Between you, Jim Lill and a few others you have pretty much destroyed any notion that recording music has to be expensive. And this is a good thing. It forces creators to focus on the art, not the tools. Thank you.
I built my first DAW in 1999/2000. You had to pay quite a bit to get good convertors, and you had to pay more to get converters that were located in the breakout box (I drooled over the MOTU 1824 iirc), because converters close to the PCI bridge would pick up noise. And the budget converters weren’t guaranteed to be shielded. Anything available today in the recording space is orders of magnitude better than hardware 25 years ago. The playing field is more level than it has ever been, and it’s just going to get better.
Yeah, everything is so good nowadays. But... some are chasing some past times characters. And putting multiple so-so devices in chain might lead to audible problems sooner.
I've always wondered what "Jitter" is. Julian should run a series called "Everything you wanted to know about digital audio, but were afraid to ask". 👍
I wouldn't worry about "The Jitter Bug" folks. The primary thing that is ruining "your audio" is a lack of creativity. WE are focusing on the wrong "things". Focus-right
@@vadimmartynyuk Maybe more than some other interfaces, but not enough to actually cause a problem for literally anyone making music. If you are deciding between interfaces based on amount of jitter, you're *looking* for a problem and picking based on random numbers on a random graph rather than using your ears.
I am not an audiophile. I am a vo artist , and Ihad to teach myself audio editing for my home studio. Many of your videos have helped my journey along the way. You have a way of explaining your process without being condescending or all knowing. you display facts and graphs an interesting narrative that allow even technoobies like myself understand what the topic is and what the issues are. thank you for taking the time and sharing your passion and knowledge
My PC was next to the microphone arm and when I folded it it stayed close. Now I have moved the PC and I no longer have any problems. Thanks to your reviews I bought a Focusrite Clarett 2pre and I'm pleased with it. Nowadays there are a lot of people doing podcasts, It would be a great idea to review audio production solutions for podcasters like the Mackie DLZ Creator or RØDECaster Pro II. That would also be a fascinating video. Love your channel. 👍
A lot of information yes, but wrong conclusions. Reclocking brings very obvious audible improvements, even in modern DACs, but according to your video it is negligible. In other words, DCS, Esoteric, Antipodes, to mention a few, are all wrong, but you are right. Yeah right. I believe my ears above and beyond any measurement.
@@StephanBuchin I studied and work in digital A/V and telecom electronics and thought just like you. It justified my inability to acquire high-end equipment, let alone test and compare it (not implying this is your situation). After decades, I finally had the chance to A/B systems on my own house (used gear from a friend's trade-in hi-fi store). Differences can be huge and obvious. Sometimes they are not. I appreciate your honesty, however you may want to personally test several high-end devices. My personal experience changed my mind significantly. Snake oil and overpriced gear exist, but not everything expensive is snake oil.
@@vmptyIf one can measure something, one may (!) also be able to hear it, often enough not even that. If however one cannot even measure something, no way there will be anything audible to detect as measurement systems simply way exceed humans' hearing abilities.
I dont know how you made this video without the words ' *clock recovery* ' but i'm quite grateful that you demonstrated just how astonishingly good the clock recovery on my Audient Evo16 is even on SPDIF in a worst case scenario, makes me worry a lot less about how the optical jitter is these days (i didnt think it was an issue, but i feel lazy not using the word clock lol)
Great video! Perhaps a future topic of clocking between multiple digital interfaces is in order? Many people get jitter/clocking issues confused and it's probably because the understanding of what jitter actually is isn't widely known (hopefully this video puts that to bed).
Thanks for sharing science-backed facts :) ! I can only agree with the content of this video, and I'm happy to see content like that that participates to sharing the truth. A fellow home studio youtuber from France
Some years ago I purchased a "JitterBug" from AudioQuest specifically BECAUSE I believed it was pure snake oil, and I felt my first deliberate "audiophile head-fi" setup would be incomplete without a dash of such. As far as audiophile snake oil goes, it seemed like a pretty cheap option for such pure stuff lol. Love this channel. Love Krausian humor. Better therapy than "Therapy", and less risk of snake oil than that realm too.
@@scorpioassmodeusgtx1811 *shrug* I'm relieved to hear that I didn't get a watered down dash of snake oil. Also, don't really care, per this video. EDIT: Skimmed the ASR review. The conclusion appears to be that it does nothing audible, and barely anything even confidently measurable, as is the conclusion of several other reviews linked around the ASR forums. I didn't see any mention of increasing jitter in the conclusions. Leaving my prized snake oil in the signal chain.
@@attaboyBrad I believe the increase in jitter was only observed when combined with one DAC, namely the the Schiit Modi 2. But even then the differences were well below what could be considered audible. It's safe to say it has no practical positive or negative effect.
Hey mister Julian Krause! Do you have your "audio interface tier list" -stream or the final chart somewhere? I would really appreciate it. Sorry for comment that is unrelated to the video.
Thank you so much for making this video! I have been arguing with people about this here on youtube, who spend lots of money in fear of the mighty jitter. Looking at your jitter results, I would say those noise in the graphs most probably are a result of other problems than jitter. Jitter was a problem 30 years ago, when they just started to make digital audio devices. I do not think anyone still have any devices which have any jitter problem anymore, as it is not a difficult problem to solve. The only time you can have jitter problems, if your device is just faulty.
I always thought of jitter as just another effect to be added when using effects that intentionally reduce samplerate and bitrate over a channel. I found a little added jitter to be pleasing in the cases were I use it. A little jitter makes bitcrunching sound more organic, and less like static
@@miquelmarti6537 this is just in context of using an Ableton Live effect over a single channel to add some grit, say for a bass track. Sorry I wasn't being clear. Oversampling wouldn't really add much in this case. I mean, the idea is intentionally to reduce samplerate.
Lowest I can go for my 48 year old ears is -72dB. So I think I'm in the clear, lol. Another reason why I also don't worry about whether my music is 16bit or 24bit.
Your reviews are fantastic. An unrelated subject suggestion: after watching many reviews for budget interfaces, it would be nice to give example scenarios of what type of user would take the most advantage of their particular features. That would make your revires from a 9.9 output to an 11 score output in the consumer scale. Thank you for your excellent work
Good explanation JK! I do believe these statements are true for probably 99% of user listening scenarios, but strongly disagree about it being inaudible. I have experienced it myself on high end systems. DDC especially, if you can't hear the difference you don't have system that is revealing enough.
