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Dither: If you think about the literal meaning of the word dither—"a confused or agitated state"—you're halfway to understanding how dither works in digital audio. Dither is a small amount of noise added to the signal that makes digital behave (and sound) more like analog. This noise allows a digital system to resolve low-level information below the amplitude of its Least Significant Bit (LSB). Without dither, signals with amplitudes below the LSB are simply ignored by the quantizer; the signal never traverses two quantization steps, a requirement of…

I approached the Lens measurements from two perspectives: its effect of jitter at the word clock inside a digital processor, and how it changed low-level waveforms with its dither-generation function. First the jitter.

Fig.1 is the Theta Chroma 396's clock-jitter spectrum made by driving the Chroma with a PS Audio Lambda transport playing the CBS Test Disc. The test signal was a 1kHz, -90dB undithered sinewave. We can see the now-classic spikes of jitter energy at 1kHz and its harmonics, the result of the test signal creating interface jitter. The RMS…

As impressive as I had found the original Mark Levinson No.31 CD transport, after about two years of living with it I found myself experimenting with outboard jitter-reduction units. In chronological order, I tried the Digital Domain VSP, the Sonic Frontiers UltraJitterbug, the Audio Alchemy DTI•Pro and DTI•Pro 32, the Meridian 518, and the Genesis Digital Lens. The sonic changes wrought by these devices were mainly positive, though the effect of the original DTI•Pro's enhancement algorithm was very dependent on the CD…

Here's an erudite, well-written pensée from Dale Kleve (klevefinearts@msn.com) on two interesting audio points. I'll have to look into the first one, but the second describes almost perfectly our own near-rear-wall listening position and its sweet spot:

"First, I would like to thank you for all the sage advice in helping me tweak my setup. I get so much pleasure and musical…

Four years ago, I was ready to write John Hiatt off. After his triumphant late-'80s comeback, which began with a label switch from Geffen to A&M, newfound sobriety, and his ne plus ultra album, Bring the Family, the singer-songwriter began a downward artistic arc. The success of 1988's Slow Turning and 1993's Perfectly Good Guitar were offset by such lesser efforts as 1990's Stolen Moments and 1995's Walk On.…

It's not known whether there's a familial link between the aforementioned Jacob, who appears to have been childless, and James Melton Winey, who, two centuries later, invented the Magneplanar speaker. (Family research indicates that Jim Winey's roots lead directly back to another Pennsylvania Jacob Winey, born in 1764…

Winey: Two or three of the big wheels came out to our little old home in White Bear Lake, with our old broken-down furniture, to hear these things. One of the prototypes, after it had gotten along quite a ways, ended up going into their fancy anechoic chamber and being analyzed by their physicists. There was this one who was their speaker expert who said, "It can't work."

Lander: But once they determined how well it did work, they wanted it.

Winey: They wanted it, and I was willing to let…

No bodily functions, please

Editor: I am and have been for quite some time now a subscriber to Stereophile. I have a question for you. Would you please provide me with the justification that you have for permitting your publishing of foul language in your magazine?

Given the subject matter of Stereophile, I am at a loss to understand such poor choices when it comes to the selection of certain words and phrases on the part of your writers to describe reactions, facts, or fiction in their articles. In the past, the…