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That is truly sad ...

This whole thread is a perfect example of how shallow we are - we prefer to judge a transport's quality by the size, weight and amount of metal rather than actual objective performance data. Kind of reminds me of the joke about the difference between a cheap CD player and an expensive CD player is that the expensive one has a 20kg weight added to it's chassis.

John Atkinson provides a valuable service by actually providing jitter measurements in Stereophile reviews (measured in picoseconds peak-to-peak based on a Dunn J-test signal analysed by the Miller device).

Just for fun, I spent about 15 minutes summarizing the results for recent hi-rez players and the figures are very sobering (and disappointing):

(08/06) Classe CDP-202 319ps
(04/06) dCS P8i 198ps
(09/05) Bel Canto PL-1A 232ps
(07/05) Ayre C-5xe 289ps
(06/05) Linn Unidisk SC 257ps
(01/05) dCS Verdi LaScala 291ps
(12/03) Krell SACD Standard 197ps
(12/03) Linn Unidisk 1.1 179ps
(12/03) Sony XA-9000ES 176ps
(08/03) Esoteric DV-50 495ps (613ps on SACD)
(05/03) Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista 177.4ps
(01/02) Sony XA-777ES 171ps

It seems that most hi-rez players have jitter well above 200ps, with the number below 200ps limited to a handful. Interesting, the two Sony players (based on the same transport) have the lowest jitter out of the pack, proving that Sony DOES know how to design low jitter transports (even though their lasers fail regularly). I think the fact that the Sony players only play CDs and SACDs (and are not modified DVD transports) are quite illuminating, and suggest that a universal transport does indeed compromise jitter performance. The Esoteric DV-50 would stand out as being a particularly poor performer, despite the R&D invested by TEAC.

In comparison, a very well regarded player (Linn Sondek CD12) measures 136.6ps. This figure is astounding given that a PLL cicuit imposes a jitter floor of around 100-150ps.

When you consider that recent analysis suggests that jitter needs to be below 20ps to be truly inaudible, the above figures suggest that ALL curent hi-rez players are at least an order of magnitude above ideal.

The upcoming Slim Devices Transporter claims jitter at the DAC < 20ps. If this claim can be substantiated, then it should be a very interesting device to listen to.

One final comment: both John Atkinson (in Stereophile) and Ted Smith (on this forum) have in the past hypothesised that jitter may be euphonic. In particular, John has suggested that low frequency jitter may cause a perceived increased in soundstage. If so, then maybe some designersof the above players are perhaps subconsciously using jitter for euphonic reasons.

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