How to improve Jitter issue via USB/ETHERNET ?

[Jean-Marie]

An interesting, if stupendously overlong, thread has emerged on CA.  Unless you have vast amounts of time to kill, I would suggest reading the first page or two, then jump to the posts from 26 March 2018, which start from page 54.

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forum...-red-pill/

Bits are bits, yes, but bit perfect can sound different.

Fascinating, thanks for pointing this out. 

I’m only half way through the thread, and now would like to understand in detail the setup, and in particular the software player used as well as audio PC. 

Assuming that everything remains bit perfect, this would only leave (as far as I can think of) as mechanisms to explain:
1) Timing related variations
2) Electric perturbations induced by the difference of interface and protocols from which the PC is getting the bits and transmitted either through the USB interface or though the power circuit. 

Those visitation would then have to affect the behavior of the DAC (most likely) and / or the Amplifiers (less likely) in an audible manner. 

Jean-Marie

They were using XXHighEnd as the software player.  This is developed by "PeterSt", who is a regular poster in the thread.

I agree with your thoughts in points 1 & 2 by the way, but it will be interesting to see if they ever manage to objectively measure or prove the precise reason.

You have my respect if you are reading the entire thread!  There is an awful lot of bluster and nonsense to read, although maybe it's worth it for the odd gem of good information that does gets occasionally posted.

I did not read it entirely, but found out some very relevant info in post https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forum...ent=799593

[url=https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/38493-blue-or-red-pill/?do=findComment&comment=799593][/url]Basically 1 and 2 are the same playing chain with the only diffence being one parameter in the XXHighEnd software player: the SFS parameter that was set at 0.1 for (1) and 200 for (2). 

I’m still investigating what this parameter does exactly, but it seems to be standing for Split File Size.
So it should logically determine how much the player is loading in memory before sending to the DAC. 

If my understanding is correct and the parameter is linear (like seconds, number of samples or kB) it means that the rate of I/O to the disk has a 2000 factor between the two configurations. 

It turns out that they have been using a SPDIF which is both synchronous and not galvanically isolated. 

Now what would be interesting would be to put our hands on a time capture of the spdif inputted to the DAC as well as a capture of the output through the ADC. 

Still crawling though the thread. 

Jean-Marie