Ji-Ji-Ji-Jitter

[Digital_Thor]

Let me take you up on this. Here is an example of a perceptive bias. It is specifically speech related, but it fundamentally works in the same way as many other biases. Some biases may be altered by how you are feeling. Some might change over time - but not all...

You'll note it is consistent. It doesn't matter when or how long since you last listened, the difference in sound you percieve will still alter based on the mouth shape you see. Even when you know how and why it happens, you can't stop it happening.

Exactly why I stream directly from my own Linux setup, rather than most ready-to-go steamers, since they so often - IME - tend to totally trash the balance between movements and sound - especially in relation to lip-sync - and I really do not like that

 

[Hayabusa]

j..i...t....t..e.r

 

[Digital_Thor]

j..i...t....t..e.r

Just re-buffer that baby... have a tiny delay, and you're good to go

j..i...t....t..e.r -> ...........jitter

 

[boxerfan88]

My imagination isn't that good. Raising the DPLL settings eliminated a nasty sound that has been occurring for a couple of years. Call it jitter or somerthing else. It worked. And it if doesn't apply to DACs, I don't know why a DPLL setting was included on my DACs

Do you mind doing a simple test?

A. Preparation

1. Configure DPLL setting to the "worst" setting to your ears.
2. Choose a test track that had the objectionable sound with the "poor" DPLL setting. (call this Track A)
3. Generate an up-sampled copy of track A (say to 88200ksps or 176400ksps) (call this Track B)

B. Test

1. Playback track A & B.
2. Compare the two.
3. Any difference?

I'm just curious what you perceive/hear.

^^ my theory is that at higher sample rates, any jitter "time period" will be even smaller, therefore inaudible...

 

[antcollinet]

Just re-buffer that baby... have a tiny delay, and you're good to go

j..i...t....t..e.r -> ...........jitter

I do hope not - your "jitter" there has just got about 90% faster. Surely what you should be getting is:
from
j....i....t....t..e.r
to
j...i...t...t...e...r

 

[Digital_Thor]

I do hope not - your "jitter" there has just got about 90% faster. Surely what you should be getting is:
from
j....i....t....t..e.r
to
j...i...t...t...e...r

Haha... true. Thought I was being all fun and smart in a jiffy there . But you are of-course right

 

[Pareto Pragmatic]

AFAIK it applies to SPDIF input.

It is supposed to. That does not mean the DAC in questions does not apply that setting to all digital inputs. I only mention that as a possibility.

It actually says on the Loxjie D30 menu that lowering the value lowers jitter.

I am far from knowledgeable on this issue and I am sure I will be corrected if I am off base, but I would say that is not entirely accurate. My understanding is that DPLL adjusts the accuracy/precision of the clock in the DAC, which then can have impact on jitter. On one end of the scale it is more precise, but you can risk issues from mismatch with the clock on the input, and get more drop outs. On the other end the clock is less precise, but can handle mismatches better and help with drop outs. Which is why the suggestion that if you experience drop outs you should move in that direction. The "drop out" issue is the one that comes up in searches for DPLL most commonly, not jitter.

I assume that more precise clock settings on the DAC run the risk of more jitter, since clock mismatch is a main source of that. There are other sources though.

As for your subjective experience, I did play with DPLL settings a bit, using spdif. Literally I said, "What is DPLL? Let me see what it does if I change it!" Default was in the middle. As I moved towards more accurate clock settings, I found issues with the high frequencies. Moving it to the less accurate side, I heard issues with the bass. Those issues? Sounded like mild distortion. I had no drop outs at any setting. The difference was clear at max-middle-min settings, but one click made very little difference, and maybe I was not hearing as much as I thought. But 3-4 clicks, obvious. So I put it back to default and never thought about it again.

That was my subjective experience, for what it is worth. Which really isn't much, other than to say I have heard differences from different DPLL settings.

If you like what you hear, that's really what matters. But if you want to say what you hear is from jitter, then measurements are the way to nail that down.

 

[antcollinet]

It is supposed to. That does not mean the DAC in questions does not apply that setting to all digital inputs. I only mention that as a possibility.

It will only be applied to inputs where the clock is transmitted from the source (SPDIF, Toslink), and the internal clock must be adapted to that.

USB - the internal clock of the DAC is used so no PLL is needed or used.

And I shouldn't need to say it, but your personal subjective impressions are no more meaningful than OP's in the absense of measurements or controlled blind listening.

 

[solderdude]

Okay so looking at the manual about the DPLL setting on the Loxjie it is about what I would have thought. It is only for the SPDIF inputs (optical and coax). It would not have an effect on USB.

my Denon CD player and is connected to the DAC by an optical cable.

He also uses it this way..

On my single-ended system, the signal originates from a wi-fi connection to my iPad, which is connected to the DAC with a USB cable (using Apple's adapater)

When he can hear an improvement using USB while setting the levels that only affect TOSLINK and SPDIF (his CDP may have both optical and coax ?) then it must be placebo.
When he can only hear an improvement using the optical input we cannot really know what's going on in his system with his connection and the output of his CDP and how the receiver in the DACs react.

 

[Sokel]

That's from ESS controller notes:




It applies to all inputs of course.
The best way to know is using the tightest DSD DPLL setting (0 or 1 usually) with really high DSD (as 512,etc) and suboptimal conditions where it really breaks.
I have it tested many times and at such tight setting everything matters (no non-certified USB cable works for exmple,or long ones,etc)

 

[JSmith]

JSmith

 

[Sokel]

View attachment 399956 View attachment 399957


JSmith

 

[AaronJ]

ESS screwed up with the company name. Too many S’s in it that people think it’s Shrill, Sibilant, Shiny, Sharp, Shimmering.

