Originally Posted by Ronnie
Surely Streaming PCM over Ethernet between the SqueezeCentre and the Touch leaves that Stream more susceptible to Jitter than the Flac stream??

With no disrespect, Ronnie, I really thought you knew better than to even ask that.

It's not better or worse, Jitter does NOT exist over PACKET networking !!!

It's REBUFFERED.

Jitter does not become a problem until you get to synchronous communication.

It's not a problem until you reach brain dead SPDIF.

Think of it this way (which is actually not that far from the truth).

The PC/Mac EMAIL's the Song to the SqueezeBox and THEN the SqueezeBox PLAY's it.

Same thing if I emailed you a FLAC or WAV. No jitter comes into play. It's still a FILE not a Bitstream.

If the message was ENCRYPTED in FLAC, it decrypts it first and then PLAY's it.

It PLAY's it by dumping it into MEMORY and Clocking it out over SPDIF.

That memory is ALWAYS PCM.

This happens no matter HOW it gets there. WIFI, Wired, FLAC, WAV, MP3.

The hardware that clocks it out of the memory is the ONLY thing that effects quality (jitter).

The SPDIF clock doesn't get more nervous or jittery just because the CPU is twiddling it's thumbs or decoding FLAC.

DTS Test is a good test to verify both decoders are not buggy (decodeing on Server vs SqueezeBox).
But I've gone beyond that because DTS can tolerate some errors.
I've recorded it with TASCAM box I have and compared the bits.

Only thing left the quality of clocking which is normally free running from the CPU.

This is why the ID40 on 861v6 is a significant step. The Sooloos EMAIL's the Music FILE to the 861.
And this CRITICAL clock to clock it out of Memory can be a VERY well controled low jitter DAC clock !!!

- Fiddler (IMHO)

If you think listening to music is fun, try learning an instrument.
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