Doing a quick google, and answering my own question, it looks like jitter effects frame integrity and stutter, rather than colour shift
No, thatâs not quite what I said. If you have multiple cables connected between a source and the DS they are all identically hampered by the sum of their electrical problems. In that circumstance you canât hear a difference between them, indicating that the differences arenât caused by jitter etc. but instead by their grounding/noise differences.
When only one path is connected at a time between a source and the DS at a time you can hear the cable related noise and ground issues. That type of interference is system/cable related and not an intrinsic difference in the interface or the DS specific implementation. Youâll have to try different cables, etc. for yourself to hear the best choice for you and your system.
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I thought that i2s was the « one input to rule them all », better than all the other ones, ceteris paribus.
Not so ?
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On many DACs it is. But separation of clock from data is irrelevant to the DS, the DS doesnât use the edges of the clocks or data. Each signal in HDMI cables is balanced, which is good for noise rejection and lowering noise radiation. HDMI cables have good shielding and better ground connectors which may help in some systems.
Ignoring bandwidth, TOSLink is probably the best interconnect for the DS. Many times when people compare inputs they leave more than one input connected which puts all cables at the disadvantage of the worse cables. Tho changing cables when doing an A/B is a pain, some might be surprised at the quality of an optical connection with no other cables connected.
Itâs always true, but even more true with the DS, that you need to check for yourself to see which cables/tweaks sound best to you in your system.
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Linn have been making streamers for 15 years and ruled out usb from the start, the only option was ethernet. They now provide numerous options, but for $20,000 still no usb.
Linn provides usb in on their entry level all-in-one Selekt device.
The dCS Bridge does have a usb input, but has extensive jitter reduction inside. I think their other units do as well, Iâve only personally used the Bridge.
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That ainât gonna happen around these here parts, pard⊠
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DACsâŠnot streamersâŠ
I see, thatâs interesting because it means, that everything that theoretically degrades a digital signal must have another reason than jitter (or noise I assume).
But how then can we reason what you described here or other audible differences between so-called bit identical copies? But I also see that you pointed out ânominallyâ and âby definitionâ, which means âtheoryâ.
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Digital audio is almost always bit perfect (or can be bit perfect, no volume changes, filtering, etc.)
People therefore often assumed that jitter was the only thing that could explain changes from varying cables, different sources, etc.
You asked
and the answer is âNo.â
You quoted where I related a story about how jitter can affect PRaT, that has nothing to do with a digital signal being affected by jitter or noise. The digital signal is the same regardless of jitter, noise, etc. You can copy a digital signal repeatedly in the presence of jitter and noise without any changes. Any jitter or noise in a digital signal can be âerasedâ by writing it to a disk, etc. and then reading it out later (this isnât exactly true for CDs, they record the jitter too so they arenât, strictly speaking, a digital only recording.)
Still itâs only the jitter at the very end of a chain that matters, and that jitter is mostly introduced in the last leg of reproduction, a CD to DAC or a computer, streamer, etc. to DAC.
Noise also affects audio systems to, regardless of whether the signal is being sent digitally or via analog. With analog chains noise at any place in the chain affects the analog signal every where downstream and cannot be removed without also removing some signal.
Perhaps I should say, no matter how you get a digital file, download, ripping a CD, etc. after you write it to a disk any noise or jitter upstream is lost and doesnât affect the digital signal at all. This is very different from analog.
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Thanks Ted, Iâm sure most of this is very basic matter of course for those who are aware. I was not so sure and Iâm still a bit puzzled that digital generally doesnât store jitter, but CDâs (which were also always declared bitperfect) can somehow as you said. CDâs yes, files no, thatâs difficult to understand.
A hard disk isnât a real time device, you can take the time to pack your data into sectors and each sector has a well defined place on the media. When itâs read back it goes into a buffer that can be read from now or later.
CDs are written (and typically read) with a clock in real time. Write a bit late, itâs futher down the track than it should be. Then when you read it it will be a little late and therefore delivered late to the DAC. These days often a big buffer might be used to isolate the CD read clock from the buffer read clock allowing some cleanup of that jitter. But thatâs, at best, a low pass jitter filter.
Real time implies that jitter counts, non-real time allows retries, buffering etc. and hence jitter isnât an issue.
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Very interestingâŠso kind of a small reason why streaming could have an advantage over disc spinning (if there werenât so many other influences) 
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Well, transports like the PWT, DMP, the new PS Audio TLA (three letter acronym) and others read faster than real time so they can buffer (and potentiality reread slightly corrupted data) alleviate most of the shortcomings of CDs, which can give them a leg up on many streamers.
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I should have added: itâs a law of physics, you can guarantee on time delivery or accurate delivery, but not both. The more time you allow yourself the more accuracy can be achieved. Thatâs true for both data accuracy and timing accuracy.
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You mean a leg up on many drives, correct? Because streamers donât have those issues with filesâŠ
In streaming, the file is buffered somewhere and perhaps in many places along the path to you.
Thereâs no such thing as a free lunch. Ethernet is inherently more noisy than CD drives. It always implies a high speed processor which is also noisy. Those doesnât mean Ethernet is worse or better than a CD transport, it just has a different set of problems to address. Many report that the best sound they have comes from a CD transport.
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Yes sure, thatâs what I meanâŠdrives have other issues than streaming.
It is a DAC ⊠and a streamer. Starting with a blank sheet, Linn saw no reason to separate the DAC from the streamer. Something I agree with and so do many manufacturers. You can use these Linn units as a DAC/pre-amp, with an external streamer (which is what I did for a while), but you donât have a usb option.
I am mildly astonished by how persistently you get ignored on this point.
It would amuse me greatly if you started describing the link between the TSS boxes as âsimilar to TOSLink only fasterâ. (Yes I understand that the protocol is completely different, but are you still using NRZ signalling?)