Importance of clocking

Peace, brother @lalitk!

I fully accept that an external clock might improve sound quality. I don’t accept that the reason for this has anything to do with the accuracy of the clock. That’s all.

Think about or investigate what a streamer does. Its job is to repackage lumps of data into (effectively) a continuous stream of data. It completely reformats it and the accuracy of the clock in the streamer is important to sound qualiity (I used to have a Mutec MC-3 reclocker after my streamer); ditto the importance of clock accuracy in the DAC (I continue to use an external clock here myself).

I am happy to stand by my assertion that there is no possible mechanism through which ethernet clock accuracy affects sound quality.

@cleeds It could, but I'm now unfollowing the thread so will only be notified if someone mentions me.

‘I fully accept that an external clock might improve sound quality. I don’t accept that the reason for this has anything to do with the accuracy of the clock. That’s all.’

Congratulations on inventing a negative inverse tautology’

Guys,

it all depends what is understood by the term 'clock accuracy'.

For example rubidium clocks have very poor short term stability, they jitter by design. This makes them totally unsuitable for a short term time base reference. Their big usage is due to their long term stability where the time has to be correct after a long time without synchronization (eg military applications). The long term frequency stability, the clock 'accuracy' is defined in ppm (part per million). The highest clock accuracy is not required for hifi applications.
An OCXO (or TCXO)  has a better short term stability (phase noise) but is doesn't have the accuracy of the rubidium. .
As in hifi the real long term stability isn't important, the better clock source is a very high quality OCXO or a TCXO.

My point is that the absolute accuracy of the clock is not as important as other aspects of it (phase noise, voltage stability, jitter, etc).

@antigrunge2 I said "I fully accept that an external clock might improve sound quality. I don’t accept that the reason for this has anything to do with the accuracy of the clock. That’s all"

You said "Congratulations on inventing a negative inverse tautology". I haven't. Please re-read. I choose my words very carefully.

You keep asserting that any reported sound quality improvements from an external clock must be due to its accuracy; I keeo asserting that it can't be, so we need to look elsewhere for the cause. I do NOT assert that an external clock cannot improve sound quality; I merely and persistently question your attribution of the effect to a cause.