Of course, none of these "improvements" have been verified by actual listening tests. Gets in the way of the more important business of selling stuff.
I installed an aftermarket clock (I think it was from Tent Labs?) into my old CD player. It worked fine, but I wouldn't swear that there was any actual change in the sound, much less the anecdotal night-and-day differences. I don't think it degraded anything, either. Meh, it was $35 and a couple hours of time. No big deal.
I installed an aftermarket clock (I think it was from Tent Labs?) into my old CD player. It worked fine, but I wouldn't swear that there was any actual change in the sound, much less the anecdotal night-and-day differences. I don't think it degraded anything, either. Meh, it was $35 and a couple hours of time. No big deal.
The biggest difference I got playing with a CD player was in reducing the EMI noise between the d/a output and the stages following.
I have seen some where the d/a reference was the 5 volt rail.
Now where jitter can grow is getting the digital signal to an outboard converter. But I am not adverse to improving the clock.
Now the simplest method to cheaply observe jitter is with an fm tuner set to the clock frequency.
I have seen some where the d/a reference was the 5 volt rail.
Now where jitter can grow is getting the digital signal to an outboard converter. But I am not adverse to improving the clock.
Now the simplest method to cheaply observe jitter is with an fm tuner set to the clock frequency.
To let all of us us admire his good education and friendly manners, i believe
The Tentlab clocks are one of the few that come with sensible instructions and co-ax cables... I have played with a couple myself in the past, and again cant say whether I got any benefit.... and its hard to do blind testing on your own
At the moment I have a big problem doing any measurements as a recent house move, where WE decided (i.e. the wife did) that we would have a big clear out... so stuff to move went in boxes, stuff for the tip went in boxes, shuffle it up and you can say good bye to signal generator, scope, meters and other bits of gear as well as other stuff in her demented quest for a clutter free house.... We did manage to move some rubbish so it balanced out!
Simon, even down to the low nanoseconds?
At the moment I have a big problem doing any measurements as a recent house move, where WE decided (i.e. the wife did) that we would have a big clear out... so stuff to move went in boxes, stuff for the tip went in boxes, shuffle it up and you can say good bye to signal generator, scope, meters and other bits of gear as well as other stuff in her demented quest for a clutter free house.... We did manage to move some rubbish so it balanced out!
Simon, even down to the low nanoseconds?
To let all of us us admire his good education and friendly manners, i believe
We can all be tetchy, I had to apologise because I jumped to the wrong conclusion and answered on the spur of the moment..... and was correctly called arrogant because on reflection my reply was.....
I and others did a lot of playing with clocks a few years back (3 or 4) as we were having all sorts of problems, with a variety of distributed clocks, and as part of the exercise we had clock modules connected by wires, we found that taking the clock of board was fraught with problems and great care had to be taken to ensure the clock fidelity so we could test different crystals and oscillators, we ended up doing bespoke test cars with RF co-ax connectors for each device we wanted to test. Having the clock on board with the shortest possible signal length paid dividends and gave the best signal integrity. We also played with clock distribution ICs logic gates (74 series) and found that each combination had to be tuned to get the ultimate clock fidelity, all the factors come into play.
Only ever once got a medal for a design, we all did from NG for designing the AN/VIC5, also got a tee shirt and we had a celebratory barbeque when we got to the TRR stage (and yes I am proud of it
)
No, i don't think or feel so. Not at all. Unless sharing its experience is arrogant ?
Ahhhh. My favorite topology and the only one I use.
THx-RNMarsh
But as the BAS survey showed these circuits have up to .05% range THD's at full scale even worse than the PONO.
one thing to remember about hearing the effects of jitter is that it is also related to the spectrum of the jitter source. If it is a coherent source of error it will be more obvious than if it is a non-correlated signal source of error (ie random noise).
Coherent error sources will give you birdies and non-coherent will give you low level broadband noise.
Alan
(wish I could find my old sources on this, the graphs are quite interesting and I may have some of it not quite right, ie: is it distributed noise sidebands on a signal vs coherent sideband tones on a signal or as I described above distributed over the baseband. Anyway for audio perception it doesn't matter)
Coherent error sources will give you birdies and non-coherent will give you low level broadband noise.
Alan
(wish I could find my old sources on this, the graphs are quite interesting and I may have some of it not quite right, ie: is it distributed noise sidebands on a signal vs coherent sideband tones on a signal or as I described above distributed over the baseband. Anyway for audio perception it doesn't matter)
Probably I don't really understand it, but when I see all those ancient circuits with just a few active devices, stringent matching requirements, objectively so-so or downright sub-par performance, and almost as many trimpots as active devices, I can't help wondering.
Wondering whether this is a remnant from the time when we slowly transformed audio design from tube circuits, with just a few active devices and lost of adjustments, objectively bad performance, and such.
