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This is a used Sonic Frontiers Ultra Jitterbug. I have the original box and power cord. It has a single coax, AES, and Toslink input. It has a coax and AES output. Digital technology and jitter reduction have come a long way since this piece was produced, so I don't know how effective it might be.
From Stereophile:
Sonic Frontiers UltrajitterbugThe Sonic Frontiers UltrajitterBug (UJB) is the most straightforward unit of the group; its sole job is to reduce jitter. This is reflected in the unit's price, which is roughly half that of the other two units reviewed here.
The UJB is housed in a handsome, sturdy-looking chassis just 9.5" wide and a little over 2" high. The 5/16"-thick beveled faceplate holds a three-position switch which selects between inputs, and four LEDs which indicate which input has been selected, and whether the unit is locked to the source.
The rear panel holds TosLink, AES/EBU, and coaxial input jacks, AES/EBU and coaxial output jacks, and an IEC line-cord connector.
More than 80 components are housed in the 2" by 1 5/8" encapsulated module. The name UltrajitterBug itself comes from the UltraAnalog AES21 input receiver module, which replaces the Crystal CS8412 or other input receiver chip with a much more sophisticated clock-recovery circuit. The AES21 uses a Crystal CS8412 for logic decoding, along with dual discrete PLLs, for an output-clock jitter specification of 40 picoseconds. For comparison, a CS8412 has about 200ps of jitter (footnote 3). Moreover, the AES21 has a jitter-attenuation cutoff frequency of 1kHz—far lower than the CS8412's 25kHz JACF. The dual-PLL circuitry is isolated from other components in the module by a brass shield. The AES21 was designed by Dr. Rémy Fourré, whose superb article on jitter was published in the October 1993 Stereophile (Vol.16 No.10, p.80).
In addition to supplying the AES21, UltraAnalog engineers worked closely with Sonic Frontiers in designing the UJB.
The UJB has four power-supply regulation stages fed from a toroidal transformer; the master clock is supplied from its own regulation stage. Appearing at input and output are hand-wound custom transformers. These took more than a year to develop, and are reportedly critical to the UJB's performance.
A careful reading of Dr. Fourré's jitter article shows that a high-pass rolloff caused by a pulse transformer can add significantly to interface jitter. Manufacturers typically talk about interface bandwidth into hundreds of megahertz, ignoring the influence of a pulse transformer's high-pass function. These factors were considered in the UJB's design.
The UJB employs a neat trick to reduce jitter: It strips out the subcode from the S/PDIF signal. Subcode is non-audio data transmitted down the digital interface that contains information such as track number and time—when you see your CD player read the time and track information, it's getting that data from the subcode. But only CD players and transports use the subcode; digital processors don't need it.
A little earlier I mentioned that jitter is created in the interface by the music signal itself. Interestingly, the subcode also produces interface jitter at the frequency at which it's transmitted: 7.35kHz. Each subcode channel has a data rate of 7350 bits per second. This bit activity creates jitter with a frequency of 7350Hz (footnote 4). In my transport-jitter measurements presented in the November 1993 Stereophile (Vol.16 No.11, p.83), every transport measured had a peak in its jitter energy at this frequency.
This is why the UJB strips out the subcode—there's no use for it, and it only adds jitter. Note, however, that the Meridian D5000 and D6000 digital loudspeakers do rely on the S/PDIF subcode, and won't function correctly with the UJB. (The D5000 and D6000 have excellent jitter rejection anyway.)
Overall, the well-built UJB appears to be a solid piece of engineering, and its thick, beveled front panel and nice cosmetics make it the most attractive product in the group.
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