 

[ejr]

Jitter - as I understand it - manifest itself as a tiny amount of background noise - hiss if you will. Like higher frequency mistakes. But not mistakes that alter the sound all together. It's just a slight background noise from behind the technique of digital signal transmissions.

That's actually a good description of what I was hearing. Though I would describe it as more than slight and it was most noticable in the higher frequencies. Its like on a synth, where you would add white noise to give a colorless tone from an oscillator a little grit. You still hear the underlying frequency, but there's a bit of a buzz or distortion. I'm probably not describing this well enough, but I'm not talking about very subtle distinctions here. It was very obvious. Anyone with ears wouldn't want to listen to it for long. When I heard it in the D30, I bought the D40, but heard it there as well. I was getting ready to buy yet another (and even more expensive) DAC just to get rid of it for good -- or go back to plugging my powered speakers into the earphone jacks or start using headphones for everything.

 

[ejr]

It is supposed to. That does not mean the DAC in questions does not apply that setting to all digital inputs. I only mention that as a possibility.


I am far from knowledgeable on this issue and I am sure I will be corrected if I am off base, but I would say that is not entirely accurate. My understanding is that DPLL adjusts the accuracy/precision of the clock in the DAC, which then can have impact on jitter. On one end of the scale it is more precise, but you can risk issues from mismatch with the clock on the input, and get more drop outs. On the other end the clock is less precise, but can handle mismatches better and help with drop outs. Which is why the suggestion that if you experience drop outs you should move in that direction. The "drop out" issue is the one that comes up in searches for DPLL most commonly, not jitter.

I assume that more precise clock settings on the DAC run the risk of more jitter, since clock mismatch is a main source of that. There are other sources though.

As for your subjective experience, I did play with DPLL settings a bit, using spdif. Literally I said, "What is DPLL? Let me see what it does if I change it!" Default was in the middle. As I moved towards more accurate clock settings, I found issues with the high frequencies. Moving it to the less accurate side, I heard issues with the bass. Those issues? Sounded like mild distortion. I had no drop outs at any setting. The difference was clear at max-middle-min settings, but one click made very little difference, and maybe I was not hearing as much as I thought. But 3-4 clicks, obvious. So I put it back to default and never thought about it again.

That was my subjective experience, for what it is worth. Which really isn't much, other than to say I have heard differences from different DPLL settings.

If you like what you hear, that's really what matters. But if you want to say what you hear is from jitter, then measurements are the way to nail that down.

I didn't hear drop outs in either direction from the lowest to the the highest DPLL value on each DAC.

I heard noise in the higher frequencies, which made the tracks sound distored to me when I listened to music streaming from my iPad to the D30 and dialog sound unnatural when streaming videos to my TV via the Roky Ultra on the D40. Both worsened when I decreased the DPLL values to zero and went away when I increased the DPLL values to the maximum.

 

[krabapple]

IMHO the Denon DAC does well with recordings like this (symphonic, where all the instruments are in one big studio or hall and tend to blend together) and less well with contemporary music or jazz combos with fewer instruments, recorded track by track, with potentially a lot of separation between them.

IMHO this is entirely illusory, or a small output level difference between the DACs.

Which brings me back to a post that I made earlier, to the effect that a wider variety of music should be used to evaluate DACs and other audiophile equipment.

You keep jumping to conclusions from the wrong experiment, so no, this is not indicated. Stop trusting these 'intuitions'.

What music do you imagine has been used to compare DACs in the past?

 

[krabapple]

Digital also can be done wrong. Even today. See the discussions about intersample clipping , especially when using SRC for upsampling.

Digital does not automatically mean "good". It needs to be implemented well to be good.

Of course.

But intersample clipping has to be really quite bad to be audible.

 

[ejr]

Do you mind doing a simple test?

A. Preparation

1. Configure DPLL setting to the "worst" setting to your ears.
2. Choose a test track that had the objectionable sound with the "poor" DPLL setting. (call this Track A)
3. Generate an up-sampled copy of track A (say to 88200ksps or 176400ksps) (call this Track B)

B. Test

1. Playback track A & B.
2. Compare the two.
3. Any difference?

I'm just curious what you perceive/hear.

^^ my theory is that at higher sample rates, any jitter "time period" will be even smaller, therefore inaudible...

Can't do step 3. Don't have any means to record anymore. But the simpler test -- and what worked for me -- was to just do what made the objectionable charactersitics of both DACs that I had been listening to for a couple of years go away. Setting the DPLL value to zero made it worse, so I set it to the max and the distortion went away. We're not talking about subtle differences here that only trained ears could distinguish. It's bad enough that anyone would think -- "Oh, that's nasty!" -- whenever the sound went high enough in pitch. The kind of thing that would make you reach for an Eq or tone control knob if there was one.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Can't do step 3. Don't have any means to record anymore. But the simpler test -- and what worked for me -- was to just do what made the objectionable charactersitics of both DACs that I had been listening to for a couple of years go away. Setting the DPLL value to zero made it worse, so I set it to the max and the distortion went away. We're not talking about subtle differences here that only trained ears could distinguish. It's bad enough that anyone would think -- "Oh, that's nasty!" -- whenever the sound went high enough in pitch. The kind of thing that would make you reach for an Eq or tone control knob if there was one.

I repeat you are being stubborn. Enjoy the circle of confusion.

 

[JSmith]

a wider variety of music should be used to evaluate DACs and other audiophile equipment

Using Multitones in Audio Test

www.ap.com

A multitone can be made even more program like, by varying the amplitude of the individual tones to more closely match the spectral content of music or speech.

Multitone Analysis with APx500

www.ap.com

JSmith