I am planning on upgrading my tube amp when its current set of tubes start to go. So I've been doing a bit of perusing online, and was really considering the Prima Luna integrated amps until I read about "
the world's first tube-based data clocking device: the SuperTubeClock™"
Did I missing something or is this just about the most obvious snake oil sales job? For what I am understand the Prima Luna Engineers are using a tube-based oscillator in lieu of a quartz crystal to generate the DAC chip clock signal. Their blurb lists reduced jitter and noise as the advantages. AFAIK the noise in a timing signal should be superfluous since it has two values 1 and 0, and anything in between (noise) is ignored. If the clock signal "noise" is leaking into the final analog output, then there are big problems with the DAC chip. With respect to jitter, I would expect the inaccuracies of a high-quality crystal oscillator to be measurable only in the nanosecond or picosecond range. Can an analog-style oscillator really do better (and does it really matter)?
Another thing that stuck me is that the clock triode is soldered in, and there is mention of it lasting 5 - 10 years. When it goes bad, do owners have to send their DACs to Prima Luna to be refitted with new - and possibly rare and otherwise unavailable - clock tubes?
Thoughts, anyone?
