The Memory Player

Digital Network players like Squeezebox stream to the dac from onboard memory. Some computer based player software may also. This is the wave of the future. Streaming in real time from a CD is not. However digital music streaming from a memory buffer is a best practice I would say from a jitter management perspective so it is a technique that will continue to grow and thrive in various new forms in the upcoming years.

"One feature on it that I heard for myself on a friend's earlier iteration of the unit eliminates every last trace of jitter from the signal"

I do not doubt playing from memory sounds better than real time reading from optical CD in general, and that is consistent with my findings, but...

How do you know for fact that every last trace of jitter was eliminated? Is the jitter measured and displayed somehow? If so, how could one know if it was accurate or not for sure?

Too bad.

I would be very interested in any source device that can be quantitatively proven to be essentially jitter free.

Those jitter critters are tricky. I think tehy are almost always there to some degree but how to know how much really for fact? I would have to hear a proven jitter free source in a good system first probably before I could attempt to recognize the same with jitter, and even then for many of the better newer devices out there, I suspect it would still be quite difficult to identify by ear.

I do seem to recall there is some quantitative threshold for measured jitter tossed around below which the audible effects are supposedly nil.

Still, I am an audio kook so 0 jitter definitely interests me though I suspect it cannot be achieved practically any more than a perfect vinyl lp can be pressed and a perfect vinyl rig created with which to play it. We live in an imperfect world.....

"It looks very interesting and hopefully it sounds just as exciting but the cost is about high at $25000."

Squeezebox Touch plays from memory for about $250 and sounds very good!