... that system including the human hearing capabilities which is exactly the reason why most of that audiophile voodoo is absolute nonsense. The ears are simply not good enough which for not too few people seems to be a fact very hard to accept. Those DDCs are real-life satire. Even IF they would have any effective audible impact, it wouldn't exactly speak for the DAC apparently then being in need to get a signal handed on a silver platter by them. Any decent DAC worth its salt has jitter rejection and whatnot already integrated so I would rather spend money on that part and certainly not any half-voodoo device in between if it has to be that way (RME ADI-2 with its FS-reclocking, Benchmark DACs, etc. and already that is most probably halfway voodoo as inaudible anyway)
@@CharlesBurnsPrime he over simplified it. It's much more complex than he made it out to be. That - 120db gets amplified. If you do actual a/b listening test you can tell the differences. Not so much that b you hear the jitter, but you can tell when there's a lack of jitter.
@@Pete.across.the.street Interesting. I would ask that you suggest a test for Julian to consider. He seems to be the kind of person that can share corrections or exceptions to claims without ego problems. I would love to understand this topic better as it is often discussed with regards to digital audio.
I am sort of reminded of the old analog days. I used a high-end open reel unit running 15 IPS; I used dbx noise reduction in many of those recordings. That meant, adding the 30 or so dB noise reduction to the already high signal to noise of my recorder (75dB or so at 15 IPS), I was running about 100 DB or a little more signal to noise ratio. Great specs; but if you listened carefully, you could hear the noise in between the notes on quiet passages. Thing is, if you’re just listening to the music, you never hear it. Your video makes me feel that way about jitter. Thanks!
@@StephanBuchin It can be. When dbx first came out, people were being told to way under-record, so that there would be less distortion. The dbx would take care of the hiss that way. dbx put in their instructions that you should record with peaks at or near 0 dB; that way, the noise control would be the best. Recording that way, you could still hear a little noise, especially on classical music. But things like jazz groups, rock, electronic Pop, the music covered the hiss pretty well.
I have a DAC very similar to the $8 one shown on this video. I bought to convert digital coaxial into analog RCA and I haven't noticed any jitter or other kind of noise or artifact. Before this video, jitter was only mentioned and sometimes describe in ways I only had an idea about. Thank you!
We, the committee of Guinness World Records hereby announce: Julian Krause officially is the person, who said the word "jitter" more often than anybody else - ever! 🏆Congrats, Julian! 🤭 Thx for your excellent vids & cheers from Hamburg! LG cosmic
Just goes to show that sometimes we focus too much on the phantom details, stuff that really doesn't matter. Let's all be more creative and focus on the art instead. Awesome and informative :)
This wrong idea of worrying about jitter these days comes from the peddlers who want to sell you their products... There is so much wasted money by poor audiophiles that believe those unscrupulous snake oil sellers...
Very well put argument and demonstrated evidence to debunk the snake oil sellers. Congratulations and thanks for all the clarity you bring to us on audio devices.
Bloody amazing content, mate. Keep on the great work! In a tech language way, you are the Glenn Fricker of audio interfaces, mythbusting sort of. For example, when it comes to SM7B -> SM57 discussion, instead of telling the same thing again and again as I did during the last 20 years, I just send a link of your video about the matter. It perfectly aligns to my experience. Ages ago when I worked for a broadcast company we tested AD/DA chips and used the same measures so although I'm not an engineer, your interface tests tell me everything about these new audio devices. Clear tech data and language, I really like that. When it comes to clocking / sync, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts about how differences between un-synced devices occur and how to solve timing issues between, for example, an audio interface and different cameras.
Very interesting. What about jitter introduced by streaming services, ei: less than ideal Internet speeds, caché and buffering. I suspect that's Why physical media or local files seem to sound better than streaming, IMO. Thanks for the great video!
Streaming services uses packets of data. As demonstrated in the video, packetized data is totally impervious to jitter. The difference in quality is compression.
Streaming audio is put into a local buffer. The audio is played directly from the audio buffer which is local memory and, therefore, no more susceptible to jitter than a local file (which, incidentally, is also streamed, just from a local media rather than a remote one). "Buffering" occurs when the data stream isn't fast enough to keep the local buffers full. In that case you will get obvious dropouts or pauses in the stream. If the stream is fast enough (which, for streaming audio, that's normally the case) then you won't get buffering. Either way, you won't get jitter.
@@KeithMilner correct i was responding to the top comment which said that network jitter could cause quality issues with streaming services which is not the case
I remember when the only elements of music we could ‘see’ were frequency response, harmonic and IM distortion, and noise. Somehow, as more and more became ‘see-able’ our sound devices became much worse and solutions much more expensive. And yet, the first record I mixed to an ancient digital format - the Sony PCM601 - is still simply gorgeous. Noise had disappeared. Frequency response was a ruler. Harmonic and IM distortions not an issue. If only I could have known what a horrible recording I was making.
Jitter was a problem on audio frequencies 40 years ago. Nowadays it's a problem when working in RF frequencies. Frequencies that are nearly million times higher than human hearing.
Asynchronous audio like USB audio needs to be resynchronized to the local audio clock somehow, usually by resampling or by adjusting the local audio clock, and that process can definitely introduce jitter.
Great video… however, I would argue that a sample of distorted guitar probably isn’t the best choice when trying to specifically discern extra distortion!
There are various form of jitter, you should still be careful about. like Dr. Jitter From jitter with love You only jitter twice Jitters are forever The jitter who loved me For your jitter only License to jitter Tomorrow never jitter Jitter another day ... And many more.
There are 4 types of USB data transfer. Audio data transfer is done using Isochronous mode. This is a one way data transfer from source to destination like streams of data. There no way to detect error at the transmission level if the there is a timing variation while sampling by the receiver. The only way the receiver can detect error is by detecting PCM data encoding format by detecting the changes in voltage. It will reclock in needed. However there is no way to send request to sender to resent the correct data. Hence the receiver uses interpolation to set the data. This interpolation will depend of the DAC designer. This is one of the reason different DAC sounds different even when all other parameters remain same.
Clock disparity between USB host and device does not result in erroneous (misclocked) data transmission because USB uses NRZI encoding to interleave clock and data. Bit errors do occur, isochronous transfer just like any includes a CRC checksum, which allows one bit error correction per 1ms window. Sometimes, devices do not implement CRC checking for incoming data, but with modern USB processors, you expect that all of these current devices do. At higher error rates, the error leaks into the output. There is indeed no retransmission possibility with iso, because the transmission and processing time window is already spent, but if you had errors at mere fullspeed (12Mbaud) that were uncorrectible more frequent than once every few days, you'd be THIS close to the device regularly falling off the bus, so you don't have to worry about it. And interpolation... you're just throwing words around at this point.
@@SianaGearzThe lovely "Interpolation" had already been roped into the voodoo nonsense sphere since the good old audio CD era. Whenever the jitter voodoo wasn't enough for a pseudo-explanation, the next claim was that due to the oh so imperfect and overwhelmed error-correction so the player had to perform interpolation all the time - which simply isn't true. In most cases, it never occurs on the C2 stage resulting in uncorrectable errors for proper media and even if, it is hardly all the time but for a brief moment.
The behringer UM2 is their cheapest (very cheap) and only does 16 bits even so its understandable that it doesnt perform as good as many others while still acceptable in this test. I would never recommend a 16 bit interface to anyone either, 24 bits is the go to if you want to make any kind of serious recording really.
You should purchase a good ddc or have someone lend you one to see if you hear a difference, and if you do hear a difference you could try to explain what it's doing to the audio signal.
I am using , from Mac Mini through USB, a Matrix SPDIF2 (reclocker) connected through IIS to Matrix Element X2 (dac/amp), with settings on synchronous mode. For me, it is an improvement of the sound . I don’t know if it is because jitter or ground , but it is doing a nice job . In this way, the sound is clearer , any sibilance is gone and bass is stronger and more defined in synchronous mode , than in asynchronous mode directly from usb. I really don’t think is a placebo, but who knows ?😊 I am using headphones.
It doesn't seem like 'buzzy' guitars would be the best source with which to identify the audible effects of jitter. After careful listening to various USB Windows audio drivers, it appears that Windows may introduce jitter and other effects when its default audio subsystem resamples and mixes audio from multiple sources internally, before shipping out the results out to USB. The samples being sent out to USB may not actually be the same samples being played on its local hard drive, for example. It doesn't have to be mixing multiple sources simultaneously for its operating system's mixer/resampler to have effects, including jitter in its internal conversion process due to noise, system interrupts, or even just less than audiophile grade attention paid to the audio driver/resampler/mixer development. If there is jitter introduced by the internal mixer/resampler software, it is built in to the output samples and USB buffering won't fix it.
As extremely correct as you are about jitter, using a highly distorted guitar as an example just doesn't make sense. Ages ago, when testing audio systems, Smokin' by Boston was one of my favorite sound check songs. Then I got to thinking, is my audio system accurately reproducing all the distortion?
I think it was you (can't remember which video and I may be wrong entirely) who said once that digitally-controlled preamps tend to have higher noise floors and that does seem to be born out in your measurements (with the Ultralite being an outlier), but I'd love a video exploring the topic. Is it a limitation of the control method or is it more of an issue of circuit design? Is there something that makes it so that a theoretically perfect fully analog preamp will always have lower noise vs a theoretically perfect digitally-controlled preamp?
I did not think my system suffered from jitter but others make it sound so inevitable that you think 'maybe I have never heard what streaming sounds like with no jitter' I have just discovered your channel (subscribed) .I had a look at your channel hoping to see a video about hifi network switches. As they are another product I do not understand, they have to plug into a Reuter so haw can they improve on one? Have you done one if not could you? thanks. PS my next upgrade will be to replace my wiim pro, do you have any advice on quality streamers to consider?
Hey Julian, I’ve seen your Video about the Elgato Wave XLR interface. Now that Elgato have added the function to add vst plugins I wondered what you think of it now. If you could respond to this comment or do a video about it I would be very happy thank you.
Great video! Obviously you understand, that jitter as a topic is a cash cow only. Actually, there are 2 versions of jitter: 1. Samples times are distributed in a slightly imperfect way near to perfect timings, but no integral time deviation occurs, like molecules thermally oscillating near their perfect place within crystal, hence no modulation, since overall timing structure is not affected. 2. time errors add up over many samples, then that error gradually reverses polarity and back and so on: This one causes intermodulation. This is the "bad" one, but even this one is definitely not audible anywhere in the picosecond range. Nobody needs single nanosecond precision. Or femtosecond, or attosecond or plancks time resolution accuracy or whatever they offer next.
@Julian: don't take away the audiophile's "last bastion" in terms of suggested quality differences despite ending up with the exact same data after error detection and correction stages. 😉 While jitter and its induced performance degeneration is a real thing confirmed by serious companies such as Intel in some paper, the audible impact as usual often is blown entirely out of proportion.
I'm worried I might become and audiophile but.. isn't just knowing the small degrees to which you can go make you an audiophile as well? The depth of knowledge. I don't know man, its a very fun rabbit hole. as my quest continues I have one more question.. is there a positive term for audiophile or is it simply .."audio engineer" LOL or "audio explorer" I used the term "audio surfing" to describe getting my first truly mixed track. so smooth... it was like I was riding the audio waves. thanks for the info sir. V/R ~Bobby
@@bobbybird3677 Thanks so much for the tip! I think it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Audiophile is a positive term for me. The most important thing is after going down a rabbit hole to pull one self out again and enjoy the music. Knowing technical stuff to not get lured into snake-oil products is important but so is taking the time to sit down and enjoying your system. That’s what being an Audiophile about. Enjoy the music!! 😀
My issue here is that we listen to music, not test tones. Time arrival problems can manifest as smearing. This reminds me of the debate of DS DACs vs. R2R DACs. DS measure better. R2R sound better.
hey Julian, love your thorough reviews. would you take a look at DJ controllers with integrated interface? they come with 2 separate stereo outs and some with mic- and line- in, enough to test there. the sound quality talk on the dj channels usually doesn't go beyond "symmetric outs = professional" I think that could be an interesting expansion of equipment to test and audience to draw...
I have a question that is maybe related to this topic: does it matter which device is master/slave in a situation where there is a rather cheap external converter connected to an audio interface via spdif? I shouldn't care right?
Amazing video mate. Is the grittyness of some 80`s early digital recordings the jitter? Take for example Show Must Go On by Queen, or the whole album a Kind of Magic, it sounds to me far more grittier than its analog predecessors.
Not too sure, distortion in audio components was also quite a bit higher back then. While jitter might add a hint og grunge, I think the most distortion is simply due to the older audio equipment that was used.
The quality of ADCs in general was variable in the early 80s. I've heard some very unpleasantly edgy, 'sharp' digital recordings made through early converters (different from 'clinical' or 'cold' recordings) - fortunately the tech improved fairly quickly.
I wonder if part of the reason it’s less of a problem is that modern devices have faster clocks, so the amount of “offness” caused by being a cycle late or early is smaller. Let me know if that is/isn’t relevant.
One device no real worries about jitter. What about if you expand on that as your studio grows? For example my set up is Interface, two 8 channel octopres via ADAT into interface, one two channel preamp via SPIDF. Maybe a video looking into jitter once you have expanded from just your interface? Thanks I enjoyed the video!
Thank you Julian for the great explanation on this topic! In a forum on Gearspace I saw a discussion about operating systems on computers re-sampling audio and therefore leading to audible quality differences during playback. Does it have to do with Jitter as well or is there another reason for the audible loss in quality? Do you have a video on this topic or would that be something you'd do a video about? There are apps like Audirvana that promise to get around the re-sampling issue and to increase the playback quality.
Awesome video. Anyway, I was wondering if you'll be taking a look at the new MOTU 828? It seems like an expanded version of the UltraLite mk5, and I hope it lives up to its quality!
Thank you for saving me 60 euros i could have uselessly spent for an Audioquest Jitterbug to be installed between my Windows 10 PC and my Presonus Studio 24C audio interface.
Ugh. I love the dumb i popped that snake oil bubble. I love the sound of external re clocked PCM. I love the sound of interpolation from hi res upsampling to 24 bit / 192 kHz. Why because it ulitmaly produces more SN DB extension pushing more Data into the silicon. Reclocked PCM at higher up sample bit rates produce amazing tighter faster bass. Come at me with the snakeoil comments. What we forget is that the chips benefit from more data throuput where upsampled generated or recorded in the orginal hi res recording and if you are going to resample you want to reclock. Could care less about jitter. Or my jitter free recordings when i add a reclocker middleware to my SPDIF chain. I like reclocking my HDMI PCM interfaces as well.
From what I understand, the timing changes introduced by jitter can affect noise floor modulation, which may not change the signal per se, but can be heard with slight changes in the timbre. It has also been proven out that the human ear-brain can perceive even slight changes in timbre due to noise floor modulation to something like -200dB.
Julian, it would be wonderful if you could test the optical toslink output of any LG OLED TV made within the last 5 years. There’s been a lot of discussion about allegedly high level of jitter that these TVs output via toslink that causes problems with some DACs. My DAC works fine but I’m wondering if this type of jitter could cause some audible issues. JDS labs has even attempted to measure the SINAD of one of these devices and it only achieved 80dB, however it is possible that they did not take into account the fact that the TV may have been down converting the test signal from 24 bit to 16 bit.
Thanks Julian, these videos of yours have been very informative in clarifying concepts that I thought I knew something about previously, but didn't really understand. As far as jitter, this is a hazy memory, likely from a decade or more previously, that Toslink, could suffer from jitter due to long optical cable runs, poor endpoint connections or cheap optical fiber, due to to signal reflections in the optical fiber itself. Would such actually be jitter or more a form of signal degradation in general at the receiving end?
Between you, Jim Lill and a few others you have pretty much destroyed any notion that recording music has to be expensive. And this is a good thing. It forces creators to focus on the art, not the tools. Thank you.
Thanks!! Agreed, Jim has some really cool videos.
Jim is amazing. It's fun how many forum myths of old fall apart when you start focusing on what actually makes a difference and the science behind it
I built my first DAW in 1999/2000. You had to pay quite a bit to get good convertors, and you had to pay more to get converters that were located in the breakout box (I drooled over the MOTU 1824 iirc), because converters close to the PCI bridge would pick up noise. And the budget converters weren’t guaranteed to be shielded. Anything available today in the recording space is orders of magnitude better than hardware 25 years ago. The playing field is more level than it has ever been, and it’s just going to get better.
Very well said!
Yeah, everything is so good nowadays. But... some are chasing some past times characters. And putting multiple so-so devices in chain might lead to audible problems sooner.
I've always wondered what "Jitter" is. Julian should run a series called "Everything you wanted to know about digital audio, but were afraid to ask". 👍
Julian, this video was Perfect just like most interfaces jitter performance. Thank you so much for the great information and demonstrations.
You're very much welcome!
I wouldn't worry about "The Jitter Bug" folks.
The primary thing that is ruining "your audio" is a lack of creativity.
WE are focusing on the wrong "things". Focus-right
Try and produce techno and see if groove killing jitter will let you draw the same conclusion.
Amen
Ironically focusrite interfaces are pretty bad in jitter and driver stability
@@vadimmartynyuk Julian showed Focusrite performance data. Present your claims.
@@vadimmartynyuk Maybe more than some other interfaces, but not enough to actually cause a problem for literally anyone making music. If you are deciding between interfaces based on amount of jitter, you're *looking* for a problem and picking based on random numbers on a random graph rather than using your ears.
I am not an audiophile. I am a vo artist , and Ihad to teach myself audio editing for my home studio. Many of your videos have helped my journey along the way. You have a way of explaining your process without being condescending or all knowing. you display facts and graphs an interesting narrative that allow even technoobies like myself understand what the topic is and what the issues are. thank you for taking the time and sharing your passion and knowledge
Another amazingly-informative video from Julian, that i didn't know i was missing in my life before this! 😅
My PC was next to the microphone arm and when I folded it it stayed close. Now I have moved the PC and I no longer have any problems. Thanks to your reviews I bought a Focusrite Clarett 2pre and I'm pleased with it. Nowadays there are a lot of people doing podcasts, It would be a great idea to review audio production solutions for podcasters like the Mackie DLZ Creator or RØDECaster Pro II. That would also be a fascinating video. Love your channel. 👍
A lot of information yes, but wrong conclusions. Reclocking brings very obvious audible improvements, even in modern DACs, but according to your video it is negligible. In other words, DCS, Esoteric, Antipodes, to mention a few, are all wrong, but you are right. Yeah right. I believe my ears above and beyond any measurement.
Without people like you, all those brands would be bankrupt.
@@StephanBuchin I studied and work in digital A/V and telecom electronics and thought just like you. It justified my inability to acquire high-end equipment, let alone test and compare it (not implying this is your situation). After decades, I finally had the chance to A/B systems on my own house (used gear from a friend's trade-in hi-fi store). Differences can be huge and obvious. Sometimes they are not.
I appreciate your honesty, however you may want to personally test several high-end devices. My personal experience changed my mind significantly. Snake oil and overpriced gear exist, but not everything expensive is snake oil.
@@vmptyIf one can measure something, one may (!) also be able to hear it, often enough not even that. If however one cannot even measure something, no way there will be anything audible to detect as measurement systems simply way exceed humans' hearing abilities.
I dont know how you made this video without the words ' *clock recovery* ' but i'm quite grateful that you demonstrated just how astonishingly good the clock recovery on my Audient Evo16 is even on SPDIF in a worst case scenario, makes me worry a lot less about how the optical jitter is these days (i didnt think it was an issue, but i feel lazy not using the word clock lol)
Great video! Perhaps a future topic of clocking between multiple digital interfaces is in order? Many people get jitter/clocking issues confused and it's probably because the understanding of what jitter actually is isn't widely known (hopefully this video puts that to bed).
Thanks for sharing science-backed facts :) ! I can only agree with the content of this video, and I'm happy to see content like that that participates to sharing the truth.
A fellow home studio youtuber from France
Some years ago I purchased a "JitterBug" from AudioQuest specifically BECAUSE I believed it was pure snake oil, and I felt my first deliberate "audiophile head-fi" setup would be incomplete without a dash of such. As far as audiophile snake oil goes, it seemed like a pretty cheap option for such pure stuff lol.
Love this channel. Love Krausian humor. Better therapy than "Therapy", and less risk of snake oil than that realm too.
Audio Science Review testing found that the Jitterbug actually INCREASED jitter. Not just snake oil, but actively counterproductive.
@@scorpioassmodeusgtx1811 *shrug* I'm relieved to hear that I didn't get a watered down dash of snake oil. Also, don't really care, per this video.
EDIT: Skimmed the ASR review. The conclusion appears to be that it does nothing audible, and barely anything even confidently measurable, as is the conclusion of several other reviews linked around the ASR forums. I didn't see any mention of increasing jitter in the conclusions. Leaving my prized snake oil in the signal chain.
@@attaboyBrad I believe the increase in jitter was only observed when combined with one DAC, namely the the Schiit Modi 2. But even then the differences were well below what could be considered audible. It's safe to say it has no practical positive or negative effect.
Your videos are pure gold. Thanks for everything you do!
Hey mister Julian Krause! Do you have your "audio interface tier list" -stream or the final chart somewhere? I would really appreciate it. Sorry for comment that is unrelated to the video.
Thank you so much for making this video!
I have been arguing with people about this here on youtube, who spend lots of money in fear of the mighty jitter.
Looking at your jitter results, I would say those noise in the graphs most probably are a result of other problems than jitter.
Jitter was a problem 30 years ago, when they just started to make digital audio devices. I do not think anyone still have any devices which have any jitter problem anymore, as it is not a difficult problem to solve.
The only time you can have jitter problems, if your device is just faulty.
I always thought of jitter as just another effect to be added when using effects that intentionally reduce samplerate and bitrate over a channel. I found a little added jitter to be pleasing in the cases were I use it. A little jitter makes bitcrunching sound more organic, and less like static
isn't that dither? a way to mask quantization noises. Try oversampling instead
@@miquelmarti6537 this is just in context of using an Ableton Live effect over a single channel to add some grit, say for a bass track. Sorry I wasn't being clear.
Oversampling wouldn't really add much in this case.
I mean, the idea is intentionally to reduce samplerate.
Lowest I can go for my 48 year old ears is -72dB. So I think I'm in the clear, lol. Another reason why I also don't worry about whether my music is 16bit or 24bit.
I really like how the jitter sounds like, when it's not that high, could use as an grit effect.
But that pereodic jitter sounds like an sp-1200
you should try my plugin, NEL. It's a vibrato plugin, but on high octave settings its perlin noise modulator would essentially produce jitter
I was thinking the same, that metallic harmonic on the periodic jitter has a really ring mod bite to it.
@@mycosys yeah it's kinda pleasant to the ears to listen too aswell
already hunting for a max4live device to rip a jitter-controlled resampler from lol @@thebloodminister988
Yeah, there’s also a plug-in called decimort by D16 that has a jitter control
We love your videos. And have something we would love you to cover:)
Your reviews are fantastic. An unrelated subject suggestion: after watching many reviews for budget interfaces, it would be nice to give example scenarios of what type of user would take the most advantage of their particular features. That would make your revires from a 9.9 output to an 11 score output in the consumer scale. Thank you for your excellent work
Amazing content as always! Thank you
Good explanation JK!
I do believe these statements are true for probably 99% of user listening scenarios, but strongly disagree about it being inaudible. I have experienced it myself on high end systems. DDC especially, if you can't hear the difference you don't have system that is revealing enough.
... that system including the human hearing capabilities which is exactly the reason why most of that audiophile voodoo is absolute nonsense. The ears are simply not good enough which for not too few people seems to be a fact very hard to accept.
Those DDCs are real-life satire. Even IF they would have any effective audible impact, it wouldn't exactly speak for the DAC apparently then being in need to get a signal handed on a silver platter by them. Any decent DAC worth its salt has jitter rejection and whatnot already integrated so I would rather spend money on that part and certainly not any half-voodoo device in between if it has to be that way (RME ADI-2 with its FS-reclocking, Benchmark DACs, etc. and already that is most probably halfway voodoo as inaudible anyway)
Somehow your analysis is deep yet not long-winded. A perfect performance.
Well he is German!
He skipped over everything that mattered.
@@Pete.across.the.street What do you have in mind that was skipped? Honestly curious.
@@CharlesBurnsPrime he over simplified it. It's much more complex than he made it out to be. That - 120db gets amplified. If you do actual a/b listening test you can tell the differences. Not so much that b you hear the jitter, but you can tell when there's a lack of jitter.
@@Pete.across.the.street Interesting. I would ask that you suggest a test for Julian to consider. He seems to be the kind of person that can share corrections or exceptions to claims without ego problems. I would love to understand this topic better as it is often discussed with regards to digital audio.
I am sort of reminded of the old analog days. I used a high-end open reel unit running 15 IPS; I used dbx noise reduction in many of those recordings. That meant, adding the 30 or so dB noise reduction to the already high signal to noise of my recorder (75dB or so at 15 IPS), I was running about 100 DB or a little more signal to noise ratio. Great specs; but if you listened carefully, you could hear the noise in between the notes on quiet passages. Thing is, if you’re just listening to the music, you never hear it. Your video makes me feel that way about jitter. Thanks!
That noise was really audible actually.
@@StephanBuchin It can be. When dbx first came out, people were being told to way under-record, so that there would be less distortion. The dbx would take care of the hiss that way. dbx put in their instructions that you should record with peaks at or near 0 dB; that way, the noise control would be the best. Recording that way, you could still hear a little noise, especially on classical music. But things like jazz groups, rock, electronic Pop, the music covered the hiss pretty well.
I have a DAC very similar to the $8 one shown on this video. I bought to convert digital coaxial into analog RCA and I haven't noticed any jitter or other kind of noise or artifact. Before this video, jitter was only mentioned and sometimes describe in ways I only had an idea about. Thank you!
We, the committee of Guinness World Records hereby announce: Julian Krause officially is the person, who said the word "jitter" more often than anybody else - ever! 🏆Congrats, Julian! 🤭 Thx for your excellent vids & cheers from Hamburg! LG cosmic
Just goes to show that sometimes we focus too much on the phantom details, stuff that really doesn't matter. Let's all be more creative and focus on the art instead.
Awesome and informative :)
This wrong idea of worrying about jitter these days comes from the peddlers who want to sell you their products... There is so much wasted money by poor audiophiles that believe those unscrupulous snake oil sellers...
This is my favorite UA-cam channel
Very well put argument and demonstrated evidence to debunk the snake oil sellers. Congratulations and thanks for all the clarity you bring to us on audio devices.
Bloody amazing content, mate. Keep on the great work! In a tech language way, you are the Glenn Fricker of audio interfaces, mythbusting sort of. For example, when it comes to SM7B -> SM57 discussion, instead of telling the same thing again and again as I did during the last 20 years, I just send a link of your video about the matter. It perfectly aligns to my experience.
Ages ago when I worked for a broadcast company we tested AD/DA chips and used the same measures so although I'm not an engineer, your interface tests tell me everything about these new audio devices. Clear tech data and language, I really like that.
When it comes to clocking / sync, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts about how differences between un-synced devices occur and how to solve timing issues between, for example, an audio interface and different cameras.
Wonderful - thanks for all your videos, keep them coming.
thanks for all you do, GREAT CONTENT !!!!!
Very interesting. What about jitter introduced by streaming services, ei: less than ideal Internet speeds, caché and buffering. I suspect that's Why physical media or local files seem to sound better than streaming, IMO. Thanks for the great video!
Streaming services uses packets of data. As demonstrated in the video, packetized data is totally impervious to jitter. The difference in quality is compression.
Streaming audio is put into a local buffer. The audio is played directly from the audio buffer which is local memory and, therefore, no more susceptible to jitter than a local file (which, incidentally, is also streamed, just from a local media rather than a remote one).
"Buffering" occurs when the data stream isn't fast enough to keep the local buffers full. In that case you will get obvious dropouts or pauses in the stream. If the stream is fast enough (which, for streaming audio, that's normally the case) then you won't get buffering.
Either way, you won't get jitter.
streaming services use lossy compression
spotify for example uses the vorbis codec
@@djentledjosh which has nothing to do with jitter.
@@KeithMilner correct
i was responding to the top comment which said that network jitter could cause quality issues with streaming services which is not the case
I remember when the only elements of music we could ‘see’ were frequency response, harmonic and IM distortion, and noise. Somehow, as more and more became ‘see-able’ our sound devices became much worse and solutions much more expensive. And yet, the first record I mixed to an ancient digital format - the Sony PCM601 - is still simply gorgeous. Noise had disappeared. Frequency response was a ruler. Harmonic and IM distortions not an issue.
If only I could have known what a horrible recording I was making.
Good man,just subbed to your channel.
I have a old keyboard soldered an external Clock input to. So i can add Jitter as an effekt and or pitch it up and down and give it a lowFi sound
Jitter was a problem on audio frequencies 40 years ago. Nowadays it's a problem when working in RF frequencies. Frequencies that are nearly million times higher than human hearing.
I find, that it is still easy to hear jitter on modern equipment. Maybe the brain can detect more, than measuring instruments can measure?
Another excellent video ----- thank Julian ---- revealing the truth
my Walkman mistreated ears only became slightly annoyed only with high settings if at all.
If Julian was born way earlier he could have been a member of Kraftwerk.
RADIOAKTIVITÄT!!!
Nice KEF's. Perfect for reference if reverb and any spacial cues.
Thank you for touching on this snake oil topic. Very good presentation as ever.
Asynchronous audio like USB audio needs to be resynchronized to the local audio clock somehow, usually by resampling or by adjusting the local audio clock, and that process can definitely introduce jitter.
The use of network switch in audio is not related to jitter, but the ground separation between noisy network equipments and audio system.
Great vid.
Great video… however, I would argue that a sample of distorted guitar probably isn’t the best choice when trying to specifically discern extra distortion!
There are various form of jitter, you should still be careful about. like
Dr. Jitter
From jitter with love
You only jitter twice
Jitters are forever
The jitter who loved me
For your jitter only
License to jitter
Tomorrow never jitter
Jitter another day
... And many more.
