What does Jitter sound like?

Having samples with jitter to compare would be meaningless unless the amount of jitter is quantified. Adding jitter to the point of making it an order of magnitude higher (nano seconds) than most decent players would not prove anything to me. Can anyone demonstrate that music through a cdp with around 300-400 ps of jitter as tested by stereophile would somehow gain astonishing resoluton by decreasing the jitter to say 100 ps as claimed by lessloss and the like? Does jitter get increasingly irrelevant as the sampling frequency is increased in the same player with a cheap clock, switching power supply and all?

Rotarius,

Having samples with jitter to compare would be meaningless unless the amount of jitter is quantified.

I agree. If you are interested there is an AES Paper published where they studied the audible effects of jitter:

Theoretical and Audible Effects of Jitter on Digital Audio Quality Benjamin, Eric; Gannon, Benjamin
AES Preprint: 4826 => these guys are from Dolby Labs so I suspect the work was thoroughly conducted but you never know. Certainly many audiophiles seem to disagree as they claim audible improvments when jitter is reduced from around 1 Nanosec to 200 psecs.

The AES paper concludes that 30 nanoseconds was the threshold of audibility on music....but specifcally designed test signals brought the threshold down to about 20 nanoseconds of jitter. They tried to use forms of jitter that are most easily audible - principally by minimizing the effect of masking (where a loud signal will mask a nearby frequencies at lower signal levels - jitter can be simulated to give the greatest frequency separation between the real audio signal and jitter induced distortion such that it has highest chance of audibility).

As I mentioned I am willing to test a solution if one exists for a few hundred....my jitter straight from my CD players must be around 1 nanosec (if specifications can be trusted). So I probably have what many would regard as levels of jitter that should be just about audible.

Shadorne - this paper is more meaningless than my jitter samples. The system and music tracks used for this test was a joke. No conclusions can be drawn from this study IMO.

At least with my jitter sample (requested by many on Head-Fi), you can hear the difference between a standard CD and a re-written CD. It will prove that the jitter with your CD player and a commercial CD IS audible if you hear ANY difference.

Steve N.

It will prove that the jitter with your CD player and a commercial CD IS audible if you hear ANY difference.

Excellent - if it is indeed proven then you might consider an AES paper to corect these misleading studies - that is probably how to best spread the word..

The sound of one bit clapping. Hardly an issue in modern design cd playback systems. The TI/BurrBrown chips, transports and all are from essentially the same sources. I am not denying there are design and thus sound differences-- some more pleasing to some of the people some of the time.....

Also I will admit there are other factors in the digi stream as well. Have intentionally kept my ears away from mega-buck digi-playbak systems for fear of endless dissatisfaction and upgrades for minor and subjective improvement.

"Dgarretson - Wow and flutter exhibit the same results as jitter, frequency modulation, so the answer is yes, although some jitter occurs at rates and changes in ways that a turntable could not physically do."

Interesting to find this. This is what I hear and people say I'm crazy so this helps me feel more normal.