Originally posted by GTM
A very time ago I saw an article in a mag..
Which magazine?
Playboy
What HifI
Journal of the AES
IEEE Spectrum
by a guy that is now well known
But you can't remember his name?
Hugh Hefner
Alvin Gold
Robert Adams (Analog Devices)
Stan Lipshitz (Waterloo University)
and, at the time, was just about the only person that was interested in getting to the bottom of the phenomenom of transports sounding different. Basically what he found was that the sound of a transport wasn't absolute.. it was dependant on the DAC that was used in combination with it. The reason? He found measureable differences between the the levels and type (ie spectrum) of Jitter being generated by the transports.
And he had appropriate test instruments? Because you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars of equipment to measure pico-seconds of jitter...
Did he also conduct a study to correlate the jitter (on a test instrument) with the ability of people to detect through their ears the effects of jitter. Putting that another way a proper test which married engineering and subjective testing?
This had an effect at the input stage of the DAC and the resulting spurious output at the analogue stage of the DAC was dependant on the Transport/DAC combination.
Again, just because it can be measured with a test instrument, does not mean it can be heard...
I thought it was well accepted these days that jitter can be audiable..in the sense that it can add colouration (ie distortion) to the analogue output stages of the DAC.
It is widely accepted in the Hifi press that jitter is audible, but none of the journalists have participated in properly conducted tests. Look at the way they review gear: the box arrives, the open it, they know who made it and how much it cost and the opinion is formed before it is plugged in. They never participate in blind tests to save themselves the humilation of not being able to demonstrate their "golden ears". Yet, audiophiles lap up the bullshit written by these reviewers and products succeed or fail based on a handful of badly conducted reviews.
So, if the article you mention was written by Hugh Hefner, appeared in Playboy and the test instrument was a bunny bouncing her boobs on the transport, then that is probably a far more interesting article, and more technically accomplished than anything by Alvin Hughes or Jimmy Gold writing in WhatHiFI+Stereophool.
If on the other hand this article was by Lipshitz or Adams and appeared in the IEEE or JAES, then it would have merit. No such article has been forthcoming, and the articles that have been published have concluded that jitter is not audible.
Let me take another tack: You only have to look at the group of people who become audiophiles: middle aged men, on the verge of age related hearing loss, with large disposable incomes. They want to buy a set of expensive gadgets, and need some justification for the expense, so as not to look stupid for buying something sonically indistinguishable from a much cheaper product. When it comes to CD transports "jitter" is the perfect excuse: jitter is an obscure topic in EE, and if someone should ask you why you've "wasted so much money on a CD player" you can mumble "oh it's jitter I read about it in hifi porn monthly, and it's definately audible, a reviewer swore blind he heard it in a single sighted test, it's the minute differences in clock blah blah" and 99.9% of the time the person asking will assume you know what your about. Then every once in a while someone will say, "OK then, I'll bring over my $100 dvd player and I'll blindfold you and swap between your transport and my DVD player, you tell me which is which"
So, here's my advice:
If your on a budget, spend your money on speakers - they are where the action is.
If you want an expensive transport, just buy it. When someone asks why you spent so much say that "you liked the way it looked"; "it's got a great warranty", "women love it", "I enjoy owning it", just don't go around claim huge sonic improvements because sometime, somewhere, someone will double blind test you
) would sound quite different.
). Interesting that it does seem to contradict/query the Benjamin and Gannon result in the "Audibility Considerations" sidebox right near the end.
.....steady!!!...
Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to get hold of the journals you've mentioned which is a little annoying as I'd like to have a look at some of those articles now.
