Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Jitter review.

Never mind. I reread that Stereophile article and it's talking about jitter driving the SPDIF Coax and Toslink INPUTS. It never discusses the actual Jitter of the SPDIF outputs.

The Jitter it's measuring is what the internal DAC sees. How they do that is beyond me.

George,

As I read it it compares jitter on a Mac mini WiFI out @ 16b as 268ps p-p and a pc soundcard with toslink out @16b as 313ps p-p.
These are all measured at the analogue out of the Transporter.

I seems from my limited reading that a good DAC can process jitter levels even at nanosecond levels.
So does jitter realy matter if you can reclock?

A previous Stereophile review (May 2005) gave Airport Express jitter @ 258ps p-p.

Using a MacMini directly into a good DAC was popular and as good as a top transport.

A DAC is equivalent to a Pre, the more you spend the more coherent a signal can be retrieved.

So why the issue with jitter, as long as its moderate in the digital domain the good DAC retimes it.

Roger

Theory and practice are often different it seems...

There is also digital domain jitter and I think that's what most people are focussing on as they will be using digital connections between all these devices if they are interested in maximum quality.

Mark

I think I read a few years back that the 588, when Hi-Fi News seemed to use it as a benchmark for their techie tests, was about 180-200. Whether this was the same type of measurement I'm not sure. I'll google it when I get chance.

Yes, it's surprisingly high. About the same as my Sony DVP-S7700 DVD player.

Here is a better article from Stereophile explaining their Jitter Measurement technique. They so happen to be measuring the infamous 508.24.

http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/590/index5.html

I think that John Atkinson mentioned in the measurement section of the Nagra CD player review in the latest Stereophile that he's just upgraded his jitter measurement. It makes you wonder how much variation in results is due to differences in measurement methodology and equipment and therefore how meaningful comparisons might be.

Cheers, Ian

I'm sure there is lots.

Roger

I think the answer is yes, it does matter. Are you familiar with the Genesis Digital Lens After extolling the virtues of reclocking the reviewer notes on page 6 under the heading of Bizarre phenomena that the jitter signatures got through the Lens's RAM and ended up at the DAC.

Regards
Gary

I've also noticed that they are not consistent with WHERE they measure jitter. For instance, in their review of the Sonos ZP80, the TOSlink output was used, rather than the coaxial SPDIF output. This seems strange, as TOSlink outputs are normally far higher in jitter than coax.

Hard to know the truth.

The real question is how much Jitter can a Meridian Preamp handle before it starts to audibly matter.

The real question for me is at what point does it audibly matter for any preamp that is fed by any excellent DAC. Is the garbage-in really garbage? Or has the technology come far enough that you don't need re-clocking for this purpose in the first place? It doesn't quite make sense to me that a SB3 is even remotely comparable to a "high end transport". I fear the Emperor's New Clothes are here.