What have we learned/discovered in 40 or 50 years, if anything? We can now design circuits without any adjustments, for a price that is ridiculously low (if you exclude marketing), with fantastic performance that greatly outstrips anything we can hear. Why do we continue to short-change ourselves to the point of paying exorbitant prices for ancient devices we should have left behind us a half century ago?
Jan
Wondering whether this is a remnant from the time when we slowly transformed audio design from tube circuits, with just a few active devices and lost of adjustments, objectively bad performance, and such.
What have we learned/discovered in 40 or 50 years, if anything? We can now design circuits without any adjustments, for a price that is ridiculously low (if you exclude marketing), with fantastic performance that greatly outstrips anything we can hear. Why do we continue to short-change ourselves to the point of paying exorbitant prices for ancient devices we should have left behind us a half century ago?
Jan
Hi elektroj,
Think about this. Anyone who actually does "get it", or understands the effect of clocks on a system would approach this differently. For one, I doubt they would be pushing clock "upgrades" like every audio CD Player modder has.
Most of the time when a client showed up wishing for a certain modification to be done to correct a problem, we find that the equipment is not working properly to begin with. So, before we make any changes, the problems are corrected first. The customers generally leave without doing modifications as very happy customers. We have had to return quite a few CD Players back to original configuration in order to solve issues. Anyone who makes changes to customer equipment without at least returning the equipment to factory performance is a fool. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the positive experiences were actually due to fixing real problems, not the added whatever.
Consider this. Most half decent CD Players do have their clocks designed properly to make it worthwhile to even consider dumping more cash into it. Therefore there is most often no clock problems to correct to begin with!
These people are passing themselves off as experts, better than the original designers of the various products. They are charging unsuspecting folks real money in order to fix a problem that is unlikely to exist. If someone claims to be an expert and is charging for their work, they damn well had better do the work to industry best practices. There is no excuse to do otherwise. The second they profess to be an expert, they are locked into an expectation that the work will be done properly - and that the work and materials do in fact improve the performance in keeping with the claims that were made.
-Chris
This annoys me greatly. Let's start by saying that Marce is 100% correct and dead on the money. He has done more "in practice" than any "clock modder" has - any of them.
Think about this. Anyone who actually does "get it", or understands the effect of clocks on a system would approach this differently. For one, I doubt they would be pushing clock "upgrades" like every audio CD Player modder has.
From my own direct experience, over many years, most absolutely do make a royal mess out of things. I'm in the Toronto Canada area, so we see a high volume of hacks. So, the answer isn't "Yes, sometimes.", its "absolutely, most of the time".
Most of the time when a client showed up wishing for a certain modification to be done to correct a problem, we find that the equipment is not working properly to begin with. So, before we make any changes, the problems are corrected first. The customers generally leave without doing modifications as very happy customers. We have had to return quite a few CD Players back to original configuration in order to solve issues. Anyone who makes changes to customer equipment without at least returning the equipment to factory performance is a fool. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the positive experiences were actually due to fixing real problems, not the added whatever.
Consider this. Most half decent CD Players do have their clocks designed properly to make it worthwhile to even consider dumping more cash into it. Therefore there is most often no clock problems to correct to begin with!
Ahhh, yeah there certainly is!
These people are passing themselves off as experts, better than the original designers of the various products. They are charging unsuspecting folks real money in order to fix a problem that is unlikely to exist. If someone claims to be an expert and is charging for their work, they damn well had better do the work to industry best practices. There is no excuse to do otherwise. The second they profess to be an expert, they are locked into an expectation that the work will be done properly - and that the work and materials do in fact improve the performance in keeping with the claims that were made.
-Chris
And which would be those devices, Jan? Trim pots? In some cases you are probably right, but in others, probably not. For example, the simulated diode for bias adjustment. Sure, one can design with a trip pot, see what he's got and execute the criuit with eqivalent values. Some manufacturers (e.g. Sony, Yamaha) do just that. But I ask you, will it still be where it's supposed to be, this ideal point, in say 10 years' time? And if not, will the deviation be significant or not?
Since I am not involved in it commercially, I am not hard pressed to write tons of sales blurb how I am using the latest in power devices.
If you're talking about actual devices, such as say transistors, well, that's a different story altogether. Some older devices, like say Mototola's MJ power series, survived to this day almost purely because of the pro sector, which still insists on them to this day because they are very reliable under adverse conditions than the plastic pack power devices which dominate today. Sure, their Ton, Tstore and Toff times are like a joke compared to modern devices, yet outstanding sound can still be had from them, with still excellent power badwidths. They were declared with Ft as better than 4 MHz, in practice they often exceed 6 MHz, but that's still just 1/5 of what modern devices do no problemo.
Still, every time I hear an amp with these devices whup the a. of modern amps, I wonder have we really got our priorities the right way around. A good example is the Otala/Lohstroh amp, which used ancient devices by modern standards, yet sounds better than the vast majority of what was made since then, with the latest in semiconductors.
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