10-May-2017, 00:22
(This post was last modified: 10-May-2017, 00:24 by Jean-Marie.)
This is a fascinating subject and that will lead to endless discussions but hopefully good reading 
In full disclosure I am probably what some will describe as an objectivist so I trust in measurements, technical explanations etc...
When it comes to jitter, as long as we stay in the digital domain and do not exceed the capacity of buffers, jitter is a non issue and can be ignored up to the last re-clocking buffer before the DAC.
The only way I can imagine prior jitter to have an impact would have to be a very indirect one based on the fact that depending on how much this last buffer is filled up, the electronic gates working to manage it and that compose it will have variations in the patterns of the current they draw from the PSU, and if you did not design properly the powering of the DAC, you may have induced effects on the outcome. This being said, I high doubt it is the case because the variation patterns linked to the actual value of the words put in the buffers are as important as the ones mentioned before.
So we are left only the accuracy of the final clock of the DAC. Jitter in this clock will translate in tiny phase shifts and frequency shifts....
However I highly doubt they are what people are hearing because they are orders of magnitude lower that the phase shifts and frequency shifts induced by the doppler effect when your head is moving by just a few millimeters.
I know some people hate DBTs, and I can understand them because they are boring, painful and much less enjoyable than listening to real music, but they can be really enlightening.
One of the most challenging aspect is that our brain has been trained by millions of years of evolution to find patterns and changes. Spotting changes quickly was a matter of life or death, and therefore, this is deeply entrenched in our brain, to the point that if we are listening to the same thing, our brain will find differences and the only reliable way to determine that two things are the same or different is to rely on statistical analysis of answers in a DBT and only consider that there are differences when the answers deviate significantly from random guessing.
Jean-Marie
In full disclosure I am probably what some will describe as an objectivist so I trust in measurements, technical explanations etc...
When it comes to jitter, as long as we stay in the digital domain and do not exceed the capacity of buffers, jitter is a non issue and can be ignored up to the last re-clocking buffer before the DAC.
The only way I can imagine prior jitter to have an impact would have to be a very indirect one based on the fact that depending on how much this last buffer is filled up, the electronic gates working to manage it and that compose it will have variations in the patterns of the current they draw from the PSU, and if you did not design properly the powering of the DAC, you may have induced effects on the outcome. This being said, I high doubt it is the case because the variation patterns linked to the actual value of the words put in the buffers are as important as the ones mentioned before.
So we are left only the accuracy of the final clock of the DAC. Jitter in this clock will translate in tiny phase shifts and frequency shifts....
However I highly doubt they are what people are hearing because they are orders of magnitude lower that the phase shifts and frequency shifts induced by the doppler effect when your head is moving by just a few millimeters.
I know some people hate DBTs, and I can understand them because they are boring, painful and much less enjoyable than listening to real music, but they can be really enlightening.
One of the most challenging aspect is that our brain has been trained by millions of years of evolution to find patterns and changes. Spotting changes quickly was a matter of life or death, and therefore, this is deeply entrenched in our brain, to the point that if we are listening to the same thing, our brain will find differences and the only reliable way to determine that two things are the same or different is to rely on statistical analysis of answers in a DBT and only consider that there are differences when the answers deviate significantly from random guessing.
Jean-Marie
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