Importance of clocking

I had a highly modified Oppo used only as a digital transport (all audio/dac board removed e.t.c). One of the mods was an upgraded clock - but not just that - a unique dedicated linear power supply just for the clock alone. This hugely lifted the performance of the transport. I was running it spdif out to an external DAC.

Interestingly the clock was a SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) clock, not an TCXO or OCXO. The people behind this mod were adamant that SAW clocks were superior in sound quality to OCXO clocks. I have never seen anyone else in the high end audio industry even say they have tried SAW clocks.

Unfortunately the Oppo mainboard itself died and all those mods (like a full on R-core LPS powering the mainboard) turned it into a paperweight. It was a way better sounding transport than any entry or medium level product you can get now.

Spend your money on a good DAC that includes a good clock.  Spending thousands on a clock is a huge waste of money, IMHO.  

As mentioned earlier, the main purpose of an external clock is to synchronize multiple devices, not to improve sound quality. 

If there is an improvement in sound quality, it's going to be much less than you could have realized by putting your money into a great DAC.  Lipstick on a pig and all that...

The issue with S/PDIF or AES "reclockers" is that you have two clocks arguing over what should the absolute clock rate be.

The DAC is forced to take one of two approaches: Abandon it’s internal clock or attempt to keep it’s internal metronome and "fix" upstream deviations from it’s own mechanism. This is exactly the thing pro clocks do, but only because there are upstream devices manipulating the data stream. They are there to stop an inevitable argument that arises as a result of a studio’s workflow. Home users HAVE no such arguments to solve, but can create them by adding upstream clocks.

Maybe the best of these situations is to use an Asynchronous Sample Rate Converter, like in the Schiits, but then you’ve got to deal with the fact that your DAC is no longer being given bit-perfect conversions.

In measurements done, I’ve seen original DAC jitter perform actually get degraded, and the signal looks like the upstream jitter PLUS the DAC’s original jitter signature.

Either use an integrated streamer/DAC or a streamer with a multi-second buffer plus USB / asynchronous communication with the DAC is the way to go IMHO.

I should point out, use whatever you want to which sounds good to you, but so far all I'm reading is a misunderstanding of how and why studio clocks work.  I'm going to go with the documentation from Benchmark and Mytek and say it's a bad idea.

@erik_squires 

for avoiding misunderstandings: In my case Dac, Etherregen and USB reclocker are all synchronised to the same Antelope 10m clock. When using AES or SP/DIF the DAC needs to rely on the incoming embedded clock signal whereas USB asychronous slaves the server‘s clock, so effectively my server is equally synchronised to the 10m clock.

The issue with S/PDIF or AES "reclockers" is that you have two clocks arguing over what should the absolute clock rate be.

The DAC is forced to take one of two approaches: Abandon it’s internal clock or attempt to keep it’s internal metronome and "fix" upstream deviations from it’s own mechanism.

How does the DAC know? What do you mean by 'abandon it's internal clock'? Are you talking about the external clock input of a DAC substituting its internal one?   Don't you agree that the better (more accurate with less jitter/noise) the incoming data on AES/SPDIF, the easier the job of the DAC's internal clock?