I appreciate this video. I'm seriously contemplating purchasing a Aune SC1 to go along with my S9c Pro. This video gave me a great basic understanding of the terminology and the upsell.
Yup. Guys, seriously, do *NOT* buy an outboard clock unless you work in a studio and need multidevice sync. They typically only degenerate the time accuracy by placing the clock at a distance from DAC. This has been tested. Hard to believe Playback Designs clock circuit might be good but can't be all that different from existing femtoclock designs.
Where are the Rubidium Clocks located? I am looking at pictures of the inside and only see 1 clock, between the reset button and the USB input, and that one is of the cheaper crystal variety.
Yes, that is MSB's ideology as well: the clock must be as close to the DAC chip as possible, and never outside the DAC chassis, due to loss of precision over long wires. dCS, of course, takes the opposite approach, believing that more separate boxes are better. Perhaps this is why I rarely find dCS-based systems to sound natural.
The standard terminology and setup is there are the internal clocks of units and their clock generators (or preferably, a clock each for the 44.1kHz and 48kHz families). The clocks of all these units (such as in a recording studio) may then be synchronized by a (usually external) master clock. Alternatively, the inferior but more common way of doing it in home audio, the internal clocks of downstream units may be slaved to the source's. Logically, if one only uses a one-box solution versus several units (such as a server/DAC with inbuilt transport), there is no need for synchronization. Besides, to use an external atomic 10MHz clock in audio isn't automatically better than to use two high-quality low phase noise internal clocks for the two sampling rate families because there is no even (mathematical) divider for to get from 10M to either 44.1kHz or 48kHz, so the "flavor" imparted by the unnecessarily added clock (they do all contribute to differences in sound, so much is true) will be at least partly spoiled by the necessary conversion by a clock generator. In a nutshell: master clocks are a plus only where the internal clocks of multiple are being synchronized.
I’ve been told that when using USB from source to DAC, that stream uses the clocks in the DAC, but with Digital coax, toslink, I2S, the clocks from the source are being used. Now, we are back to a long run from clock to DAC chip. I’m new to all this, so would love to understand it more.
Thank you for this informative video. You spoke at length the varies types of the clock in the DAC. From my experience, the quality of the DC power feeding the clock is equally if not more important that the clock itself. I don't know of any DAC (including PBD MPD-8) that the clock has it's own dedicated PS separate isolated from the rest of the PS circuit.
Probably because it does not need it.. that sounds like neurotic design. Playback Designs uses a separate fully isolated COMPLETE (not just a dedicated secondary) power supply for its digital section which includes the clock. It is an extremely clean, linear power supply. The clock circuit has its own dedicated secondary off the isolated dedicated Digital Psup and its own dedicated regulation.. That is an extremely high level DC Psup.. Im happy with it... and bottom line is NONE of what you said will make a difference if the RESULT is not great sound.. so all these "squirrel food" concepts are fun to conceive, but totally different in application.
I do have first hand experience using a dedicated PS feeding only the clock circuit and the results are astounding! I first heard the important of power to the oscillator/crystal a few years ago from the designers at Ayre Audio in a RUclips video called "Pints with Ayre". This statement intrigued me. I did some further research on this and found the Grandioso Esoteric line also followed this line of " neurotic design" on their outboard Separate Power Supply Units. I modded my 20+ year old ML 360DAC using a Korean design PS ( ULN-HD1L - sold on Ebay) to feed direct power to the Oscillator. The results are unbelievability good!!! Increased clarity without being clinical, better focus, lower floor noise, and better dynamics. @@OCDHIFiGuy
@OCDHIFIGUY, since you like to rant about Playback design having next level or latest clock...can we have the specifications and or measurements of this so called next gen clock? Clock measurements are objective so its very easy compare one clock to other objectively
Not my job, because I don't give a shit about measurements. I sell results, others sell measurements. You want to bring your best measuring DAC to compare with my Playback Designs in a listening (only thing that matters) test, them I'm game.
@@OCDHIFiGuy How do you listen to clocks man? Since we are talking about clocks, OCXO, TCXO, VCXO etc. Don't just rant because you have a fan following, else you will end up making such shit mistakes. BTW listening taste is very subjective, what you like may not be what other people like and vice versa, take your and Jay's differences for that matter. So not everything can come to just listening to the gear test.
