Caiman/TC-7520 clock upgrade

[HighFidelityGuy]

This subject was brought up the the Caiman Passive output mod thread so I thought I'd make a seperate thread to hold discussions on this topic.

It seems that the 7520 and Caiman don't have a seperate descrete clock if that's the way to describe it. So it was mentioned that one of the chips could contain a clock. I didn't think the DAC chip would have this so I looked at the data sheet for the CS8414 receiver chip. From scanning through that it sounds like this may be providing the clock but I'm no expert. HERE's the datasheet. Can anyone with more knowledge on the subject tell if it looks like I'm on the right track?

Cheers.

[HighFidelityGuy]

I did some digging and it looks like the CS8414 was the clock source in the 7510, so I'm guessing it's the same in the 7520/Caiman. So does anyone know if the clock features of the CS8414 could be bypassed and a higher end clock used instead? Also, if this was possible, how would this affect using various sample rates? Would you end up only being able to play 44.1Khz for example, depending on what clock frequency you purchaced? That's the bit about clock upgrades I've never understood.

[Reid Malenfant]

Ummm, looks like the CS8414 recovers the clock data from the input source if i'm looking at it correctly This explains howcome it can be used at multiple sampling frequencies as it recovers whatever clock rate it needs from the digital data itself

This might well be the dead end I'm not that hot on digital stuff but unless you had multiple clocks it looks like this'll go nowhere very fast indeed

[HighFidelityGuy]

I see, that kind of makes sense. So really you need to use a source with a high quality clock in the first place. I've been wondering about adding a Hiface Evo between my PC and Caiman for a while now so perhaps this is the time to do that as I'm guessing it will have a better clock than my PC's soundcard. The Evo has an external clock input as well so that adds extra flexibility. This again raises the question of how you get multiple clock frequencies though as from what I understand if I added an external clock, even if it could produce multiple frequencies I'd still have to manually change this every time I switched between 44.1 and 96Khz. Is that how it works or is there some way the external clock can automatically change it's output frequency?

[Reid Malenfant]

As i say, i haven't ever really dealt with any digital stuff So i'm a little out of my depth here & making a guess when i say that you'd probably need to do exactly what you just mentioned

On the other hand, if i was correct about the clock recovery from the input data there is a sure fire way of getting better quality audio out of the Caiman

Buy a Monarchy Audio DIP24/96 interface processor which reduces jitter or the newer version that does the very same & interpolates to 24 bit words & upscales to 96KHz as well if required

[HighFidelityGuy]

Thanks Mark, they look like interesting products.

At the moment I'm thinking that my PC soundcard is the weak link in my system as it's probably not got a very good clock and as a source in general it can no doubt be bettered. I don't want to add a seperate network player as I like to use Windows Media Centre as my "one for all" interface for TV, videos, music and photos. So that limits me to an internal or external soundcard. External cards allow for isolasion away from the noisy PC internals and the Evo is the only one of these I've found that has all the outputs I want for future expansion. It's either that or I get a DAC with USB input that's higher end than my heavily modded Caiman. But that will no doubt cost more than the Evo and won't allow me to do room correction in the digital domain between transport and DAC, which is something I want to continue doing. So it seems my options are some-what limited.

So I think I'll try an Evo in the new year and see if it makes any improvement. If not it's back to the drawing board.