There is a nice doc by Jon Risch at : http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/jitter.htm.
I think one can partition what I shall call 'convenience' and 'sound reproduction' roughly to the transport (or source medium) and DAC respectively. Here's what I mean: I really liked Onhwy61's post where he was able to move from song to song, quickly and easily. For me, that would be a wonderful part of at least some of my listening experiences. There is an analogy to DVDs here: in terms of sales, the DVD has been the greatest home electronic success in history. And it is no wonder--DVDs offer a clear value proposition over VHS that virtually any video consumer can appreciate. Similarly, computer-based home entertainment systems (and variants thereof) offer great promise, to the degree that they offer not just more "convenience," but that this can operationally change the way we listen to music.
DACs with on-board clocks can re-clock the data stream, making them virtually immune to the transport, be it CD, hard drive, RAM, whatever. So there is no reason why convenience needs to be at the expense of high quality sound reproduction. But DACs are still not completely immune, as Jon hints towards in this article above. Cable reflections, ground bounce, chip load, etc. these will affect DACs even with on-board clocks, and highly resolving systems will invariably uncover a source medium dependency. Source mediums specifically made to minimize jitter, such as high-end transports, will make it easier on the DAC. There is nothing that I know of in the computer industry that gives computer-based storage systems any translational benefit over to *DAC technology* that the traditional digital audio community is not already aware. So when it comes to sound reproduction, the traditional digital audio community is likely to still command the lead. If this is achieved reasonably inexpensively via pro-audio, or esoterically in boutique audio, is really an issue that is applicable re one's own system, resources, and goals.
I think one can partition what I shall call 'convenience' and 'sound reproduction' roughly to the transport (or source medium) and DAC respectively. Here's what I mean: I really liked Onhwy61's post where he was able to move from song to song, quickly and easily. For me, that would be a wonderful part of at least some of my listening experiences. There is an analogy to DVDs here: in terms of sales, the DVD has been the greatest home electronic success in history. And it is no wonder--DVDs offer a clear value proposition over VHS that virtually any video consumer can appreciate. Similarly, computer-based home entertainment systems (and variants thereof) offer great promise, to the degree that they offer not just more "convenience," but that this can operationally change the way we listen to music.
DACs with on-board clocks can re-clock the data stream, making them virtually immune to the transport, be it CD, hard drive, RAM, whatever. So there is no reason why convenience needs to be at the expense of high quality sound reproduction. But DACs are still not completely immune, as Jon hints towards in this article above. Cable reflections, ground bounce, chip load, etc. these will affect DACs even with on-board clocks, and highly resolving systems will invariably uncover a source medium dependency. Source mediums specifically made to minimize jitter, such as high-end transports, will make it easier on the DAC. There is nothing that I know of in the computer industry that gives computer-based storage systems any translational benefit over to *DAC technology* that the traditional digital audio community is not already aware. So when it comes to sound reproduction, the traditional digital audio community is likely to still command the lead. If this is achieved reasonably inexpensively via pro-audio, or esoterically in boutique audio, is really an issue that is applicable re one's own system, resources, and goals.