I was almost disappointed that I just bought $180 SC cut oscillators to replace those in my streamer, then I saw the Rubidium oscillators are $2000+ each. That justifies the price of the playback designs dac in my mind, a great selling point.
I'm stuck in the past as I recall the very first known digital recording was in the 60's. RCA / PHILLIPS laser disc for NASA. Here ET'S , learn everything about this planet Earth. Fast forward to the early 80's and the first studio digital audio recordings were done. They used 3/4 inch UMATIC Video Tape macines along with TBC ( TIME BASED CORRECTORS). Nowadays , I will only care when I'll get tons of money to blow on this digital stuff$$$$. Educating one self is always important and thanks for sharing.
I use a TCXO DDC for my USB2 audio to s/pdif conversion, I consider it good technical housekeeping it should keep the PLL happy and hopefully files are sampled at the correct time for correct pitch and low jitter.
@@OCDHIFiGuy Don't tell me...playback designs, yeah, I bet they use some proprietary clock recovery architecture for s/pdif, either that or you have no use for that 'protocol'.
Hey Mike. Thank you for this explanation. As always 💯% Mike. And now it's time for a good cup of coffee. Greetings from the Netherlands Limburg Maastricht and of course continue what you do for all of us on 🌍 earth... Peace and love. ✌🏾🌍😘☕️😁SSEEYYAAA BROTHER 👌🏿
Are the "Weakest Link In Your System" and "System Synergy" concepts mostly squirrel food feeders? The practically infinite combinations of components in the playback chain seem to require a never ending and increasingly granular journey because how does one determine without spending that a different clock, different tonearm wires, different op-amps in your DAC, an OTL amp, NOS tubes, different cables etc. etc. etc. in your system wouldn't "fix" a weakest link (which will create a new 'weakest link' somewhere else in the chain) or improve 'synergy'? I'm not an "objectivist" but I understand their level of influence because because the journey to nowhere can become exhausting and impoverishing, and "objective" data seems to provide an off ramp.
I think hes saying when they run out of good reasons, they will create some... Just like Big Pharma and ADD or "Restless leg syndrome" anyone for Fibromyalgia ?? they are all too happy to run commercials about the problem then sell you a fix for it. Play on peoples fears... sad..
Ignoring if its necessary at least the $$$$ Esoteric external clock has an atomic clock inside. I feel charging $20k for an atomic clock is less of a money grab than a $30 crystal inside a pretty box.
Here's some food for your squirrel... Time always bends and the further apart the more time bends. 😮 The GPS satellites have built-in compensation for this bending of time, they wouldn't work properly without it.
I can understand why you call yourself the "black sheep" of the audio industry - you clearly don't know what you are talking about in the case of master clocks and are doing a great disservice to your listeners with your half-truths. I'm old enough that I grew up in the analog era of audio in the 60's and 70's. I splurged when I graduated college and got myself some really great analog gear at the time - Mark Levinson preamp and Linn Sondek turntable among other components. I loved to stop in at high-end HiFi shops in my large metro area and listen to the very best analog equipment available at the time. Audio has been a lifelong passion of mine. After a long hold out, I eventually got tired of the cleaning and finicky handling of treasured LPs and transitioned to digital sources. It has been a long road of digital technology evolution since the early Redbook CD days, but I have finally arrived at a point where I am certain that I have never heard better music reproduction from any analog system than I have now with my digital streaming system. And, to my point, it wasn't until I added a moderately priced ($1,600) 10 MHz external master clock (with excellent specs BTW) to my R2R DAC that my system really opened up and started to sound so, so good. My current total 2.2 system cost is around $12k after swapping in and out over a 15 year period, so I don't have a ton of money invested. Instead, I like the challenge of finding high value components to swap into my system for continual improvement. Digital streaming is asynchronous (no embedded clock reference) with generally variable-sized ethernet packets. It is up to your system's digital processing capabilities to re-clock the incoming audio data packets. If you don't have a well designed, quality clock systems built into each of your digital components or subsystems, you will have digital jitter, the bane of great sounding music. With extremely low jitter, I notice that I hear very large soundstages, brass instruments with extremely complex timbre sound smooth and clean, bass has weight and impact, female voices sound natural and melodic, cymbals sound light and clean, etc.
