Re: Camelot Dragon 5.1 "Sound Enhancer"

Hi Guys, I'm No Way Qualified To Do An In-Depth Technical Review Of This Product, However I Had A Chance To Play With It On My Meager System This Week.
So If Anyone Is Interested In Seeing What This Contraption Does, Heres Just One Of The Many Opinions Out There On The Net.

Basically for those that don't know, it's advertised as a "jitter filter". Most Mid-Line/Low-End DVD players (LD Players Too?) apparently display this defect.

Well, this device ($499 MSRP) is supposed to filter out this "jitter" coming out of your player, feeding it back into your receiver thus causing this undesireable "jitter".

First Of All, I Have A Pretty Upper Lower End Set-up And By No Means Able To Really See/Hear Too Many Flaws In Software.
So Here Goes:

Toshiba Cinema Series 32" TV
Harmon/Kardon AVR65 DTS Capable Receiver
Panasonic A310
Infinity Minuette 5.1 Satellite Speakers
(BU-80 Sub)
I Live In A Small Apartment Setting, So Everything I Have Is Pretty Much Sufficient For What I Do.
I Proceeded To Hook Up The Camelot Through The Digital Coaxial Cable, and I Also Had a Optical Signal Running As Well Directly To The Receiver, So I Could At Least ATTEMPT To A/B Switch During My Little Playtime.
So, I Pick Out Some Scenes Of Movies I Think I "Know" Pretty Well.
-"Saving Private Ryan" DTS Edition
-"A Bugs Life"
-"Blade"
-"Lost In Space" (Ugh)
-"American Pie"
I Also Tried A Few CDs...
Mostly Dance/Techno Albums.
I'll spare you guys on the details of me racking my brain trying to find any IMPROVEMENT in Sound Quality.
If There was any difference at all, It was probably because of the placebo effect.
I even let more non-critical listeners give it a try, and even my girlfriend (whos grown up in recording studios and such even said the ORIGINAL tos-link connection was better!)
She agreed with me that the connection with the filter was a hair "louder" when played at the same volume, but since she even new louder = better in many peoples perception, there was no real difference, subtle or otherwise.
After About 4 Days Of Testing, My Bottom Line is that this product wasn't for me, and it wasn't worth the price tag.
Again, My Equipment probably wasn't "high-end" enough to notice a difference
then again, if your paying more for "better" equipment, you shouldn't need this thing anyway IMHO.
thanks for listening guys.
-Con

[DJRobX]

"Jitter" makes absolutely NO SENSE WHATSOEVER in terms of a Dolby Digital signal!

It's a COMPRESSED data stream. It gets fed into the DD decoder in chunks, where it's then decoded into a buffer and then played back out the DAC at the appropriate speed. The only place "jitter" could occur here is between the decoder and the DAC, which is INSIDE your receiver!

There are FIFO buffers in the optical/coax receiving logic that are designed to handle minor timing problems. Even rudimentary serial port chips from 1980 had them. And even if this Camelot device did *something*, how would its output be any better than the original signal? Its still going out over that digital connection where this supposed "jitter" occurs in the first place!

This Camelot "Jitter remover" sounds like a whole lot of horse shit to me, designed to prey on the same people who try and justify spending $1000 on a digital audio cable.

hahah Rob, I Do Believe You're Right. =)
For the price i would have paid for the Camelot, I Went out and got some Infinity Overture 1's. now THERE was a change.
-con