Superclocks

[Confused]

An open question.  A while ago I was fortunate enough to listen to the dCS Vivaldi Upsampler with and without the Vivaldi master clock.  To my ears it did sound better with the master clock.  In the UK the Vivaldi master clock retails for a cool £10,000.  Looking at the Vivaldi clock specs, I cannot see anything that looks superior to the Clock in a Mutec MC3+USB.  Am I missing something or the Vivaldi clock simply very expensive for what it is?  

[Confused]

I must admit I remain puzzled about clocks through the audio chain.  Obviously multiple clocks are needed when processing data in a PC and transferring via a network for purely functional reasons, but why is super clock accuracy and jitter important in anything other than the last clock in the DAC.  You could argue that as long as all the bits are there, buffered, and in the right order, then clocking accuracy and jitter do not really matter, the clock in the DAC will sort out the timing and all will be perfect.  The reality is that folk worry about clocks in computers, network end points, USB add on devices, jitter from hard drives, computer processes and so on, but you could form a logical argument that none of this matters.  To be clear, I am not trying to argue that this is indeed the case.  From my own experience optimisation of this type in the PC and the audio chain prior to the DAC can make a huge difference to the end result.  It's just that logically I find it difficult to rationalise why this should be the case.  As an example, pull an Ethernet cable out of a network switch in my set up, the music keeps playing for a second or so, so how can anything upstream of that cable be making any difference whatsoever?  And yet, my experience shows that the upstream stuff genuinely does matter, it is just that the explanations I have seen for this in the past just don't seam to always hang together logically.  Sometimes I wonder how I sleep at night!