Sound of digital jitter and error correction?


What does digital jitter and error correction sound like?
mshan
Someone over at Audioasylum.com just posted this link:

http://www.jitter.de/english/engc_navfr.html

From that article:
- improved ease of listening
- increased clarity
- improved high frequency response
- better instrument separation
- more information
- better timing
- better soundstage
- improved overall audio performance
I'm no expert but my experience with a MArantz CD67 (which is a high-jitter player) is that jitter makes everything smooth and blurred. The effect when I added a monarchy DIP and an external DAC was that the DAC alone made almost no difference, but the DIP (the jitter reducer) made everything more focussed and defined ... soundstage, attack of acoustic guitar ... it all came into focus.
So jitter doesn't necessarily sound bad ... I think it gives a warmth to the sound, but it definitely causes great loss of detail.
Listen to the same recording on both vinyl and digital. Pay particular attention to cymbals as they fade away. You'll see the difference very quickly - the "hash" sound of the digital cymbal just before it fades to quiet is courtesy of jitter. With vinyl, the fade out retains its tonal character all the way to quiet. Many other examples, but this one I find to be the best illustrator.
Jitter is basically a form of distortion...

TIMING JITTER is the variation in time of the significant instants (such as, zero crossings) of a digital signal, relative to a clock with no jitter above some low frequency (about 10 Hz).

RELATIVE JITTER / ALIGNMENT JITTER is the variation in time of the significant instants (such as, zero crossings) of a digital signal, relative to a clock recovered from the signal itself. (This clock will have jitter components above 10 Hz but none above a higher frequency in the 1 kHz to 10 kHz range.)