Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Is jitter audible and what does it sound like? (Read 47491 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #50 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
How much jitter is audible is thus not an question with a simple single number answer. Consumers generally lack the background and interest to manage just a single number.  Reality is that large numbers of numbers are needed to describe the problem.

Most audiophiles would agree with this. The mantra that human hearing is complicated and mysterious and partly unknown, is almost universal amongst audiophiles.

While it is true, the good news is that you can get rid of such complications by taking "safe" limits, which contain enough contingency for all practically occurring variations, and use the resulting simple value as a guideline how to build gear. This has long been done with distortion. THD+N is a very simplistic measure compared to the complications of human hearing, yet it is fairly straightforward to put down a number that is "good enough" for all practical cases. "Good enough" meaning that even a golden ear won't notice a problem. We know from research that in the case of THD+N, the audibility limit is above 0.1%. That's therefore "good enough", and any better won't make any audible difference, with a high degree of confidence.

The same thing of course applies in the case of jitter, which basically means that if the jitter is below a couple of nanoseconds, you're on the safe side, even in the most critical case. Any better than that won't make an audible difference, with a high degree of confidence.

So all those large numbers of numbers can be condensed to a few simple data points, if the goal is merely to be on the safe side. It turns out that with today's technology, neither THD+N nor jitter poses a significant problem anymore, i.e. reaching the safe side is easy and needs no expensive technology. That would be a point that even the layman should be able to understand.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #51 –
Agreed, and to further add to that it is important to note that except in very rare instances it is impossible to conceal an audibly objectionable level of jitter yet still show acceptable, friendly, low levels of THD+N. I learned this from the brilliant digital engineer Bob Adams of Analog Devices decades ago.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #52 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: Pusherman on
Quote from: theriverlethe on
I am interested in his claim that mass-market AV receivers can have thousands of picoseconds of jitter over HDMI.  Granted, this is also a video connection, which makes you even less likely to notice distortion.

They also have DSP and thus buffer audio data which kills jitter.


The high numbers for jitter that were measured were taken at the analog output of the AVR which were downstream of all  of those enhancements. It was real.




Could you explain this in a little more detail?  I'm not understanding why HDMI would influence jitter of the downstream system.  HDMI is a packet-based digital protocol, how does the rate at which packets arrive influence the analog performance of the device?  Unless the DAC is actually clocked off of the HDMI clock (which would be tough since a lot of different HDMI clocks are possible), the DAC's jitter shouldn't depend on if you fed it with HDMI or any other input.  Just like how playing Spotify vs. iTunes doesn't change the jitter in your sound card. 

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #53 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
The high numbers for jitter that were measured were taken at the analog output of the AVR which were downstream of all  of those enhancements. It was real.

I don't trust anything that king of the snake oil peddlers says. I looked into Paul Miller's measurements on that unit they like to trot out to scare people, a boogieman, the Yamaha RXV3900, reviewed in Feb 2009, and although the unit got a "FAIL" rating, by my reading of the raw numbers it was because it only put out 95 wpc cleanly yet was marketed as 100w/ch or more, I guess. Look at the pages for PCM jitter tests and all I see is "Passing" grades, although it isn't patently obvious, I'm afraid, as to what's HDMI and what's not*. In fact his charts aren't that easy to interpret. It took me forever to deduce the m on the x-axis, on some graphs, is short for "magnitude", i.e. no real units given [but you can usually figure out when they mean dB, etc.]

Sign up for an account to register, if you don't already have one. It is free, easy, and solicitation free:
http://www.milleraudioresearch.com/avtech/index.html

He gives some of the most detailed raw specs out there and I'd suspect you've already seen his site but did you ever actually examine the RXV3900 raw data yourself, rather than trust what others claim about it?

*CORRECTION: I see 96k/24 bit does get a "FAIL" for HDMI jitter, at the very bottom of the LPCM data for that Feb 09 test of the RXV3900. OOps.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #54 –
Quote from: Thad E Ginathom on
Isn't it an audiophile fact that electrons have memory? Thus, signals which have been exposed to jitter, must surely be left feeling, and sounding... jittery!


