Is the Monarchy DIP effective?

previous post--grammatical correction bases for basis

I have a MkI DIP that I've used for several years. I've found its effectiveness ultimately hinges on both transport quality and the DAC's receiver section in particular. It brought significant improvements to a older CD player's toslink signal when feeding an older receiver chip. However, with either a quality low jitter transport or a newer Crystal receiver chip (the CS8414 for example), the results were marginal. I would imagine that for the best low jitter transports and DACs, the DIP may actually degrade performance. I suspect the DIP reclocks via its PLL no better than a certain design limited level of jitter (I can't imagine it would ever be better than 250 ps, considering the age of its design). 250 ps was considered a very good jitter specification five years ago - if that's better than your transport and DAC's native jitter levels, you've gained; if not, you've taken a step backwards. I believe the latest Crystal receivers have intrinsic jitter around 150-200 ps. The DIP doesn't compare to the new technology jitter busters, IMHO (the 2 ps output D2D-1 that I now use comes to mind). But at its price and in the right system, the DIP is still a good value.

Postscript to my earlier post: I also had a Sigma II 24/96 and it had the CS8414 receiver chip. The results using a DIP with this DAC (coaxial digital - not toslink) were slightly noticable, but undramatic, and undetectable with a quality transport. By the way, the current jitter boxes still use PLL to some extent, so it should not be discounted as passe. The difference is that the new boxes use a high precision second reclocking stage that the DIP does not.

Would the Sony 7700 dvd be considered a good transport with low jitter?

I am not familiar enough with that machine to say. If you can ever get a response from them, you may want to try asking Sony or perhaps your dealer. Jitter is a more mainstream design issue than it was five or six years ago, so I would think all manufacturers consider jitter attenuation within their price point constraints. I have a CEC transport, which I know has low design jitter. By the way, don't overlook your cables as an additional jitter source. Improper cabling can add tons of it via reflection.