For Gustard R26...which bang for the buck: DDC or LHY OCK clock?
I've been enjoying this dac for several months now. I have tried USB and COAX and now I2S.
There is a noticeable improvement in each of these inputs. I have read many of the discussions here regarding both DDC and external clocks. I am wondering which of these would give more bang for the buck. The Gustard goes very well with my tube amps.
I am considering the LHY OCK 1 or 2 for clocks and undecided for the DDC.
@kereru Well, FedEx came through. Hooking up the OCK-2 was straight forward. I'm connected from the sine output to the U18 and R26. I'm still cooking my $7.50 cables. Lol. I ordered better cables, but they didn't show up. I'm not good at describing what I hear, but it sounds excellent. Big soundstage and 3D sound. Separation of instruments. Excellent detail, but no sibilance. The first thing I noticed was how punchy the bass is. Things sound more real. I'm very pleased. |
@sls883 Awesome! I think the R26 in particular benefits from a better quality oscillator, as its internal one is a little jittery in some tests I’ve seen. The differences you describe are typical of better temporal/time domain precision, soundstage and 3D/decay one might expect but the extent of the effect on bass is quite something isn’t it. Who’d have thought better timing would make bass more punchy and weighty. Expect longer decay tails and richer bass and midrange texture with better clock cables. Also a tweak to try in due course that has worked for me with every cable, cheap or more expensive, is to wrap the BNC plug/socket junction at both ends with about 1” copper foil tape with conductive adhesive - costs next to nothing but sounds like a solid cable upgrade. |
@kereru Thank You for your making known the Modification carried out. There seems to be a intention to manage ambient energies, where changes are made by adding mass to manage energies to keep critical components optimised in their function. Controlling Fluctuations in Temp’ Control is seemingly critical for the OCXO to perform at the optimised environment for the design. It does seem Temp’ Fluctuation will impact on the OCXO and ’Aging’ resulting from Temp Fluctuation, will become a factor where there is changes occurring to the function that are measurable. Changes occurring to the function that are Audible, well that becomes another subject all together. I am a duck to water on this Clocking Topic, lots can be considered for a type of Chassis and the Components used within. Quite strange, as I have never worn a Wrist Watch since my early Teen Years The Link will show how serious the OCXO is to be considered https://www.paulvdiyblogs.net/2020/07/a-high-precision-10mhz-gps-disciplined.html
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@pindac Cheers for the link, gee that guy went deep into the weeds on controlling temperature variation. Interesting. FYI I have a 1”/2.54cm cube tungsten block as the base of the stack on the OCXO. With tungsten’s high density - same as gold - it weighs 316 grams so has a lot of thermal mass for its size (at least 10x a largely air filled OCXO is my guess) so once the assembly is up to target temperature (which it will delay proportionate to the initial mass) must help with smoothing micro-variations of the oven temperature, presumably also smoothing the required activity of the oven’s heater and hence its current demands on the OCXO circuit. But there’s clearly vibration damping effects too - for which tungsten is known - adding what is % wise negligible mass of fo.q polymer sheets and much smaller cubes on top has quite an additional effect on the sound. Longer decays, better transient attack etc.
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