Hi Mike, to start off your comment with an insult is not a good way to get meaningful communication across to me. So Ill ignore your stab at my integrity. If you would like to debate me and hold me to the mat about your perceived "half truths, I think it will be enjoyable for the viewers. Next, let me clear you up on why Im a black sheep. It means im not part of the herd. I dont follow the industry narrative like a sheep. I tell the truth and put myself out of the crowd, to bring you, the end user, truth. $12K whole systems are not on my radar, and neither my clients. So to my point, as I said.. and Ill say it again for the record. This is no half truth, this is bona fide and irrefutable. Cheap DACS have cheap clock circuits. Cheap clock circuits are vulnerable to jitter. Smart marketers know its easier to sell a $6K DAC in 2 parts for those on a tight budget. $4K DAC with crappy clock, and $2K clock to fix the jitter. So yes, in your situation, a clock does make it better. It was PLANNED that way. Well I, nor my clients wish to participate in having our chain yanked. So we buy DACS that use the best clocks in their initial build. Anything else is a waste of time.
@@OCDHIFiGuy Yes, I did come on too strongly. Sorry for that. It just strikes me the wrong way when I hear broad generalizations about HiFi stuff which are true in most cases, but clearly not all. One of the appeals of this hobby to me is that I enjoy the process of continuous improvement. I let my ears be the judge as well as a handful of online reviewers and forum commenters who I've come to trust. I'm careful to not compare apples and oranges and only draw conclusions from systems very similar to mine. At this point, I think I've just about reached that pinnacle of listening enjoyment for me. There is virtually no aspect of what I hear which leaves me wanting more. BTW, my DAC cost $1400 and my clock/power supply/cable cost $1600 for a combined cost well below most premium DACs. The lesson for me is that if you shop around and do a lot of research, you can find separates that are lower combined cost than most premium integrated DACs.
Hqplayer >>>>>>>>> any dac internal high sampling given you have a REALLY high end pc. You need $2000+ tower that is 12th gen cpu i7/i9 or newer 32gb ddr5 and minimum 3000+ nvidia gpu, really a server grade quadro or 4000 series
@@MrBazsi888 hqplayer with a very powerful pc on custom Linux like audiolinux doing your upsampling that you send to your dac will blow away the sampling done in the best of the best dacs
Ive never tried HQ Player due to the ridiculous resource pig that software is. Plus its so advanced, its like trying to figure out what boxes to check in a F-35 Raptor cockpit. Not very user friendly, its designed for Engineers with a Squirrel on steroids. LOL. I say as long as you dont miss it, then F it...
The whole idea with a external clock is to synchronize more than one device with the same clock. Like a streamer and a DAC. To just upgrade a clock is ridiculous (as you state in the video).
I'm so glad you clarified the clock mess. I wasn't sold on the hype either. Ain't getting one!
I appreciate this video. I'm seriously contemplating purchasing a Aune SC1 to go along with my S9c Pro. This video gave me a great basic understanding of the terminology and the upsell.
Thanks ! Very helpful ! So if I have high quality Transport/Server and separate high quality DAC no need for external Clock either?
Yes, correct
Yup. Guys, seriously, do *NOT* buy an outboard clock unless you work in a studio and need multidevice sync. They typically only degenerate the time accuracy by placing the clock at a distance from DAC. This has been tested. Hard to believe Playback Designs clock circuit might be good but can't be all that different from existing femtoclock designs.
Where are the Rubidium Clocks located? I am looking at pictures of the inside and only see 1 clock, between the reset button and the USB input, and that one is of the cheaper crystal variety.
en.antelopeaudio.com/products/10mx/
Created for the pro Audio/Studio environment
This information is very new to me. Thanks Mikey!!
Glad it was helpful!
Yes, that is MSB's ideology as well: the clock must be as close to the DAC chip as possible, and never outside the DAC chassis, due to loss of precision over long wires. dCS, of course, takes the opposite approach, believing that more separate boxes are better. Perhaps this is why I rarely find dCS-based systems to sound natural.
