Period is the American name for "."
Full stop is the English name for "."

In the UK, we would say "This is just the best, full stop." to mean that this is the best, and there is no doubt about it.

In America, they say "This is just the best, period.", meaning the same thing.

Martin was simply stating that he thought that the statement needed no argument, and being friendly to the English and the Americans by using both dialects.

You will notice, as you learn more about the English language that it is not one language. The language Americans call English is quite different, in many small ways, to the language the English call English.

It's all good fun.


Anyway, moving on to Jitter:

The S/P-DIF format is inherently jittery. This is because it puts data down the wire using a block type structure, with a regular pattern, every 192 samples. This patterning promotes jitter. This is made even worse by patterning that happens in the audio data caused by the waveform of the music.

Meridian goes to great lengths to minimise this jitter, but there's only so far you can go within the limits of S/P-DIF. Putting a FIFO in the speaker is the only way of removing audible the effects of jitter completely.

MHR is a scrambling system that makes the data on the wire look like random noise, therefore 'decorrelating' the data on the wire. The S/P-DIF block structure remains, but this system does remove jitter caused by patterns in the audio waveform.

Upsampling is a completely different issue. Running the system faster will push the audible effects of jitter up the audio spectrum, possibly pushing it out of audible range. I say *possibly* because I don't really understand how upsampling can significantly reduce jitter.


Simon.