Audiocom Superclock 4

[leo]

now THAT got my attention, hope so!

and Leo, this Sabre Dac of yours...was there a thread on AOS about it, its piqued my curiosity.

The problem with this diy dac is that its by far the most picky regarding regulation, it sounded pretty good in stock form but after the mods its something else.
I've not finished with the Sabre dacs yet

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showt...t=1152&page=14

[Audiocom AV]

I use a Superclock 2 in my Denon 2900, and it sounds pretty nice actually. How does the Superclock 4 compare to the 2 and would it be worth an upgrade I wonder?

Cheers.

Hi Mike

When we released Superclock 3 to our distributors, they reported back that version 3 made Superclock 2 sound broken.

The Superclock 4 is another considerably step-up from version 3.

Cheers,
Mark

[Audiocom AV]

Hi Mark,

Its a shame the Touch may make modding more awkward because of space etc, one of the things I like about the Duet is that its pretty easy to work on.
Majority of my music is 44.1 so the Duet after the mods for me is the best way so far for playing most of my music collection from the pc .
If the Touch was capable of 24/176 and 24/192 I'd be more tempted, for higher res I may wait or just get a Hi-face sometime and mod it .

Regards,
Leo

Hi Leo

I cannot see the attraction with 24/96, as you say the majority of music is 44.1 so why limit the performance of the player to accommodate 24/96 files that are in the minority

Now 24/192, or 24/384 would be interesting.

Best,
Mark

[Audiocom AV]

Mark,

We have been using the Black lion unit for a few years very good for the outlay for those clients who wish to chase a decent upgarde.

Black Lion Master clock

For those looking towards to one of the very best then the neat studio clocks from the UK guys Drawmer are a very worth while choice.
We have compared them abx with the Apogee big ben, the UK versions is some what more coherent sounding and has improved bass and stage depth too. The Apogee gives a more mechanical feel to the sound. (IMHO)

High quality master clock

Our reference systems use Rubidum ( 2nd level atomic clocks) to slave, the Sever<>Puremusic tarnsporter<>Dac or S/D transporter<>dac.
Do not under estimate the the importantance in an all digital system of 'slaving' all the clocks from a central master, the more pieces of equipment in the chain the more critical it is they all talk at the same time.
The differences are quite something when implimented in a full sorted system.

Hi

Interesting, thanks.

The Black Lion looks interesting because of the price in relation to the cost of the Touch, I could not find a price on the other one.

The quoted jitter, PPM, will not give any real indication of sound quality. You can take 10 different clocks with quoted jitter around 10 ps, Temp. co 1-25 PPM, and they will all wildly sound different because of how the clock signal is generated (digital or analogue domain), noise & speed of regulated supplies, etc. For audio it is low frequency jitter, 0.1 – 10 Hz that is the worst and most audible.

Best,
Mark

[Mr. C]

Hello Mark,

The Black Lion unit is pretty good and gets very close to its spec on our AP test kit, however it is purely the fact that you can slave ALL of the devices within a genuine 3ppm (quality cables and connectors) with very minimal drift even after a couple of years.
The Drawmer unit is also an SRC/Master word clock too price is around £900, which is £200-£300 better value than the big ben.

Would agree on the varying performance issue of clocks, right across the price spectrum.
Though we have found you can fit the most desirable specification of clock available, the performance it gives is in direct proportion to the supplying feed, using a high specification totally isolated ultra low noise floor stiff power supply that has ultra tight regulation and stability will bring far greater benefits then just fitting the replacement clock alone.

As for limiting the unit to 24/96 I am sure that's purely a marketing issue I feel, is this purely down to the receiver chip performance?, current draw, space issue or dac chip, or a combination of both do think.

[Ali Tait]

At least there is a certain amount of 24/96 material around.There is very little of higher resolution available as far as I can see.

[Audiocom AV]

Would agree on the varying performance issue of clocks, right across the price spectrum.
Though we have found you can fit the most desirable specification of clock available, the performance it gives is in direct proportion to the supplying feed, using a high specification totally isolated ultra low noise floor stiff power supply that has ultra tight regulation and stability will bring far greater benefits then just fitting the replacement clock alone.

As for limiting the unit to 24/96 I am sure that's purely a marketing issue I feel, is this purely down to the receiver chip performance?, current draw, space issue or dac chip, or a combination of both do think.

Hi

Absolutely, we found the quality of clock power supply right back to AC is a major factor in sound quality.

I think the limitation to 24/96 is a mix of marketing and receiver chip performance. Most current DAC's are 24/192, Burr Brown have 32 DAC's capable of 192 KHz, and only 8 for 96 KHz.

Best,
Mark

[Marco]

Hi Mark,

How's it going, mate - can you remember which Superclock mod is in my DAS-R1?

Marco.

[Audiocom AV]

Hi Mark,

How's it going, mate - can you remember which Superclock mod is in my DAS-R1?

Marco.

Hi Marco

It's going very well, thank you.

Your DAS-R1 has the Superclock 4

I hope it is still performing well.

I have seen a couple of Sony CDP-R1 or CDP-R1a transports become available lately, are you still interested in one of these?

Best,
Mark

[Marco]

Hi Mark,

Glad it's going well. Thanks for the info - I wasn't sure which one it was I had. Is that your best clock mod then, or have you improved on it further?

I'm just interested in whether I have some 'tweakage' left in the DAS-R1, apart from the bullets and bybees you mentioned before

I still plan to come down with Ian sometime later in the year

Marco.