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

Could some evil genius review current thinking on computer jitter levels and how they compare with trad transports?
Are Macs optical outs better than Pc soundcards?
Where do WiFi devices come in all this?
Answers on a postcard please.

Roger

> Are Macs optical outs better than Pc soundcards?
>
why would they be any different, materially? they both use the same chips and hardware subsystems under the covers (other than the high-end specialized boards, etc.).

doody.

If jitter were measured I would expect the order to be something like this:

PC/MAC - poor - lots of electrical noise in the computer to cause problesm

External soundcard - better - detached from the main noise source


Traditional CD players - better than a PC/Mac unless using a specialised card

WiFi devices - even better - completely decoupled from any computer noise

High-End transport - better again due to components and architecture designed for low jitter

Modified WiFi - best - so little already in a wifi device which can cause noise - so once modified to squeeze(box!) every ounce of performance they beat high end players

Mark

Has anybody measured these claims?

Roger

Not directly one against the other as far as I know, but I have followed numbers for many of these devices over the years and feel that the order I gave is probably pretty accurate. Many numbers are available via Google searches.

Mark

Roger

If you do a search of the archives on Mark's and my user names you'll find plenty of chat on our adventures on moving from traditional high-end transports to wireless streaming devices based on real-world listening comparisons rather than measurements.

Regards
Gary

Found some recent measurements on SB3

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=24392&highlight=jitter+measurements+SB3

Does anyone know specs on Meridian Players?

The key question here is at what point does jitter reduction matter. Having a claim to be the lowest is utterly irrelevant if the hearing threshold is achieved by all devices. At what level of jitter is jitter actually a problem?

just from having owned these; over the years of listening experience - my $.02 matches essentially identical with Mark;

Currently for me, the new AppleTV via it's 802.11n AE wireless WiFi is virtually indistinguishable from my Elite transport. I suspect it may not quite match M- or other higher end transports (don't have any of those), but to KiS's point, it may be a moot point for most ears...

I recently was able to stream some dts and dd5.1 from iTunes to the ATV >> processed by the G68.. very sweet indeed...

ken

Sterophile quotes the Linn Majik(�1500) rejection of word clock jitter @193 picoseconds peak-peak.

SB3 linear 491 picoseconds peak to peak.
SB3 SMPS 459 picoseconds peak -peak.
Can someone ellucidate these results please.

Roger

What are you using for DTS/DD5.1? The newly released beta of Handbrake? They claim to support 5.1 on the ATV with this latest release.

Roger,

I don't know an answer to your question.

But here are some measurements Sterophile made of the Transporter better than above numbers but still above 193 but comments indicated the Transporter is considered very good. He also said Coax was significantly better than TosLink. There are lots of ways to measure jitter and I think you'd have to have the same engineer and setup to compare apples to apples. It's sort of like the old watts debate.

http://www.stereophile.com/mediaservers/207slim/index4.html