You have to dilute your jitter to at least 30C.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #55 –
Quote from: saratoga on
I'm not understanding why HDMI would influence jitter of the downstream system.  HDMI is a packet-based digital protocol, how does the rate at which packets arrive influence the analog performance of the device?  Unless the DAC is actually clocked off of the HDMI clock (which would be tough since a lot of different HDMI clocks are possible), the DAC's jitter shouldn't depend on if you fed it with HDMI or any other input.

That AV receivers clocking system must be weak, is it HDMI transport layers jitter at all or just AV Receivers internal crappy clocking jitter?

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #56 –
Quote from: theriverlethe on
Quote from: Thad E Ginathom on
Isn't it an audiophile fact that electrons have memory? Thus, signals which have been exposed to jitter, must surely be left feeling, and sounding... jittery!


You have to dilute your jitter to at least 30C.


And like cures like? So we pass our signal through a homeopathic jittered solution to remove jitter?





The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #57 –
Quote from: Thad E Ginathom on
Quote from: theriverlethe on
Quote from: Thad E Ginathom on
Isn't it an audiophile fact that electrons have memory? Thus, signals which have been exposed to jitter, must surely be left feeling, and sounding... jittery!


You have to dilute your jitter to at least 30C.


And like cures like? So we pass our signal through a homeopathic jittered solution to remove jitter?


Precisely.  Just be careful about grounding.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #58 –
Quote from: mzil on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
The high numbers for jitter that were measured were taken at the analog output of the AVR which were downstream of all  of those enhancements. It was real.

I don't trust anything that king of the snake oil peddlers says.


I have no disagreement, there. But, I'm citing from the same body of Miller Reasearch as you appear to be, except I'm talking about the relevant HDMI info, and I see through the fog of numbers and understand that without proper interpretation in the light of audibility, that data is just numbers.  It is even a pretty good example of cherry picking the units of measurement in order to produce impressive-looking numbers.

Quote
I looked into Paul Miller's measurements on that unit they like to trot out to scare people, a boogieman, the Yamaha RXV3900, reviewed in Feb 2009, and although the unit got a "FAIL" rating, by my reading of the raw numbers it was because it only put out 95 wpc cleanly yet was marketed as 100w/ch or more, I guess. Look at the pages for PCM jitter tests and all I see is "Passing" grades,


Obvious deflection because PCM related performance isn't the issue at hand. HDMI performance is.

Quote
Sign up for an account to register, if you don't already have one. It is free, easy, and solicitation free:
http://www.milleraudioresearch.com/avtech/index.html


Been there, done that years ago.

Quote
He gives some of the most detailed raw specs out there and I'd suspect you've already seen his site but did you ever actually examine the RXV3900 raw data yourself, rather than trust what others claim about it?


Despite your apparent hopes and false claims, I'm not that naive or poorly informed. I find it insulting that someone would assert that I was so foolish.. It also shows ignorance of easily knowable facts.  because if one knew anything at all about past AVS-based discussions between Amir and I, they'd know that I had done my homework and studied the Miller Research site long before Amir brought it up.

It is you who may be playing the fool on several grounds. What are those raw specs but numbers?  Where is the reliable data that relates to real world audibility?  Why are you prattling on about LPCM data when HDMI is the issue at hand?

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #59 –
I'm the original poster. Thanks for all your responses, everybody. I hope this thread will never be removed as it really has cleared up many issues, and I'm sure many others will also find it useful.
I better clear something up:

1: I've never believed jitter was audible or a problem at all. I asked here to clear up my doubts (doubts instilled by the hi-fi industry). Although I misunderstood some things, then my assumptions were correct: Jitter is not audible except for a few exceptions. This point mostly goes to ajinfla (it seemed to me that you believed I claimed jitter was audible).
2: My vinyl vs. CD comparisons were simply taking the vinyl LP and the original CD (not a vinyl-rip) and compare them and see which media I liked the best. Then I would keep/buy that media. I used my own collection for this, so by now I have compared around 700 albums and singles, but that's a different discussion. This experience was one of the reasons why my friend asked me about record players and particularly good vinyl records.
As for whether a vinyl-rip and the original vinyl sounds the same, then I would say they do, if the rip was recorded properly. I'm sure Michael Fremer would say that he could hear a world of difference ;-). Anyway, I took several CDs and recorded them with a regular no-name very long cable from my CD player into the line-in on my computer, matched the levels (my cable does actually lower the volume of one channel) and then did an ABX test in Foobar. I couldn't hear any difference! Yet people pay gazillions for cables and A/D converters to record vinyl records. I downloaded some rips from one setup that used a turntable costing around 18,000 dollars (including an 8,000 dollar cartridge). On top of that he had used a cable from the phono preamp to the A/D converter costing around 2,800 dollar. Yet, my reasonably priced Rega sounded better than this setup!

And yes, the salesmen love me, as Saratoga said ;-). Unfortunately, much of the hi-fi industry is built on speculation, assumptions, reputation, price and subjective reviews. After all, nobody can know everything, and we all tend to listen to experts in certain fields (for instance earthquake experts) rather than go out and investigate for ourselves. So, as someone said, when a salesman or an audiophile on an internet forum tells us some pseudo science we'll believe it as we simply don't know any better. Many of the responses you've given me in this discussion are still too complex for me to fully understand, so in this case I also just listen to the experts (you).
So, a lot of us have been suckered in by aggressive salesmen to buy, or at least listen to things that don't change anything, or then change very little. And there seems to have been an enormous increase in focus on materials. Especially one particular salesman chew my ear off for two hours about how crappy my equipment was, how much crap everybody else was selling, how much CDs sucked, how much better vinyl was, how much better their equipment was than anybody elses, how much of an improvement audiophile grade power cords made, and so on, and if I didn't agree I wasn't serious about audio. As I was borrowing a CD player he also gave me an expensive power cord to try out as well, which another, very nice, seller had also done earlier (different brand), and in both cases I'm sure I could hear what improvements it made: it was exactly 0 %!
And as I sometimes say: If audiophiles had actually bothered to do listening tests of all their claims, there would be no arguing about jitter, 24 bit/16 bit, ultra-high sample rates, aliasing, etc. But alas! Hardly any audiophiles want to put those claims to the test.
Thanks again, everybody. I've been sick of thinking about hi-fi for quite a while, and now that all my stuff is in storage and I've gone three months to almost the other end of the world I can get some peace of mind .
"What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"
- Christopher Hitchens
"It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge"
- Sam Harris

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #60 –
Just to add:
Someone posted this link:
http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...51322&st=25

In there an experiment with both "regular" people and "professionals" were conducted and there were quite clear results:

Quote
All participants could distinguish between sounds with and without time
jitter when the jitter size was 9216 ns. A few could when it was 1152 ns. No
one could when it was as small as 576 ns.

There was a question, however, if the result would depend on the listening
environments and the skill of the listeners. That is why we carried on the
second experiment. This second experiment is reported in the paper, the one
that you probably read.

Listeners in the second experiment were all professionals, audio engineers,
recording/mixing engineers, musicians, etc... Sound materials were selected
by the listeners so that each listener could use his (her) familiar
materials. The experimenter (we) visited the listeners' studios or listening
rooms so that we could use listeners' own DAC, amplifiers, loudspeakers and
headphones. The system configurations, therefore, varied among listeners.
They were mostly mid-end or above, I suppose.

As you can find in the paper, some listeners could distinguish the sounds
when time jitter was 500 ns. It could not be detected, however, when the
jitter was as small as 250 ns.


In Ethan Winer's "AES Damn lies" video he mentions that his USB soundcard is spec'ed at 0.5 ns. So what an enormous difference! That's really a number that says something. I'm very glad I saw those numbers. That really helped a lot! I really liked the ending of the portion I quoted parts of above: "I won't
believe someone who says that he can detect time jitter of 100 ps or less in CDs."
"What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"
- Christopher Hitchens
"It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge"
- Sam Harris

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #61 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: mzil link=msg=0 date=
..., I'd suspect you've already seen his site

 I find it insulting that someone would assert that I was so foolish.. It also shows ignorance of easily knowable facts.  because if one knew anything at all about past AVS-based discussions between Amir and I, they'd know that I had done my homework and studied the Miller Research site long before Amir brought it up.

