Replaced clock, now music plays 1.7x slower

[yammy1688]

Hey all,

I recently replaced the cheap crystal on my sound card with one of the ebay clocks and now my music plays sllloooowwwww....

Now at least according to the labels on both clocks, both are 24,576, but for some reason, when any sound is played through the new clock, it goes quite a bit slower, 1.7x to be exact.

Could there be anything to cause this aside from a defective/mislabeled crystal, or perhaps some multiplier of sorts built into the sound card somewhere?

I've removed two caps and resistor associated with the crystal, and it's too late to put the old one back as I may have damaged it during removal from too much heat (just get choppy static with old clock).

The good news is that even though it's slow, i can already tell that it's quite a big upgrade sound-wise. cleans everything up so to speak and brings out all these little details.

Any help would be appreciated!

-ken

[yammy1688]

I forgot to add that this occurs whether the power supply is plugged in or not, so I suppose it may be a power supply issue.

Does anyone know if an improperly powered clock would exhibit this type of behavior?

[poynton]

Could you have mis-wired the new clock to the soundcard?

How have you connected it ? Photos would help.



Andy


.

[yammy1688]

OK so it turns out it simply wasn't receiving any power. I mixed up the secondary cables from the transformers (it's the kind where both secondaries are the same colors). Once I re-wired it, checked for vac on the board itself and voila!

So let this be known: an unpowered clock can work without power, just slowly. I simply assumed that it wouldn't work at all without power, and thus expected it had something to do with the clock itself.

Makes very appreciable difference BTW. Great use of $45

Hope someone finds this useful!

-Ken

[poynton]

probably the board was actualy free running rather than the clock working without power

[yammy1688]

What does free running mean?

Originally Posted by poynton

probably the board was actualy free running rather than the clock working without power

[wwenze]

The crystal couldn't have been running without power while being connected to the circuit at the same time, because the only two pins of the crystal where it connects to the circuit are also where you apply power.

[yammy1688]

So it was being powered by the sound card?

Originally Posted by wwenze

The crystal couldn't have been running without power while being connected to the circuit at the same time, because the only two pins of the crystal where it connects to the circuit are also where you apply power.

[wwenze]

Originally Posted by yammy1688

So it was being powered by the sound card?

Maybe, but without the extra power to the clock and just power from the two pins on the card and affected by other components on the clock PCB the resonant frequency of the circuit was undesired.

I don't think the card would be playing music without a clock, at least mine stops totally when I select external clock and resumes when switched back to internal.