Long Coaxial audio run?

In my system, this would completely crush the quality. Even 2 feet of 1694 does this. Depends on your system.

I would recommend using WiFI instead, such as Squeezebox, duet or AppleTV. The same data is delivered. The only difference is jitter and some of these are pretty good.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

"Is USB effected by all this "Jitter" for example a laptop connected to a USB Dac with like a 15 foot USB Cable etc…?"

Yes, and it depends on the DAC and it depends on the cable as to how much. Cables with small gauge silver conductors and air or teflon dielectric add less jitter. Less dielectric absorption and therefore less dispersion of the signal.

Steve N.

Vvrinc - I spend a LOT of time on the forums educating audiophiles about one of the most pervasive problems with digital audio, and that is Jitter.

Digital audio is comprised of two elements, the data words and the timing of these data words. The two cannot be separated because the D/A conversion of the digital datastream must have both elements. The data must be delivered to the D/A without error and the timing must be recovered or generated so that timing variations are minimized (jitter). This attempts to matche the timing of the original A/D that was performed in the studio with a low-jitter clock. These clocks are critically important for both A/D and D/A.

Here are some white papers I wrote for PFonline that tell more about this:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue22/nugent.htm

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Undertow - here are two good USB cables:

Synergistic
Locus Design Axis

As for DAC's, they are all somewhat sensitive to the incoming jitter, even those with isolated free-running reclocking. In theory they shouldn't be, but they are. I know because I make reclockers and I mod a lot of DAC's. I also read a lot of anecdotal posts. Maybe it's power supply, RFI or ground-plane coupling causing this, I dont know.

I do know for a fact that lesser anti-jitter techniques such as ASRC chips are generally sensitive to incoming jitter. Making ANYTHING that totally rejects all incoming jitter is the holy grail and to my knowledge has never been achieved. Some manufacturers claim this, but when I hear their gear and do some cable swapping, I disprove these claims. They usually just need more resolving systems to hear this. I've been working on this problem for years and thought I had it licked. Closer than anyone has gotten before I believe, but still no cigar.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio