Here's our last in this nerding out blathering about timing.
If timing doesn’t matter across the internet or your home network, why does it make such a big difference when you hook up a high-end transport? Or the AirLens streamer?
Because now you're dealing with a direct, real-time digital audio connection.
Unlike streaming, where data is buffered and reassembled before playback, a transport like the PMG reads data from a local disc and outputs a continuous digital stream—over I²S or coax—straight into your DAC. And when that stream is handed off, timing becomes critical. Every sample has to be converted by the DAC at precisely the right instant. If that timing drifts, even slightly, the DAC’s analog output drifts with it. That’s jitter, and it’s not theoretical—it’s audible.
This is why we designed the PMG SACD Transport the way we did. It doesn’t just read a CD or SACD and throw bits at the DAC. It first rips the disc into memory—isolating it from mechanical errors and read-time inconsistencies. Then it carefully feeds that data out using a dedicated low-jitter clock. That’s a completely different model from a standard CD transport, where the timing is often tied to the drive mechanism itself.
In our case, we hand the DAC a clean, well-timed stream that it can lock onto with confidence. When paired with something like the PMG Signature DAC over I²S, where both sides speak the same native digital language and share clocking information, you get a connection where jitter is virtually eliminated.
So while timing doesn’t matter when your files are flying across a network, it matters a lot when bits are crossing the cable into your DAC. That last few feet of signal path—transport or streamer to DAC—is where everything comes together. That’s where you want stability, precision, and a clock that doesn’t flinch.
The difference isn’t subtle. You hear it in the space between instruments, in the ease of the presentation, in how the music breathes. Timing may not matter everywhere—but where it does, it matters completely.
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