Wyred4Sound - Do clocks age?


Reading a recent review of the wyred4Sound Remedy over at 6moons (gods, is there any site harder to read or understand?) they seemed to say that perhaps digital clocks in sources and DACs age.

I remember reading some truth to this with some of the higher end clocks aging relatively quickly compared to lesser clocks.  I'm wondering if anyone has a source or measurements for this?

Does this mean we'll need to purchase a re-clocker every 5 years to keep our DACs sounding at their best?

Best,

Erik
erik_squires
I’d be surprised if clocks got all that much better over 2 years though.
I have no particular knowledge of that, Erik, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you were right. I was just offering my interpretation of the reviewer’s comment.

Also, when it comes to jitter specs I wonder how much consistency and meaningfulness there is among the different manufacturers with respect to how they are defined. The jitter measurements John Atkinson provides in Stereophile are often specifically stated to be averages taken across a specific bandwidth, and detailed spectral plots based on precisely specified test conditions are often provided as well. But I’d expect that when specs are provided by manufacturers there is lots of opportunity for creative "specmanship." Examples being the bandwidth of the measurement, peak-to-peak vs. peak vs. rms vs. other forms of averaging, measurement at the output of the oscillator vs. the output of the component vs. other circuit points within the component, or just the spec on the oscillator itself as determined under ideal conditions independent of the surrounding circuit and the noise it introduces, etc. etc.

Regards,
-- Al

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Do the clocks degrade with time? I have wondered about this as well, but I think the electrolytic caps will give up long before the clocks do.
Do the clocks degrade with time? I have wondered about this as well ...
I have no particular knowledge regarding that question, but it wouldn't surprise me if such concerns arose as a result of flawed extrapolations from the fact that over time digital watches and clocks gain or lose time.  "Flawed" for two reasons:

1)That would occur to some degree even if nothing at all in the watch or clock changes over time, just as a consequence of its initial inaccuracy.

2)If the master oscillator in such a device were to gain or lose the equivalent of say a minute per year, due to some combination of initial inaccuracy and changes in accuracy that may occur over time, that would amount over a period of 10 years to an error of less than 0.002%.  In a digital audio device that would result in a corresponding change in pitch, which would seem unlikely to be perceivable even to those having perfect pitch.  0.002% would mean, for example, that a tone of 1000 Hz would be reproduced as 1000.02 Hz.

What might matter is significant degradation over time in the jitter performance of the device, but FWIW I am not aware of any credible evidence that would raise concern about that possibility.

Regards,
-- Al
  

So have any of you received your Remedy reclockers yet, and have you had a chance to listen? I began writing about my experience with it (it's doing some very nice things in my system) but haven't posted it yet because it has turned into a full-blown review and I'm still editing it. I hope to have it ready soon.