It is you who may be playing the fool on several grounds.
Yikes. Relax. You are attacking me for not being omniscient and knowing which sites you have or haven't examined? Are you serious? I already wrote, quoted above, that my gut feeling is that you probably had, but attacking me for not being 100% sure if you had examined the raw data in person at the Miller Research site? Are you for real?

I'm also at fault for not being intimately aware of every single AVS-based discussion you've had with him and what exactly was discussed in each one? Isn't it in the hundreds? Including some jitter related threads that are literally thousands of posts long and the vast majority of them I've never seen?

 
Quote
Why are you prattling on about LPCM data when HDMI is the issue at hand?
I was trying to be helpful by mentioning that the HDMI data on the RXV3900 can be discovered by opening the sub section of Miller's report called "LPCM Performance". That wasn't intuitively obvious to me, and I completely missed it at first, so I mentioned it for the benefit of others.
See the screen shot:
http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php...st&p=906265
[attachment=8392:Miller_R...for_HDMI.jpg]

I also mentioned the report appeared in Feb 2009, so you or anyone else could find it more quickly, on a site that to the best of my knowledge  does not have all the many years of reports alphabetized, so in order to find this one I had to open every year manually and search each one of them individually. I hope you didn't take my mentioning which issue it appeared in as an insult, too.

I admitted that I had made a mistake after writing my post and had misread the Miller Reasearch page:
Quote
*CORRECTION: I see 96k/24 bit does get a "FAIL" for HDMI jitter, at the very bottom of the LPCM data for that Feb 09 test of the RXV3900. OOps.
but seeing as my lack of omniscience regarding every single conversation you've had with him, over hundreds(?), with some of the jitter related threads (where he specifically discusses his jitter article, including the Yamaha RXV3900 data) having over two three thousand entries, I no longer wish to discuss it.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #62 –
Quote from: KozmoNaut on
Quote from: board on
My friend's attitude is that jitter is omnipresent and always audible and smears the stereo image etc. (like the comment above), so although he exclusively listens to digital audio he is starting to think vinyl might be the way to go to get rid of the issue of jitter. Surface noise, pops, clicks, etc. from vinyl can be filtered out by our brains, whereas jitter is an omnipresent 'grating' and unpleasant sound.


Your friendly is sadly very misinformed. Jitter in digital audio does manifest itself as noise in the signal. But like you said, it's way below audible levels, unless the recording is done at a ridiculously low level. It can't do anything else, and certainly not "smear" anything at all. To claim that it is omnipresent and "grating" just shows that your friend has bought into the audiophile bullshit machine, big-time.

If your friend is so worried about jitter, he should be absolutely mortified at the amount of wow on vinyl records, even good ones. There can be a significant pitch difference as the record spins if the center hole isn't perfectly aligned. You mostly notice it on long sustained tones like organ music, you get a warbling or pitch rising and faling with the ~1.8 second period of the record's rotation.

Wow on a vinyl record is several orders of magnitudes beyond even very bad digital jitter, and the noise floor is significantly higher.

And that's before you get into other effects such as pre-echo (you can hear a faint copy of loud transients ~1.8 seconds before they hit, because the grooves slightly distort each other during the vinyl production process, or because the master tape has suffered from bleed-through. And of course, everything gets worse the closer you get to the center of the record, as there is less vinyl in each groove per revolution, so the dynamic range and noise floor suffers.


Really good points about the wow (& flutter) of vinyl.  Thanks. 
However, I think you might be wrong about your very last comment: 

Quote
everything gets worse the closer you get to the center of the record, as there is less vinyl in each groove per revolution, so the dynamic range and noise floor suffers.