Jitter in the south west of the UK , jitter is a slur describing a long haired heavy metal/rock fan (like myself)
There are 4 types of USB data transfer. Audio data transfer is done using Isochronous mode. This is a one way data transfer from source to destination like streams of data. There no way to detect error at the transmission level if the there is a timing variation while sampling by the receiver. The only way the receiver can detect error is by detecting PCM data encoding format by detecting the changes in voltage. It will reclock in needed. However there is no way to send request to sender to resent the correct data. Hence the receiver uses interpolation to set the data. This interpolation will depend of the DAC designer. This is one of the reason different DAC sounds different even when all other parameters remain same.
Clock disparity between USB host and device does not result in erroneous (misclocked) data transmission because USB uses NRZI encoding to interleave clock and data. Bit errors do occur, isochronous transfer just like any includes a CRC checksum, which allows one bit error correction per 1ms window. Sometimes, devices do not implement CRC checking for incoming data, but with modern USB processors, you expect that all of these current devices do. At higher error rates, the error leaks into the output. There is indeed no retransmission possibility with iso, because the transmission and processing time window is already spent, but if you had errors at mere fullspeed (12Mbaud) that were uncorrectible more frequent than once every few days, you'd be THIS close to the device regularly falling off the bus, so you don't have to worry about it.
And interpolation... you're just throwing words around at this point.
@@SianaGearzThe lovely "Interpolation" had already been roped into the voodoo nonsense sphere since the good old audio CD era. Whenever the jitter voodoo wasn't enough for a pseudo-explanation, the next claim was that due to the oh so imperfect and overwhelmed error-correction so the player had to perform interpolation all the time - which simply isn't true. In most cases, it never occurs on the C2 stage resulting in uncorrectable errors for proper media and even if, it is hardly all the time but for a brief moment.
The behringer UM2 is their cheapest (very cheap) and only does 16 bits even so its understandable that it doesnt perform as good as many others while still acceptable in this test. I would never recommend a 16 bit interface to anyone either, 24 bits is the go to if you want to make any kind of serious recording really.
The best explanation ever!
I didn't knew this existed in my music, but I promises I forget what you said okay. 😊👍🏻
You should purchase a good ddc or have someone lend you one to see if you hear a difference, and if you do hear a difference you could try to explain what it's doing to the audio signal.
I am using , from Mac Mini through USB, a Matrix SPDIF2 (reclocker) connected through IIS to Matrix Element X2 (dac/amp), with settings on synchronous mode. For me, it is an improvement of the sound . I don’t know if it is because jitter or ground , but it is doing a nice job . In this way, the sound is clearer , any sibilance is gone and bass is stronger and more defined in synchronous mode , than in asynchronous mode directly from usb. I really don’t think is a placebo, but who knows ?😊 I am using headphones.
It doesn't seem like 'buzzy' guitars would be the best source with which to identify the audible effects of jitter.
After careful listening to various USB Windows audio drivers, it appears that Windows may introduce jitter and other effects when its default audio subsystem resamples and mixes audio from multiple sources internally, before shipping out the results out to USB. The samples being sent out to USB may not actually be the same samples being played on its local hard drive, for example.
It doesn't have to be mixing multiple sources simultaneously for its operating system's mixer/resampler to have effects, including jitter in its internal conversion process due to noise, system interrupts, or even just less than audiophile grade attention paid to the audio driver/resampler/mixer development. If there is jitter introduced by the internal mixer/resampler software, it is built in to the output samples and USB buffering won't fix it.
As extremely correct as you are about jitter, using a highly distorted guitar as an example just doesn't make sense. Ages ago, when testing audio systems, Smokin' by Boston was one of my favorite sound check songs. Then I got to thinking, is my audio system accurately reproducing all the distortion?
I think it was you (can't remember which video and I may be wrong entirely) who said once that digitally-controlled preamps tend to have higher noise floors and that does seem to be born out in your measurements (with the Ultralite being an outlier), but I'd love a video exploring the topic. Is it a limitation of the control method or is it more of an issue of circuit design? Is there something that makes it so that a theoretically perfect fully analog preamp will always have lower noise vs a theoretically perfect digitally-controlled preamp?
That is true ! Hey Julian why did you not do a review of the new AVID Mbox Studio ?
Excellent explanation, thank you 👍
I have LOL'd as soon I have seen Behringer in the test.
Well explained. Thanks for clearing this myth.
I did not think my system suffered from jitter but others make it sound so inevitable that you think 'maybe I have never heard what streaming sounds like with no jitter'
I have just discovered your channel (subscribed) .I had a look at your channel hoping to see a video about hifi network switches.
As they are another product I do not understand, they have to plug into a Reuter so haw can they improve on one?
Have you done one if not could you?
thanks. PS my next upgrade will be to replace my wiim pro, do you have any advice on quality streamers to consider?
Hey Julian, I’ve seen your Video about the Elgato Wave XLR interface. Now that Elgato have added the function to add vst plugins I wondered what you think of it now. If you could respond to this comment or do a video about it I would be very happy thank you.
Excellent job! Succinct. i appreciated the graphs demonstrating you thoroughly investigated jitter for us. Convinced me to subscribe.
Great video! Obviously you understand, that jitter as a topic is a cash cow only. Actually, there are 2 versions of jitter: 1. Samples times are distributed in a slightly imperfect way near to perfect timings, but no integral time deviation occurs, like molecules thermally oscillating near their perfect place within crystal, hence no modulation, since overall timing structure is not affected. 2. time errors add up over many samples, then that error gradually reverses polarity and back and so on: This one causes intermodulation. This is the "bad" one, but even this one is definitely not audible anywhere in the picosecond range. Nobody needs single nanosecond precision. Or femtosecond, or attosecond or plancks time resolution accuracy or whatever they offer next.
My wifes father’s family are Krause from Lithuania.
Fantastic explanation!
What a gem
Thank you for this video.
@Julian: don't take away the audiophile's "last bastion" in terms of suggested quality differences despite ending up with the exact same data after error detection and correction stages. 😉
While jitter and its induced performance degeneration is a real thing confirmed by serious companies such as Intel in some paper, the audible impact as usual often is blown entirely out of proportion.
How about a video on the difference of using ADAT with and without using word clock
Ur So Cool Very Cool Luv Ur Precis Explanations That I Can Understand Keep it Up Luv Your Channel!!
