The reason this is not common as it’s not really needed. It’s cool for curiosity or scientific purposes (instead of having to buy an analyzation tool/software), but no real benefit for consumers. As doing a J-Test (extreme jitter, more than you’d likely ever have), even cheap DACs can reduce down to at least -100dBFS, better than the noise floor of a CD, and since almost no content is gonna have sounds meant to be heard below say 40dB, even a cheap DAC would have no jitter when playing 40dB to 140dB.
DAC's : The missing feature: Signal quality
One thing I wish DAC's would provide is some idea of how much jitter and noise a particular input provides. This is something which I think with a little work could be gleaned from the input circuits.
I want something that tells me "woah, that's a really dirty signal coming in, but i"ll do the best I can with it."
One common source of noise is ground loops. Another may be high jitter from a source like Apple TV. This would also help us evaluate the benefits (if any) of various signal cleaners and reclockers.
Best,
E
I want something that tells me "woah, that's a really dirty signal coming in, but i"ll do the best I can with it."
One common source of noise is ground loops. Another may be high jitter from a source like Apple TV. This would also help us evaluate the benefits (if any) of various signal cleaners and reclockers.
Best,
E
Showing 2 responses by mzkmxcv
If your system has jitter (only thing to take note of for digital connections; linearity, THD, crosstalk, IMD, SNR, etc. are all near identical), then that results in a rise in the noise floor, which would sound like static, it would be heavily masked by music, but if you played say a 10kHz tone on your digital device, and you heard some background static, then you have audible jitter. We are talking random jitter here (not periodic), and if you want an example of what poor random jitter sounds like as a reference point: http://www.sereneaudio.com/blog/what-does-jitter-sound-like Take note of how 2ns of random jitter raises the noise floor to ~ -80dBFS, and keep in mind how I said even cheap DACs can reduce it to -100dBFS or lower (+20dB is the same as having 100x more wattage, so in this case 1/100 the wattage as it’s the opposite direction). |