The rate of vinyl playback is constant, like a car going down a highway at 33 & 1/3 miles per hour.  The rate of the needle across the groove doesn't slow down or speed up, therefore there isn't a loss of quality (similar to IPS, inches per second, of tape).  Rather instead, it's more like the car (needle) is on a road which is curving more and more.  The speed of the car over the pavement doesn't change.  Similarly, in vinyl, the speed of the needle over the vinyl doesn't change either, so there's no change in medium quality.  If there is, it's for different reasons at least.  Of coure the needle comes to an end, but that's like a car coming to the end of a road.  There's not less medium to represent the waveforms.  it's 33 & 1/3 (or 45, or 78) all the way through.  Guys, back me up on this. 

Anyways, everything else you wrote seems agreeable. 

EDIT:  I just realised, you might have been talking about the wow/flutter/jitter getting worse at the center of the record.  Is this what you meant? and if so, could you please elaborate on this relationship? 

I'm not entirely understanding this.
Be a false negative of yourself!

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #63 –
Quote from: Nystagmus on
There's not less medium to represent the waveforms.  it's 33 & 1/3 (or 45, or 78) all the way through.  Guys, back me up on this.

You're wrong there. It is not the angular velocity that matters here, but the tangential velocity. In other words, the closer you get to the center, the smaller the groove length per revolution.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #64 –
Quote from: Nystagmus on
Quote
everything gets worse the closer you get to the center of the record, as there is less vinyl in each groove per revolution, so the dynamic range and noise floor suffers.


The rate of vinyl playback is constant, like a car going down a highway at 33 & 1/3 miles per hour.  The rate of the needle across the groove doesn't slow down or speed up, therefore there isn't a loss of quality (similar to IPS, inches per second, of tape).  Rather instead, it's more like the car (needle) is on a road which is curving more and more.  The speed of the car over the pavement doesn't change.  Similarly, in vinyl, the speed of the needle over the vinyl doesn't change either, so there's no change in medium quality.  If there is, it's for different reasons at least.  Of coure the needle comes to an end, but that's like a car coming to the end of a road.  There's not less medium to represent the waveforms.  it's 33 & 1/3 (or 45, or 78) all the way through.  Guys, back me up on this. 

The speed of rotation is always the same and does not change between outer groove and inner groove, but the speed of the needle gets slower.
Assuming that the vinyl is has a diameter of 30cm and the label has a diameter of 10cm, the needle passes in the outer groove pi*30cm=94,25cm per circle and in the inner groove pi*10cm=31.42cm per circle. This means that the needle passes in the outer groove 3 times more groove per time-unit than in the inner groove.

Update:
I checked wikipedia. Vinyl with 33 1/3 circles per minute has a speed of the groove of 50cm/sec on the outer groove and 20cm/sec on the inner groove.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #65 –
Quote from: Nystagmus on
The rate of vinyl playback is constant, like a car going down a highway at 33 & 1/3 miles per hour.


An example of confusing linear velocity and rotational velocity which in fact are two very different things.

The speed of cars is given as a linear velocity which makes sense because they generally travel in straight lines.

The relationship between linear velocity and rotational velocity includes the radius.  This is also known as CAV or constant angular velocity.

The linear speed of the stylus in the groove is therefore decreasing as the tone arm plays the recording. IOW, the linear speed is proportional to radius.


Quote
The rate of the needle across the groove doesn't slow down or speed up, therefore there isn't a loss of quality (similar to IPS, inches per second, of tape).


Completely and utterly false.

The rate of the needle across the groove slows down proportional to decreasing groove radius, and therefore there is a serious loss of quality.

This loss of quality is readily measured and it was always completely and obviously audible to me.

It was well known that the common presence of orchestral crescendos at the end of musical works was a source of challenge and frustration to vinyl mastering engineers.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #66 –
Quote from: board on
In Ethan Winer's "AES Damn lies" video he mentions that his USB soundcard is spec'ed at 0.5 ns. So what an enormous difference! That's really a number that says something. I'm very glad I saw those numbers. That really helped a lot! I really liked the ending of the portion I quoted parts of above: "I won't
believe someone who says that he can detect time jitter of 100 ps or less in CDs."


