dCS Puccini Clock

If you do get the Oracle BNC, see if they can get you the old one without the useless switch on it as it's cheaper and better performing.

hello to all, just contributing my two cents to this string. i recently bought a puccini and have heard it in two other settings with and without clock. the first time was at a dealer and i did perceive a improvement in body and smoothness with the clock. the quality of this system was in fact so good (isn't this often the case at the dealer!) that it motivated me to buy the puccini in the first place. the second time i heard the clock was in another audiophile's system. in his system i could barely notice the difference. my tentative conclusion is that you need to have everything dialed way up (the dealer used all Valhalla) to get the most of the benefit, and that at this level, other tweaks: upgrading to highest end interconnect, power cord, speaker cables, etc. may provide equal, or greater benefit. I am open to your views....

regarding dealer comments re: clock cable, forgive me for not being surprised that said dealer insists that sonic benefits continue to accrue as cable price goes up (!)

If you want one of the best word clocks available the Black Lion Audio Microclock MKII is exceptional. It is hands down better than the Apogee Big Ben which several of my friends own. The Big Ben apparently uses older PLL technology for reducing jitter. The Microclock uses a different approach and has less accumulated jitter than the Big Ben. The Big Ben has around 100 to 150 picoseconds of accumulated jitter & the Microclock MKII is rated at under 10 picoseconds to give you an idea. For $425.00 you can not beat it considering Big Ben's $1300 tag. Black Lion offers a 30 day demo period as well for you to try it in your system. They recommend using as short a BNC cable possible and longer than 3 meters degrades performance. I personally have found going from a cheap 3 meter Hosa cable to a 1 meter premium cable was noticeably different in the sound with a smoother, less fatiguing presentation. They also recommend plugging the power of the clock directly into the outlet for better results. There are .5 meter cables at Thecableco and I will try one of those next to see if theres any difference. I even prefer the sound of the Microclock to the Antelope Audio Isochrone OCX, another popular clock. I have no affiliation with Black Lion except that I'm a satisfied customer and finally settled on a clock.

strangely on my system which is very holografic, the clock is producing less difference than on the Indra / Howland combination mentioned here above.
I am running the clock with the cables delivered by dCS.

positive effects
- the space beetween instruments is a little cleaner
- the general colour seems a little dryer when I take the clock off

? effect ( I still don't know if it'is positive or not)
- the tonal balance has changed, more high frequencies and less direct power in the medium / bass

I am quite perplex

I just got this info from dCS:

"March 24th will see the release of v1.10 software update for Puccini Player that provides a number of enhancements to Puccini Player. All dCS distributors will be sent copies of this update disc for the Puccini users in their country. I can also mail you a copy if you would like?

Features provided in this update include:

- Lock time for digital inputs is substantially improved
- A menu allows the user to lock to wordclock on per-input basis for digital inputs
- It is now possible to turn off the LEDs when the display is set to “Off”
- Upsampling from digital inputs is now possible, dependent on the user buying a unit-specific license from our website

All Puccini users should be encouraged to install this update.

For users who want to purchase the upsampling feature from dCS, this update is a pre-requisite and must be installed before upsampling on the digital inputs can be enabled. We recommend that if users want to hear the differences that upsampling makes then they play a CD in CD mode with upsampling disabled. This can be done in the menu section by setting the CD upsampling page to PCM.

Hope this helps

David J M Steven"