Good to know... I'm with MSB on this point. ;-)
The standard terminology and setup is there are the internal clocks of units and their clock generators (or preferably, a clock each for the 44.1kHz and 48kHz families). The clocks of all these units (such as in a recording studio) may then be synchronized by a (usually external) master clock. Alternatively, the inferior but more common way of doing it in home audio, the internal clocks of downstream units may be slaved to the source's. Logically, if one only uses a one-box solution versus several units (such as a server/DAC with inbuilt transport), there is no need for synchronization. Besides, to use an external atomic 10MHz clock in audio isn't automatically better than to use two high-quality low phase noise internal clocks for the two sampling rate families because there is no even (mathematical) divider for to get from 10M to either 44.1kHz or 48kHz, so the "flavor" imparted by the unnecessarily added clock (they do all contribute to differences in sound, so much is true) will be at least partly spoiled by the necessary conversion by a clock generator. In a nutshell: master clocks are a plus only where the internal clocks of multiple are being synchronized.
I’ve been told that when using USB from source to DAC, that stream uses the clocks in the DAC, but with Digital coax, toslink, I2S, the clocks from the source are being used. Now, we are back to a long run from clock to DAC chip. I’m new to all this, so would love to understand it more.
This depends on what type of USB.. You are describing the difference between asynchronous and isynchronous. Just google it..
I'm wondering how many people can really tell the difference between all these different clocks in a blind test?
It's actually easy
@@michaelrovner4165 very easy.
Unless something is off, I highly doubt it...
@@ptg01 for master clocks yeah, but not the clocks in your equipment. Clocks are the most important part of digital.
Sixteen.
Thank you for this informative video. You spoke at length the varies types of the clock in the DAC. From my experience, the quality of the DC power feeding the clock is equally if not more important that the clock itself. I don't know of any DAC (including PBD MPD-8) that the clock has it's own dedicated PS separate isolated from the rest of the PS circuit.
Ian Canada's Dac does.
Probably because it does not need it.. that sounds like neurotic design. Playback Designs uses a separate fully isolated COMPLETE (not just a dedicated secondary) power supply for its digital section which includes the clock. It is an extremely clean, linear power supply. The clock circuit has its own dedicated secondary off the isolated dedicated Digital Psup and its own dedicated regulation.. That is an extremely high level DC Psup.. Im happy with it... and bottom line is NONE of what you said will make a difference if the RESULT is not great sound.. so all these "squirrel food" concepts are fun to conceive, but totally different in application.
I do have first hand experience using a dedicated PS feeding only the clock circuit and the results are astounding! I first heard the important of power to the oscillator/crystal a few years ago from the designers at Ayre Audio in a RUclips video called "Pints with Ayre". This statement intrigued me. I did some further research on this and found the Grandioso Esoteric line also followed this line of " neurotic design" on their outboard Separate Power Supply Units. I modded my 20+ year old ML 360DAC using a Korean design PS ( ULN-HD1L - sold on Ebay) to feed direct power to the Oscillator. The results are unbelievability good!!! Increased clarity without being clinical, better focus, lower floor noise, and better dynamics. @@OCDHIFiGuy
@OCDHIFIGUY, since you like to rant about Playback design having next level or latest clock...can we have the specifications and or measurements of this so called next gen clock? Clock measurements are objective so its very easy compare one clock to other objectively
Not my job, because I don't give a shit about measurements. I sell results, others sell measurements. You want to bring your best measuring DAC to compare with my Playback Designs in a listening (only thing that matters) test, them I'm game.
@@OCDHIFiGuy How do you listen to clocks man? Since we are talking about clocks, OCXO, TCXO, VCXO etc. Don't just rant because you have a fan following, else you will end up making such shit mistakes. BTW listening taste is very subjective, what you like may not be what other people like and vice versa, take your and Jay's differences for that matter. So not everything can come to just listening to the gear test.
I was almost disappointed that I just bought $180 SC cut oscillators to replace those in my streamer, then I saw the Rubidium oscillators are $2000+ each. That justifies the price of the playback designs dac in my mind, a great selling point.
Agreed...
Another great video. Thanks!
Thanks for watching!
