Opinions on Esoteric clocks ......

Bugman03, I've heard this improvement myself with Esoteric's P01 and pair of D01 DACs in their room at CES.

When it comes to synchronous digital audio components (such as Esoteric are), it is beneficial to have external clock because it "locks" them all to the exact same clock frequency. For example, your P05 has a VCO used to reference the PLL multi clock generator, and the D05 also has a similar clocking architecture with another VCO. The two VCOs (one in transport, one in DAC) are impossible to work at the exact same frequency, unless they are "locked" to an external reference (the external clock). This is why the sound is more focused with the external clock. Furthermore, if there was a clock output from your P05 so you can feed D05 with it, you wouldn’t need external clock because the benefit would be the same.

Above does not apply to a single digital audio component (CD/SACD player) simply because there is no benefit from an external clock, IMO. It also does not apply to a Transport/DAC combination where the DAC is asynchronous.

Best,
Alex Peychev
www.aplhifi.com

So, the clocks do not help with jitter....they merely put the two players ( transport and DAC ) in sync. which improves the overall focus. Right ?????

Hello Garebear,

Correct, the external clock cannot improve the jitter of the internal clocks; it locks them to the same reference frequency.

I understand that frequency stability/deviation specification of external clocks is extremely tight (this is why they are so expensive) and there is benefit using them with multiple synchronous digital audio components, but that has nothing to do with improving the short-term stability/jitter of the internal clocks, which is critical for optimal D/A conversion.

Best,
Alex Peychev
www.aplhifi.com

Technically, this is all pretty much over my head. All I can comment on is what I hear. So I have to take issue with the comment above that "if there was a clock output from your P05 so you can feed D05 with it, you wouldn't need external clock because the benefit would be the same." Unless I misunderstand, this seems to be saying that if you can slave the transport's clock to the clock in the DAC, the result will be the same as with the external clock. (If I misunderstood, sorry.) When I ran the P03 and D03 by themselves, of course the P03 was slaved to the D03's clock. The very substantial improvement when the GOR-b was added was over the P03 slaved to the D03.

......and let's not forget - ahhhhh - the cost of 2 BNC cables - and the cost of another power cord which from what I have been told does make a difference on these clocks. My system is witred with Purist Audio 20th Anniversary's ...not cheap !