Clocker value on a network player?

Do chord dacs do a good job with jitter?

This is audiophile land. Assume misinformation is rife in almost all cases.

You don't need a precision clock in audio. You need a clock with low jitter over a period of time about about 2-5 times the lowest frequency, or out 0.1 - 0.25 seconds.

Why do I need a 1 part per million accurate clock. Do you think anyone's turntable is this accurate?

Why do I need an oven controlled crystal oscillator, which was developed for frequency stability over long periods of time, not near term jitter. If these designers were really trying for lowest jitter, they would cool the crystal because the phase noise is lower. But people use oven controlled because it is cheap, and they only need stability. Some scientific applications do cool the crystal for lower thermal noise.

I am ranting :-) ... a good clock is essential as many have noted for synchronous signals, but good DACs can eliminate almost all jitter, and certainly audible jitter. Even low cost DACs can do that now. 

Theoretically, an asynchronous USB connection should eliminate any sonic effects from the upstream components because you are just sending digital data and the DAC is in complete control. 

In reality, it usually doesn't work out this way. It appears to be fairly hard to isolate the noise created by the USB interface itself from interfering with the sound quality. Moving the conversion from asynchronous to synchronous outside the DAC often (but not always) results in better sound quality. 

Even DACs with exceptionally good USB circuitry and noise isolation benefit from a cleaner USB signal, although how much depends on the DAC. 

There are no easy answers here (and a lot of differing opinions). 

Synchronous simply means that the audio data is sent to the DAC at the same rate that it is played (e.g. at 44,100 samples per second in the case of standard Redbook CDs). The DAC has no control over the rate at which the data is sent. 

Asynchronous means that the DAC periodically requests a bunch of audio samples as they are needed and the DAC controls when to do these requests. 

What about the chord tt?
Asynchronous vs synchronous, another good thing to understand.
usb causes the dac to do its clocking thing without involving the player.  And if dac has good power, this all tends to marginalize the player impact.

I don't believe it makes much difference into a DirectStream.

With the exception of USB and Ethernet, all other commonly used digital audio interfaces (spdif, toslink, AES3, i2s) are synchronous. This means that the source (the network player in your case) controls the clock.  

Some DACs will buffer and reclock even these synchronous interfaces, but it's still important to have an accurate and clean source clock to reduce buffer under/overflows and noise. 

Many DACs sound better using one of these synchronous interfaces. For example, my Denafrips Terminator Plus sounds noticably better using i2s than any of the other inputs I've tried including USB. 

Synchronous signals are one way. The DAC is forced to accept the samples as they come in. With say a CD turner, external DAC’s were forced to accept any incoming timing variations.  The DAC is forced to synchronize with the source.

Asynch uses 2 way communication to allow the DAC to control the sample rates. USB can be asynch. Coax/Optical cannot.

Thanks,  what is meant by synchronous digital output ?  So it may be better to not connect via usb interconnect to the dac?

Because when run thru a synchronous digital output it eliminates reclocking at the DAC level. This is thought to produce less jitter and thus a quieter, more detailed presentation vs running thru noisier USB.

Of course there are many variables but it provides another option to see what produces the best sound. Results are going to be very system dependant.