I'm stuck in the past as I recall the very first known digital recording was in the 60's. RCA / PHILLIPS laser disc for NASA. Here ET'S , learn everything about this planet Earth. Fast forward to the early 80's and the first studio digital audio recordings were done. They used 3/4 inch UMATIC Video Tape macines along with TBC ( TIME BASED CORRECTORS). Nowadays , I will only care when I'll get tons of money to blow on this digital stuff$$$$. Educating one self is always important and thanks for sharing.
I use a TCXO DDC for my USB2 audio to s/pdif conversion, I consider it good technical housekeeping it should keep the PLL happy and hopefully files are sampled at the correct time for correct pitch and low jitter.
Yulaswift says that jitter is a problem of the same magnitude as clipping.
I stay away from DACs with PLL (as my reference)
@@OCDHIFiGuy Don't tell me...playback designs, yeah, I bet they use some proprietary clock recovery architecture for s/pdif, either that or you have no use for that 'protocol'.
as always very informative and of course lets remove all snake oil
Wow thanks for this Great advice Bro you are a legend!
Happy to help!
Just build a ROLEX clock in my dac-best i ever heard.
Hey Mike. Thank you for this explanation. As always 💯% Mike. And now it's time for a good cup of coffee. Greetings from the Netherlands Limburg Maastricht and of course continue what you do for all of us on 🌍 earth... Peace and love.
✌🏾🌍😘☕️😁SSEEYYAAA BROTHER 👌🏿
Quality. Thanks
You bet !
Good stuff
THX !
why not more reviews of Playback Designs in certain magazines, like Stereophile? beacause PBD doesn't advertise enough in them?
You got it.
when you make exceptionnal stuff, you don't need to advertise as much as when you're trying to sell ordinary, overpriced or crap!
@@OCDHIFiGuy
Thank you for the honest explanation. So tired of HiFi bullsh*t.
Are the "Weakest Link In Your System" and "System Synergy" concepts mostly squirrel food feeders? The practically infinite combinations of components in the playback chain seem to require a never ending and increasingly granular journey because how does one determine without spending that a different clock, different tonearm wires, different op-amps in your DAC, an OTL amp, NOS tubes, different cables etc. etc. etc. in your system wouldn't "fix" a weakest link (which will create a new 'weakest link' somewhere else in the chain) or improve 'synergy'? I'm not an "objectivist" but I understand their level of influence because because the journey to nowhere can become exhausting and impoverishing, and "objective" data seems to provide an off ramp.
The only clock I use is the big one around my neck: Flava Flav!
Distortion and Clipping, then Wow and flutter, joined of late by by Jitter and now this…et voila!, another revenue stream is born 🎉
Are you saying that distortion, clipping, wow and flutter were never actually problems?
I think hes saying when they run out of good reasons, they will create some... Just like Big Pharma and ADD or "Restless leg syndrome" anyone for Fibromyalgia ?? they are all too happy to run commercials about the problem then sell you a fix for it. Play on peoples fears... sad..
It's a pretty good argument
clear and simple explanations, love that Mikey!
Glad you liked it!
don't you mean master word clock. Hands down very important.
EXACTLY
Ignoring if its necessary at least the $$$$ Esoteric external clock has an atomic clock inside. I feel charging $20k for an atomic clock is less of a money grab than a $30 crystal inside a pretty box.
Agreed, however the $24K Playback Designs MPD-8 DAC will sound more natural, like real music... In my opinion of course.. ;-)
Here's some food for your squirrel... Time always bends and the further apart the more time bends. 😮
The GPS satellites have built-in compensation for this bending of time, they wouldn't work properly without it.
Epic....
Great title lol
Thx !
So glad I never took the bait
Did you buy the playback designs?
@@Pete.across.the.street no not in my budget
@@Pete.across.the.streetI'm using 2 Dayton audio kabd-430
Osiyo Daniel !
