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madreza

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 8, 2005
Messages
364
Location
Paris, France
I'm just understanding that the clock you use in your setup changes the sound !
any experience about that ?

what clock do you use ?
any opinion on Apogee big ben , Mytek studio clock , Isochrone, etc ....... ?
 
thats all voodoo bullshit which used to make sense 10 years ago. No internal clocking is most of the time better, but sometimes just not possible
 
I understand your point, but did you test it ?
I mean running the same signal in the same converter with different clocks and doing A/B ?
 
OK !
I think I'll have to test that tomorrow

I have a AD16 a DA16 a RAMSA DA7 and my RME soundcard

will try recording the exact same signal with different sync sources .......

will tell you tomorrow ......
 
JohnRoberts said:
I don't know if it's proper voodoo, but it is mostly BS.

JR

We'll have to agree to disagree John. While it may not be technically correct or even advisable I find my work
flow more enjoyable with better sounding results when I'm using my BB as the system clock.

I'm using proper 75 ohm, terminated BNC cables, as opposed to using the AES or digital data streams for the clock.

When I hook up the clock the result is immediately evident and yes, sounds better to my ears.

There is an added advantage of being able to do VSO tricks with the BB as well, just like analog.  8)

The best thing to do is hook one up and see if you like what it's doing.

There's an interesting thread developing over on this board

http://prorecordingworkshop.lefora.com/2011/04/03/external-clocks-myth-busting

Mark
 
In the converter world, 99% of converters require a high speed clock. This PLL circuitry generates high frequency clocks, from a low frequency rate (typically, you have to generate 24.576MHz from your 48kHz wordclock.

this is usually in your converter unit, not in the big ben unit.

All PLL's, no matter how well designed with introduce jitter to the high speed clocks. the only way to avoid Jitter is to use the crystal integrated into your converter unit.

There's a great paper by Dan Lavry on the effect of Jitter on audio clocks. His research shows that the first effects that jitter have is on distortion/noise at high frequencies... i.e. your high frequencies will begin to have higher THD+N than the rest of your audio.

It makes me ponder if there is a school of thought that says that the music *sounds* nicer with a little distortion at high frequencies, even though friends will an oscilloscope would be having heart attacks?

cheers

/R
 
Rochey said:
It makes me ponder if there is a school of thought that says that the music *sounds* nicer with a little distortion at high frequencies

The school of if it sounds good, it is good.  8)

I encourage everyone to do their own experiments and to draw their own conclusions.

Mark
 
I try not to over analyze (or argue about) what other people hear.

The technology wrt to clocking digital systems has changed quite a bit over the years. BTW, I have nothing but respect for Dan Lavry's convertor work. 

It is difficult to adequately characterize what very small clock (time sample) uncertainty would sound like, and I won't try.

It might be interesting to organize a null test between two similar units, one with and one without external word clock to objectively characterize the magnitude of any phenomenon. Such a comparison would be understandably difficult to organize in such a way that the experiment related errors don't dominate the actual test result.

I'm fine with agreeing to disagree...

JR
 
I had a Mastering session today for 1 of my projects .....
and of course I asked his opinion to the guy who worked there !!!

he told me he did A/B tests and it changes the sound !

For the moment I have no real opinion about that cause I haven't done any test by myself !

I'm just asking for opinions before :D
 
for sure it changes the sound, the question is if it improves a proper modern internal PPL. most manufactures like prism sound, lavry etc will say no it won't. A simple way to test is a converter loopback da/ad do it a few times and check for differences.

in a big studio I'm sure a good external clock is a life saver in a small setup I strongly believe in short cables !!!! internal is the shortest

nicholas


 

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