Thanks Julian for all the great work! Could you review the Neve 88m ? Thanks!
I'm worried I might become and audiophile but.. isn't just knowing the small degrees to which you can go make you an audiophile as well? The depth of knowledge. I don't know man, its a very fun rabbit hole. as my quest continues I have one more question.. is there a positive term for audiophile or is it simply .."audio engineer" LOL or "audio explorer" I used the term "audio surfing" to describe getting my first truly mixed track. so smooth... it was like I was riding the audio waves. thanks for the info sir. V/R ~Bobby
@@bobbybird3677 Thanks so much for the tip! I think it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Audiophile is a positive term for me. The most important thing is after going down a rabbit hole to pull one self out again and enjoy the music. Knowing technical stuff to not get lured into snake-oil products is important but so is taking the time to sit down and enjoying your system. That’s what being an Audiophile about. Enjoy the music!! 😀
Hey julian, amazing review as always. Could you please do a review of the YAMAHA AG06 mixer/audio interface?
I was hoping this would get into an explanation of wordclocking, but did I nod off for that part? 🤔😬
The only time jitter matters is while you record data on physical devices, such as a hard disk. But these devices have a close to jitter-free driver.
Hey Julian, could you review the Neumann MT48? Really curious about the headphone outs!
My issue here is that we listen to music, not test tones. Time arrival problems can manifest as smearing. This reminds me of the debate of DS DACs vs. R2R DACs. DS measure better. R2R sound better.
Dubstep producers hear the examples and be like, "how can I add jitter to my synths?".
hey Julian, love your thorough reviews. would you take a look at DJ controllers with integrated interface?
they come with 2 separate stereo outs and some with mic- and line- in, enough to test there.
the sound quality talk on the dj channels usually doesn't go beyond "symmetric outs = professional"
I think that could be an interesting expansion of equipment to test and audience to draw...
Hi Julian have you got plans to review the new Zoom H6essential and other essential lines from Zoom ?
I have a question that is maybe related to this topic: does it matter which device is master/slave in a situation where there is a rather cheap external converter connected to an audio interface via spdif? I shouldn't care right?
That moment when you discover you prefer the electric guitar with more jitter, not less...
Amazing video mate. Is the grittyness of some 80`s early digital recordings the jitter? Take for example Show Must Go On by Queen, or the whole album a Kind of Magic, it sounds to me far more grittier than its analog predecessors.
Not too sure, distortion in audio components was also quite a bit higher back then. While jitter might add a hint og grunge, I think the most distortion is simply due to the older audio equipment that was used.
The quality of ADCs in general was variable in the early 80s. I've heard some very unpleasantly edgy, 'sharp' digital recordings made through early converters (different from 'clinical' or 'cold' recordings) - fortunately the tech improved fairly quickly.
I wonder if part of the reason it’s less of a problem is that modern devices have faster clocks, so the amount of “offness” caused by being a cycle late or early is smaller. Let me know if that is/isn’t relevant.
One device no real worries about jitter. What about if you expand on that as your studio grows? For example my set up is Interface, two 8 channel octopres via ADAT into interface, one two channel preamp via SPIDF. Maybe a video looking into jitter once you have expanded from just your interface? Thanks I enjoyed the video!
Thank you Julian for the great explanation on this topic! In a forum on Gearspace I saw a discussion about operating systems on computers re-sampling audio and therefore leading to audible quality differences during playback. Does it have to do with Jitter as well or is there another reason for the audible loss in quality? Do you have a video on this topic or would that be something you'd do a video about? There are apps like Audirvana that promise to get around the re-sampling issue and to increase the playback quality.
Awesome video. Anyway, I was wondering if you'll be taking a look at the new MOTU 828? It seems like an expanded version of the UltraLite mk5, and I hope it lives up to its quality!
Jitter is easliy measureable and many inexpensives dac are basically jitter free (-130db or even less).
Thank you for saving me 60 euros i could have uselessly spent for an Audioquest Jitterbug to be installed between my Windows 10 PC and my Presonus Studio 24C audio interface.
Oooooohhh, so that's how the distortion made by my M-Audio Air 192/6 after a few hours of 192kHz sound playback is called.
Digital is inherently"Jittery" it's like a stair step , you can hear it if you know what to listen for..
Ugh. I love the dumb i popped that snake oil bubble.
I love the sound of external re clocked PCM. I love the sound of interpolation from hi res upsampling to 24 bit / 192 kHz. Why because it ulitmaly produces more SN DB extension pushing more Data into the silicon.
Reclocked PCM at higher up sample bit rates produce amazing tighter faster bass.
Come at me with the snakeoil comments. What we forget is that the chips benefit from more data throuput where upsampled generated or recorded in the orginal hi res recording and if you are going to resample you want to reclock.
Could care less about jitter. Or my jitter free recordings when i add a reclocker middleware to my SPDIF chain. I like reclocking my HDMI PCM interfaces as well.
From what I understand, the timing changes introduced by jitter can affect noise floor modulation, which may not change the signal per se, but can be heard with slight changes in the timbre. It has also been proven out that the human ear-brain can perceive even slight changes in timbre due to noise floor modulation to something like -200dB.
Do you have a link to the study?
Please, MOTU 828 test! 🙏
Julian, it would be wonderful if you could test the optical toslink output of any LG OLED TV made within the last 5 years. There’s been a lot of discussion about allegedly high level of jitter that these TVs output via toslink that causes problems with some DACs. My DAC works fine but I’m wondering if this type of jitter could cause some audible issues. JDS labs has even attempted to measure the SINAD of one of these devices and it only achieved 80dB, however it is possible that they did not take into account the fact that the TV may have been down converting the test signal from 24 bit to 16 bit.
Thanks Julian, these videos of yours have been very informative in clarifying concepts that I thought I knew something about previously, but didn't really understand. As far as jitter, this is a hazy memory, likely from a decade or more previously, that Toslink, could suffer from jitter due to long optical cable runs, poor endpoint connections or cheap optical fiber, due to to signal reflections in the optical fiber itself. Would such actually be jitter or more a form of signal degradation in general at the receiving end?
Nah you get to worry about bit errors way way way before you have to worry about jitter.
I don't see how something like a DAC would need to be built for it to cause random jitter.