The old boombox I used to have made a constant whine noise. Alot of players now use CDrom drives, and I know I can definitely hear my computer drive spin up and down, so there must be software trickery or noise dampening going on in the nice ones. I can't hear it in my XA5400es, except slightly when you first put a disc in. But I'd bet the sound you hear or dont hear from the drive outweighs jitter by several orders of magnitude in regards of a cleaner sound.