No USB input? That’s odd…
I don’t want high speed processors in the box, but it turns out that I misspoke.
The display/control processor will be a USB input. I forgot about USB since there’s no USB hardware on the TSS digital board.
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Why is a USB input on the digital side a problem?
An optical link will reliably get rid of conducted electrical noise, but nothing is perfect. High speed processors will add jitter (by adding noise to the power…). You can’t completely eliminate jitter, you can only low pass filter it. Also since nothing is perfect even that low pass filtering isn’t ideal. The TSS has three levels of reclocking (each with their own power supplies) so input jitter will be greatly attenuated, but still I wanted an extra level of isolation from the noise inherent in USB.
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Are there any high end DACs out there without USB input? Or will the TSS be the first?
So - not clear, Ted - is there a USB Audio input, or is the USB for other purposes?
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I guess I could add that the control/display processor is much more powerful than the XMOS chips that the Matrix and DS, etc use. The USB will be better implemented in the display than on the TSS digital card with an XMOS chip.
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So how would you rank the TSS inputs, even if they will be closer to each other in performance ?
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The TSS will have audio USB available via the display/control processor.
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So it does have USB input… [confused]
IMO the differences in the (non-USB, non-bridge) inputs on the DS are only related to the shielding and grounding reliability of the associated cables. There virtually no difference between inputs if they are driven by the same source. Hooking multiple inputs from a single input device like the PWT, DMP or Matrix and switching the active DS input doesn’t change the character of the sound, in fact I’ve not encountered anyone that can even tell when the input is changed, there’s no click, etc. and no one can tell me which input is selected just by ear. All of this will be true on the TSS and the TSS will also have user selectable ground lifts so there can be even less interaction with the rest of the system in the TSS than the DS.
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It’s a Two Box deal.
I said I misspoke in my response to your question above:
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I believe dcs are a bit usb reluctant, but I’ve not checked recently so I could be wrong
Just a very theoretical question Ted:
Is jitter harmful on the way before it gets filtered?
Where I come from is:
When we filter the rumble of a needle by a subsonic filter inside a phonostage, the rumble itself is still suboptimal in the chain before, even though it doesn’t have consequences anymore in the phonostage after filtering. But it still may affect the pure reading operation of the needle upfront by inducing unnecessary vibrations.
May jitter similarly influence the signal before its filtered?
The only place jitter matters in digital audio reproduction is at the transition where digital becomes audio, i.e. the last place there is a clock in the signal path. Before this, everything is digital which is nominally bit perfect, which by definition is designed to be unaffected by jitter.
(Actually there are also interactions between jitter and ground/power supply noise, but I don’t think that’s what you are talking about.)
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It’s interesting you don’t get jitter problems in the digital video world e.g. TVs. Is this because the tv is actually transmitting pixels still in the digital domain? Although their intensity is analogue, rather than dithered.
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You definitely get jitter artifacts in video, but we are much less sensitive to jitter in video than audio: audio has a much bigger signal to noise ratio which makes the effects of jitter more apparent.
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Interesting, I’ve not heard of this, how does video jitter manifest itself?
So if I understand correctly, Matrix to DS through Hdmi or Aes is equivalent.
How about
streamer, aes, ds
Versus
Stream, usb, matrix, aes, ds
?