Importance of clocking
There is a lot of talk that external clocks because of the distance to the processor don‘t work. This is the opposite of my experience. While I had used an external Antelope rubidium clock,on my Etherregen and Zodiac Platinum Dac, I have now added a Lhy Audio UIP clocked by the same Antelope Clock to reclock the USB stream emanating from the InnuOS Zenith MkIII. The resultant increase in soundstage depth, attack an decay and overall transparency isn‘t subtle. While there seems to be lots of focus on cables, accurate clocking throughout the chain seems still deemed unnecessary. I don‘t understand InnuOS‘ selling separate reclockers for USB and Ethernet without synchronising Ethernet input, DAC conversion and USB output.
@erik_squires ”This is why TV’s and streaming devices have relatively large buffers. Everything goes into a bucket which it attempts to keep full from one side, and then carefully doled out by a metronome on the other. That’s where the clock matters.” Nicely put! |
Yes, it is. With asynchronous USB data is delivered in packets (frames) to buffer at some time intervals, for instance 1ms - for instance 44 samples, DAC delivers each sample to D/A converter in exact intervals (cannot be improved) signaling back buffer over/under flow. Problem of data coming at different or uneven intervals is eliminated by the buffer and back signaling. Synchronizing time of the frame delivery with D/A clock won’t help because D/A converter already operates at exactly even intervals. |
