jitter, it sounded like it removed jitter, therefore it removed jitter.

 

I pretty much agree with @SSL and @Chris F - I believe that once you hear a source with very little jitter, you understand the effect it has. In my comparison, the Chromecast Audio has a fair amount of jitter on SPDIF. Stock USB to Gungnir Multibit sounds different, and I imagine comparing a good USB source would also help to understand how the stock USB was being affected by jitter as well.

 

You believed the product did what it said. You listened to the result, and deduced that what had happened was reduced jitter. Well, I suppose it might have been.

As to the video.... I guess I wouldn't want anything to sound like that, but then there are all kinds of people in the world, and all kinds of music.

 

Jitter is by definition deviation in the arrival/presentation of data. If the packets are always arriving at slight deltas from the reference it will affect the image/soundstage as well as the transient attack and decay.

I used the first minute of the below track (from CD) to evaluate the Mutec:


The improvement in imaging and transient precision as the wind chimes sweep back and forth through the stereo field is very obvious with the Mutec in place. Without the Mutec the chimes sound a bit fuzzy and blurred. With the Mutec you hear as each individual chime is struck like pinpoints jumping out of the image. It is a big difference which I attribute to very accurate timing and lack of jitter.

 

You might have been right. Mikoss might have been right too --- but any number of things, with changed hardware could have led to different/changed sound, and it is always an assumption that it is jitter.

Back in the day, wow and flutter and all that analogue stuff were fairly easy to pin down, especially by people with very good ears and accurate pitch sense.

My devil's-advocacy position is that the digital-audiophile world has lumped together a number of subjective observations and impressions and, without any possible means of actually establishing the fact, called it "jitter." But sometimes, they might be right.

By the way: thank you both for joining in the exchange.

 

I'm not equipped to measure jitter in my own system however others have for example here:
http://sonicus.net/Blog/

Another review by professional sound engineers with good technical info:
http://tapeop.com/reviews/gear/106/mc-3-smart-clock/

Their sonic evaluations agree with mine. Also, at this point in time I feel there are enough people with a Mutec sitting in front of their Gungnir Multibit/Yggdrasil to have reached a consensus that it brings a real and significant improvement; not just a sorta-maybe-kinda sideways thing.

Groupthink? Maybe, but given the cross section of ears and numbers I don't think so.

 

I am not questioning anybody's perception or experience, only the attribution of cause.