Jitter reduction, best device?

i would stay away from the benchmark if you are thinking of using the usb port, it is inferior to the coax port.

i would agree that a jitter device will not perform miracles of converting a inferior signal to a fantastic signal. won't happen.

i have multiple setups using jitter devices and external dacs and they "all" have made a big difference in the sound. all connections induce jitter and some devices handle it better than others. why not use a jitter device to clean up the signal before it gets to the dac. garbage in, garbage out. another low cost dac is from audio alchemy if you want to go an inexpensive route. ps audio was at rmaf and they went over some new equipment that they will be coming out with that deals with the jitter issue.

the new audio research dac sounds promising. i heard it at rmaf and it sounded good and the AR rep indicated that they got the usb port down where it is equal to the other ports. something that the current dacs can't claim.

also, if you are using a music server, i isolate mine from the jitter device by using a toslink cable instead of a copper cable. there is no chance of any noise of the computer or the AE to get on this type of cable. if you isolate the jitter device, then you can use a coax or aes cable from the jitter device to go into your external dac.

mapman
i disagree on your theory that your ears can tell if you have jitter or not. all i can tell you is if you hook up the jitter device between the source component and the dac, you will hear a big improvement, something you won't hear until you hear hear the difference. just like going from a mid-fi system to a hi-fi system. you might think how can music sound any better than this mid-fi system. you won't know until you hear a system that produces music that you haven't heard before. also, i'm not talking about a shrill sound becoming warm or rough edges. a jitter device is not going to make a bad system great. my den system consists of a dk design integrated amp, dvp9000es, adcom gda-700 dac, totem speakers and subwoofer, and a connection from my music server. a decent system for a den. when i placed a cheap audio alchemy jitter device (get my feet wet with jitter devices), my sub was way out of adjustment (more powerful and way too loud), and the whole soundstage opened up. when you get a better jitter device, it opens up the sound even more. bottom line, i got as much improvement from the jitter device as i did placing the dac in the system.

not necessarily. why does esoteric build a $10k external clock? why does dcs build the 3 box setup for $60k. thats like saying you can buy the cheapest cd player but the dac will fix all symptoms. those pieces sound wonderful but at a price. IMO, you want to use the best quality pieces that you can spend to get the best sound. you are not going to buy a cable that will perform miracles with a mediocre dac or cd player. the only way to tell if something will work or not is to demo it. or just leave things like they are and be happy withwhat you got. but you can't say you trust your ears and you would know what you are missing.

bottom line: the only way to tell if a jitter device will do something in your system is to try it. everybody could guess all day long about things. but in the end, you won't know if it works or not for you until you test it. also, all the room tuning devices, ac filters, 20 or 30 amp dedicated wiring, room lens, different speaker positioning, claws, beaks, better cables, better power cables, etc... i don't think you can say that none of these will not have an impact in your system until you try them.

hens - i also use the monarchy in my audio system. i also heard a huge improvement when i inserted this device before the dac. i also use other brand jitter devices in my den and rec room and they also made a large improvement in the quality.

mapman - if your skeptical, then you will probably never be happy with a setup like this because in the back of your mind, you think other alternatives will be better. why don't you think a pc can read a cd as well as a cd player? check out who makes the transport mechanisms in "all" the world. probably 2 or 3 companies: philips, sony, are probably the most popular. so what has the most smarts: computer or cd player? what has the most memory/buffer to hold data read off the cd before sending it down its channel?

i am a computer nerd and when i hear people say that pcs/macs aren't capable to produce good sound, i get frustrated because it isn't true.

do you think that reading music off a cd player is any different than reading bits off a cd when loading a program onto your pc? how many times have you had issues loading a program off the cd with corrupted data or issues that the bits couldn't be read properly off the cd?

now as for sound quality, the pc/mac isn't very good, but thats were jitter devices and external dacs come in. the roku will not improve the sound any, you need much more equipment to do that.

also, reclocking is not done at the level you are talking about. normally a clock device has to talk on a peer-to-peer basis with the source (say a cd player) so the 2 devices can get in sync with each other. the benchmark will not do that. the esoteric clock and transport devices do that, along with the dcs pieces.

my advice to you is to go listen to a good quality system or go read some of the articles that state that ripped cd's can sound better than the original disk if done properly. you might be surprised.