So you have a really top of the line awesome DAC, but you have a fifty dollar CD player that ouputs digital via optical. You claim the player has horrible jitter that is so bad you cant stand it but when hooked to the DAC its oh my gawd great. So if the music is so screwed up coming out of the optical of the CD player how is this DAC so magical in putting it back together? It must be magic.

since the audio the feeds the amp is going to be analog, the DAC is crucial to this stage. how it does the conversion, the anti aliasing, etc, there are lots of different things that go on.

Lets be honest, a transport has a few key parts...
Power supply
Physical Transport
Board layout
DAC

if the DAC is less than stellar, then you will get audio that can have issues. if the dac and the power supply leave things to be desired, same thing. if the transport SUCKS, then the whole thing would be screwed, but the dds of that are pretty low.

If you can get clean digital out, then yes, it is just a bitstream, so the outboard box that converts that to clean analog audio, it could give you similar results to a 20K player.

[QUOTE=Dizzman;14378314] if the transport SUCKS, then the whole thing would be screwed, but the dds of that are pretty low.

QUOTE]


BINGO Dizz. That was my point. Seems there is some company out there who claims they have taken what they say is a nearly unlistenable transport and ran it into the DAC they make and made the best music system in the world.

If the digital is outputting crap that is so screwed up then no DAC can "reanimate" that.


here is a quote from this company. The ATV they speak of is the Apple TV box.


Quote"The ATV has a lot of jitter on its optical digital output - an output that is generated inside by its internal computer. It really is nasty sounding. Most DAC's I've played with - even really high end ones - seem to have a hard edge to their sound when connected to the ATV or the Wadia iTransport (more on this later). What's needed is a DAC that can ignore jitter and compromised digital outputs and, perhaps most important, employ an almost overly lush and sweet analog output stage."

i will give them that a digital signal with lots of jitter can also be an issue. so in a dacs reciever, jitter recovery can be a big part of it as well.

we are not talking about moving bits around, just at stabilizing the jitter. in digital we do not have outputs and inputs, we have transmitters and receivers. so IF their reciever spends quite a bit of energy on the stabilization (this is a big part of HD-SDI, and other high speed transport mechanisms, by re-clocking and reestablishing voltage, we are able to go long distances) it is possible that they improve what goes into the conversion side of the daC and thereby get a better sound.

SO there can be some truth to what they are saying.

I am not saying it is so, just that it could be.

All CD players (including High-End models) by nature develop large amounts of jitter as a result of variable-speed disc rotation, laser-servo tracking error and optical defects in the medium. Therefore, an elastic store (FIFO RAM buffer) is placed between the laser pickup output and the D/A to buffer out the low frequency speed variations and jitter. Jitter artifacts in the cheapo players are most likely occuring at the output of D/A converter, due to poor clock filtering/processing. So if you intercept the PCM data before it hits the D/A, you probably are getting relatively jitter-free audio data ... even in the cheapo players.

In any case, external D/A processors employ either secondary elastic stores or sample rate conversion to further attenuate whatever timing fluctuations are present in the CD player output data stream. Some of them are so good, like the Benchmark product line, that essentially no audible jitter related artifacts appear in their output. Stereophile magazine has a pretty good collection of measured jitter performance, in their website review database.

IMHO, that's why it is a waste of money to buy the high-end equipment. A mediocre player and a Benchmark DAC1 or Lavry DA-10 will give equivalent or better performance, for a lot less money.

Seems there is some company out there who claims they have taken what they say is a nearly unlistenable transport and ran it into the DAC they make and made the best music system in the world.That might be a reasonable claim, actually. But it's also not particularly revolutionary. Like fastl said, audible effective jitter elimination is not an elusive goal. It's been done.

Of course, this is really just a continuation of a recently-closed thread. I'm not expecting much good to come from this one.

Audible being the key word.

Audible being the key word .... precisely. You can't completely eliminate jitter, but you can reduce its effects to the point that you can't really hear it. The Benchmark DAC is pretty impressive in that respect. Stereophile has measured its performance several times, and it out-dukes equipment selling for more than ten times its price.

The Benchmark DAC is pretty impressive in that respect. Stereophile has measured its performance several times, and it out-dukes equipment selling for more than ten times its price.

Great product. I previously owned the DCS Stack and was able to directly compare this $1000 Benchmark DAC (driven by a $150 OPPO DVD/CD Player) to my $42000 DCS system . If we did not upconvert to DSD, I was unable to hear ANY difference (doesn't mean there wasn't one, only that I {and another individual who also owns the DCS stack} could not hear it). There was a difference between the DSD upconversion and the Benchmark. (not sure which one was correct but I will give the advantage to the DCS System). Regardless, it is a very impressive piece of audio gear, for, in terms of audio equipment costs, an unbelievable bargain --- but not impressive looking. I think it weighs 4 pounds, it about 7 inches wide and one rack height tall

Since we are on DAC's,how about a great tube DAC for my Samsung BD 5000 blu-ray player?:)

....great tube DAC? Isn't this referred to as an oxymoron?

Funny thing is that jitter is not a problem in audio.

Funny thing is that jitter is not a problem in audio.

At least not in any consumer based players. And we have it whipped pretty good in the pro world. Except this seller would have you think otherwise. Thats how he makes his money by playing up to the unfounded claims and fears of audiophilles.

At least not in any consumer based players. And we have it whipped pretty good in the pro world. Except this seller would have you think otherwise. Thats how he makes his money by playing up to the unfounded claims and fears of audiophilles.

That is how most if not all profits are made off the high end and people still fall for this type of advertising.

....great tube DAC? Isn't this referred to as an oxymoron?

Yes if you have no tast in hi-fi.

Just the opposite. By all means, I can understand the attraction of tubes for amplification. But as we discussed in another thread proper CD sound is more objective. Adding a tube output stage to a CD player us just an open invitation to suboptimal sound. Like it or not CD players are naturally solid state...

Funny thing is that jitter is not a problem in audio.

I agree. :D