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.

antigrunge2

Let‘s just say that my ears and reputable designers like Innuos, Esoteric et al disagree with you

Disagree with what?  I don’t question you can hear the difference, but I attribute it to electrical isolation that device brings and not the reclocking process itself.

@emergingsoul  +1. Any external clock will have to be connected by a cable (50 or 75Ohms) of course. This will cause smearing of the clock signal, it is not the frequency of the clock but the rise and fall times of the edges that are difficult to control without introducing several issues like overshoot/undershoot of the transitions (could cause more noise / jitter) and uncertainty (frequency / phase shift / linearity). In my book the clock source needs to be as close as possible to the DAC IC with proper PCB impedance control. An external clock source is required in a studio recording environment in order to sync several devices together.

@greg_f  

Thank you for the response but it's not helpful versus what I was trying to say. Doesn't really clarify the essence of what I was trying to say.

Seems to me a better Clock needs to be designed for inclusion within a dac. Adding a separate Clock and dealing with all the interconnects doesn't really help for something like this.  Better to deal with all the wiring within the component for a better clock. Do you disagree?

I‘d really appreciate if someone would comment on this thread from personal experience rather than from however acquired first principles. 

And by the way: your sophisticated views would obviate the setups of any major recording studio where clocking of multiple devices with very long cables is standard practice