@@OCDHIFiGuy osiyo Mikey
I can understand why you call yourself the "black sheep" of the audio industry - you clearly don't know what you are talking about in the case of master clocks and are doing a great disservice to your listeners with your half-truths. I'm old enough that I grew up in the analog era of audio in the 60's and 70's. I splurged when I graduated college and got myself some really great analog gear at the time - Mark Levinson preamp and Linn Sondek turntable among other components. I loved to stop in at high-end HiFi shops in my large metro area and listen to the very best analog equipment available at the time. Audio has been a lifelong passion of mine. After a long hold out, I eventually got tired of the cleaning and finicky handling of treasured LPs and transitioned to digital sources. It has been a long road of digital technology evolution since the early Redbook CD days, but I have finally arrived at a point where I am certain that I have never heard better music reproduction from any analog system than I have now with my digital streaming system. And, to my point, it wasn't until I added a moderately priced ($1,600) 10 MHz external master clock (with excellent specs BTW) to my R2R DAC that my system really opened up and started to sound so, so good. My current total 2.2 system cost is around $12k after swapping in and out over a 15 year period, so I don't have a ton of money invested. Instead, I like the challenge of finding high value components to swap into my system for continual improvement. Digital streaming is asynchronous (no embedded clock reference) with generally variable-sized ethernet packets. It is up to your system's digital processing capabilities to re-clock the incoming audio data packets. If you don't have a well designed, quality clock systems built into each of your digital components or subsystems, you will have digital jitter, the bane of great sounding music. With extremely low jitter, I notice that I hear very large soundstages, brass instruments with extremely complex timbre sound smooth and clean, bass has weight and impact, female voices sound natural and melodic, cymbals sound light and clean, etc.
Hi Mike, to start off your comment with an insult is not a good way to get meaningful communication across to me. So Ill ignore your stab at my integrity. If you would like to debate me and hold me to the mat about your perceived "half truths, I think it will be enjoyable for the viewers.
Next, let me clear you up on why Im a black sheep. It means im not part of the herd. I dont follow the industry narrative like a sheep. I tell the truth and put myself out of the crowd, to bring you, the end user, truth.
$12K whole systems are not on my radar, and neither my clients.
So to my point, as I said.. and Ill say it again for the record. This is no half truth, this is bona fide and irrefutable.
Cheap DACS have cheap clock circuits.
Cheap clock circuits are vulnerable to jitter.
Smart marketers know its easier to sell a $6K DAC in 2 parts for those on a tight budget. $4K DAC with crappy clock, and $2K clock to fix the jitter.
So yes, in your situation, a clock does make it better. It was PLANNED that way. Well I, nor my clients wish to participate in having our chain yanked. So we buy DACS that use the best clocks in their initial build. Anything else is a waste of time.
@@OCDHIFiGuy Yes, I did come on too strongly. Sorry for that. It just strikes me the wrong way when I hear broad generalizations about HiFi stuff which are true in most cases, but clearly not all. One of the appeals of this hobby to me is that I enjoy the process of continuous improvement. I let my ears be the judge as well as a handful of online reviewers and forum commenters who I've come to trust. I'm careful to not compare apples and oranges and only draw conclusions from systems very similar to mine. At this point, I think I've just about reached that pinnacle of listening enjoyment for me. There is virtually no aspect of what I hear which leaves me wanting more. BTW, my DAC cost $1400 and my clock/power supply/cable cost $1600 for a combined cost well below most premium DACs. The lesson for me is that if you shop around and do a lot of research, you can find separates that are lower combined cost than most premium integrated DACs.
Next video: the external upsampler.
Hqplayer >>>>>>>>> any dac internal high sampling given you have a REALLY high end pc. You need $2000+ tower that is 12th gen cpu i7/i9 or newer 32gb ddr5 and minimum 3000+ nvidia gpu, really a server grade quadro or 4000 series
@@ClassifiedBrief what?
@@MrBazsi888 hqplayer with a very powerful pc on custom Linux like audiolinux doing your upsampling that you send to your dac will blow away the sampling done in the best of the best dacs
@@ClassifiedBrief hqplayer is free? It has also a remote app for phones?
Ive never tried HQ Player due to the ridiculous resource pig that software is. Plus its so advanced, its like trying to figure out what boxes to check in a F-35 Raptor cockpit. Not very user friendly, its designed for Engineers with a Squirrel on steroids. LOL. I say as long as you dont miss it, then F it...
another PBD promotional video
Not really. But Playback Designs is by FAR the best DAC I've ever had in my system. Same with every person I sell them to...
The whole idea with a external clock is to synchronize more than one device with the same clock. Like a streamer and a DAC. To just upgrade a clock is ridiculous (as you state in the video).