Yes its worth pointing out just how large those values have to be before you notice them. To put that in context, if your 44.1kHz D/A is clocked off an ~10 MHz oscillator at 225x its clock rate, then 9216 ns of jitter would correspond to the 10 MHz oscillator having a bandwidth of about 4 MHz, which is basically impossible.  It wouldn't even be oscillating at that point, and any digital logic was hooked up to would have long since crashed

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #67 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
The rate of the needle across the groove slows down proportional to decreasing groove radius, and therefore there is a serious loss of quality.

This loss of quality is readily measured and it was always completely and obviously audible to me.

I actually haven't played with vinyl records since my single digits. If you were to put the same recording at the start and end of one side, are there fairly audible speed/pitch differences?

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #68 –
Quote from: Hotsoup on
I actually haven't played with vinyl records since my single digits. If you were to put the same recording at the start and end of one side, are there fairly audible speed/pitch differences?

No, the difference is not audible as either speed or pitch since the angular velocity is constant both in recording and playback.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #69 –
The difference will be mostly distortion. Good mastering techs knew how to counteract this by subtly changing the EQ etc. towards the inner grooves and other tricks.

It can also be slightly counteracted by choosing a different alignment for the stylus on a standard radial-arm turntable. The most common "Baerwald" alignment tries to keep the tracking error and distortion as low as possible across all the grooves, but it does see a spike in distortion in the inner grooves. The alternative "Stevenson" alignment tries to counteract the inner groove distortion, at the cost of slightly higher distortion further out. Proponents of this alignment method claim that focusing the most accuracy on the inner grooves gives the most even distortion levels across the grooves, as the outer grooves are naturally less distorted.

But there's only so much you can do, with less material per second, the inner grooves will always have inferior sound to the outer grooves, given the same source material.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #70 –
Quote from: Hotsoup on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
The rate of the needle across the groove slows down proportional to decreasing groove radius, and therefore there is a serious loss of quality.

This loss of quality is readily measured and it was always completely and obviously audible to me.

If you were to put the same recording at the start and end of one side, are there fairly audible speed/pitch differences?


No speed or pitch differences are expected or generally found.

That is not the nature of the difficulties that the decreasing linear speed causes.

The problem is a loss of treble extension and an increase in treble harshness.  It  can be audible, depending on both the playback gear and the recording.

For example, a LP recording that is quiet and lacks treble is naturally not going to lose treble extension and clarity  as profoundly as one that is loud and bright.

No matter the quality and state of perfection of the playback gear, these problems are there. The degree varies, but across a reasonable selection of recordings, critical listeners are going to hear it at least some of the time.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #71 –
I've also read vinyl cutting engineers say that when vinyl was the dominant media, often the more mellow songs would be put at the end of each side, as they would be less affected by distortion. They also mentioned that nowadays, they often get recordings with powerful songs at the end of each side, which caused problems for them.

Two common records you might have or can get a hold of that would show this inner-groove distortion would be "Rubber Soul" by The Beatles and "Shotting rubberbands at the stars" by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians - at least the European copies I have, and the Beatles one has the most audible distortion.
"What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"
- Christopher Hitchens
"It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge"
- Sam Harris

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #72 –
That must have been a pretty high quality vinyl rip if the CD version didn't sound any better.  Background hiss should be pretty obvious in almost any quiet or silent passage.  Audible differences absolutely exist in cartridges, turntables, etc.  I think the takeaway from this thread is that a <$100 digital source will almost certainly have higher fidelity than the most expensive record player.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #73 –
Casting aside JJ's "subjective preference is inviolate" clause, the only valid objective grounds on which one can base this otherwise vinyl equals or trumps CD nonsense is increased dynamic range of old vinyl over newly remastered CD (IOW, apples vs. oranges).  More often than not, it seems claims that new vinyl is from a more dynamic master than the CD counterpart are unable to hold water when placed under scrutiny.

Please check your bogus TTDR measurements at the door.

Is jitter audible and what does it sound like?

Reply #74 –
There's nothing that prevents modern dynamic-range compression from being pressed to vinyl, right?  I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt and think that complaints about DRC form the basis of this whole hipster vinyl mythology.  For myself, the points made in this thread have dissuaded me from even dabbling with a turntable.