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Is jitter audible?

Spirit84

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I have been reading some comments online where several audio experts have suggested that jitter is not audible.
Is this actually correct?
 
As Don mentions, audibility of jitter highly depends on what profile it has. Dolby did some tests a few years back and found that pure sine wave spectrum jitter can be audible in a few nanosecond range.

Here is one set of results I have saved from their AES paper: Theoretical and Audible Effects of Jitter on Digital Audio Quality

dolbyjitter.png


The people who make statements about inaudibility of jitter usually don't know what jitter is :). And that it is not one thing. It is infinite number of things. It is like saying that bacteria is dangerous to you. That is only true of some bacteria and certain amount of it.
 
People who say that, usually ask for examples where jitter audibility has been demonstrated using a commercial music release and/or hardware.

Jitter audibility is a case, again, of quantity as well as quality of distortion. As in: no one says X can't possibly be audible, X doesn't exist, X can't be measured. But measuring a difference doesn't mean hearing one. X *can* be audible, if it's high enough....but how often *is* X high enough, in practice, with the sources and 'samples' we use?

CD player jitter for example is typically measured in picoseconds: thousandths of a nanosecond.

Maybe as per B&G's 1998 work that you cite, the next time I'm listening to pure sine waves at 8 kHz on different gear (preferably 90s vintage), I'll watch out for jitter?
 
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