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Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

Not unless the DAC lets it

If the DAC decides to play this data at the rate it receives it from the USB bus, the computer can have an effect on the timing of music playback, since it controls when each piece of data is sent over the USB bus.

If the DAC uses a buffer for the incoming data, then plays from its buffer using its own time signal, it makes no difference what timing is used by the computer to send the data (assuming it is sending it fast enough for playback, and slow enough not to overfill the buffer, which is something the USB device should be able to control).

Here's an analogy...it's like giving pieces of paper, each with one musical note on it, to a guitar player. If the guitar player plays each note when he receives the paper, then there will be jitter if the notes are not received at exactly the right time. If he saves a few and then begins playing them such that there will always be a buffer of notes ahead of him, it doesn't really matter how irregularly they were received.


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