Master Clock for your EtherREGEN

[Jakenz]

On 11/30/2022 at 9:48 AM, Superdad said:

Rob (@Exocer) offered to loan us his LHY OCK-1 for @JohnSwenson to measure on his expensive Jackson Labs Phase Station. Since John agreed, I'm going to take Rob up on his offer.

 

I greatly look forward to your independent test too.

 

FWIW I'm another relative recent and very happy OCK-1 adopter, a first time external clock user, amazed at the difference it brings to my Gustard R26, already a great sounding DAC. I got mine several months ago, well before the OCK-2 was released. Incidentally around that time a Head-fi user requested a phase noise chart for the OCK-1 from LHY and was provided the below. Interestingly it was -115.5db/1hz offset but 'only' -136db/10hz. The former being remarkable if accurate, the latter more in line with your comments about how hard it is do do low phase noise OXCOs at affordable prices and the importance of the 10hz offset.

 

There followed some speculation over in Headfi, to which I enthusiastically contributed, that as the then spec for the OCK-1 was <-110db/1hz, given the provided plot there may be some OXCOs used then for OCK-1s that substantially exceed this minimum. But that with the introduction of the OCK-2 LHY would naturally be reserving all such better OXCOs for that unit going forwards. The fun speculation was that prior to this some early OCK-1 adopters may have hit the jackpot with <115db/1hz units... 

 

My personal experience is the combination of R26 + OCK-1 is sufficiently resolving that apart from sounding remarkable for a <USD2k combo, I can easily distinguish between different clock cables - the Gustard C2 50ohms, a cheap generic pro audio 50 ohm, a 'hifi' coax digital 75ohm, and most recently a Minicircuits semi-rigid 50ohm low return loss cable that looks very similar to Cybershaft's 50 ohm cable. Differences were particularly clear on the square wave output which I used exclusively to begin with but still to a lesser extent on the sine output. Sine sounds better, which I've now moved to. Gustard C2 clearly the best of the bunch, followed by the Mini-circuits, with daylight to the other two, the 75ohm digital coax one last. I've not tried the Mini-circuits filter John recommended for use with sine wave outputs. I've no idea if the ability to distinguish cables is typical of a -110db/1hz external clock.

 

Cheers

Jake

 

[Jakenz]

6 hours ago, Exocer said:

I wonder how many Ock-1’s can match those numbers.

Very few, if any, is my guess. Assuming that one was a unicorn OCK-1 whose plot they cherry picked to share. But depending on how LHY source their OXCOs for the OCK-1 & 2, and assuming OCK-1 units at least meet the claimed maximum phase noise of -110db/1hz (which may be a big assumption, I don't know), I like to think there was and continues to be some variation in the range -110db to -115db @  1hz offset.

 

[Jakenz]

On 5/21/2023 at 7:17 PM, MartinT said:

 

Considerably better sounding, it seemed to work symbiotically well with a Gustard R26.

 

Rather like my AfterDark / U18 / X26 Pro combination, just a detailed, spacious sound with great depth.  It didn't have quite the slam of the X26 Pro, but then few do.

 

Intrigued by the shared experiences of several R26 owners who found a really positive improvement with the LB, including one chap who felt it bested his AD Emperor (not sure which exact model) with the R26, I've ordered one to try out. It's not expensive so I figured what the heck. Reading your first-hand impression of its sound with the R26 is reassuring as I appreciate you are very familiar with what a well clocked system sounds like. 

 

I will compare the LB to my LHY OCK-2 and OCK-1. I upgraded to the OCK-2 earlier this year after having the OCK-1 for six months, which itself brought really nice improvements to the R26, but the upgrade itch got to me. My Focal Sopras' beryllium tweeters were not a super easy listen with either the R26 or the SMSL VMV D2 AK4499 prior to the OCK-1's arrival. Both LHY clocks with the R26 are good enough to respond differences in clock cables used, the best one so far by some margin being the Harmonic Tech Digital Copper III. And yes, I acknowledge the uncertainty as to the actual phase noise of the LHY clocks, given the OCK-1 unit measured by John Swenson had 1hz offset noise around -90db and 10hz offset around -120db IIRC, and LHY/Beatechnick's response of just removing phase noise specs. I don't wish to reopen that can of worms, just to acknowledge it. Even so, that's around 20db better than the LB's specs. One would expect the OCK-2 to measure/perform better than the OCK-1, which certainly seems to be borne out by both my first hand experience and that of folk who got OCK-2 and compared it to their high spec'd reference clocks like the Mutec REF10.

 

Anyway, given the gulf in phase noise specs, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a little scepticism and trepidation that this will turn out to be an expensive experiment, but I'm keeping an open mind and I'll be interested to hear what I hear with the LB when it arrives. 

[Jakenz]

3 minutes ago, Exocer said:

I’ll be watching this closely.

 

Do you still have the Ock-1 around for comparison?

I do indeed. Haven't listed to it for a while, been meaning to sell it, but somehow I never seem to get around to selling things.  Which is good for comparisons if not so good for my bank balance. Speaking of which I have a similarly parked Gustard U18 DDC I can try the LB with in various combinations including dual-clocking the R26 or the U18 alone, test the special R26 'synergy' postulation...

[Jakenz]

9 hours ago, Clockmeister said:

 

 

Hello FG

 

 

 

Totally understand your thoughts perfectly

 

 

 

I will clarify the 5-7% for you as it will put this into perspective in relation to my personal evaluation system is somewhat different from a great many system's its has been designed to show ANY differenices across a wide spectrum of variables.

 

 

 

To obtain that 5-7% from this single aspect of ethernet noise in raw terms was in a $ value around 12K, now we have clients that would bat an eyelid at this outlay. For others it's a system cost.

 

 

 

So the sound quality point of that system is significant to raise the bar that much more is a good figure of merit, HOWEVER it is an accumulative effect in that you will require, mains conditioning/grounding/room treatment/quality LPS's and cables.

 

 

 

I did take the spare N20 into one of the smaller system which are well set up, although only have moderate mains conditioning and good cables in a well set up room, the resultant difference wasn't nearly as marked. With the RJ45 grounding cable attached it produced a better result. Very system dependant imho.

 

 

 

One does have to keep a perspective on all of these steps forward, how and why each one happens and what results are transposed into the finial SQ.

 

 

 

Here is  a bit of fun for you, for my sins I am a self-confessed digital whore & test equipment Fetishest.

 

 

 

My personal dac collection number over 100 now including some highly desirable audiophile delights plus some real howlers. Yet I use dac's between 28 and 16 years old simply because the make music correctly and place you firmly inside the recording environment. A lot of the new high-end bling infested are just merely polish hifi with zero grain and very little involvement. However, audio is very personal and what one man really enjoys the other is not so fussed.

 

 

 

Here I was investigating finding some spurious RF emissions on an oldie b ut goodie dac, the worst starting point when using the dedicated app for 'oddball' emissions was -68dBc a solid 15dBc below the Cisper 14 standards. However, a few investigative hours with the right equipment can yield some very positive results.

 

 

 

However you need to apply this philosophy right across all of the audio system imho

 

 

 

 

Hi @Clockmeister I've followed your posts here and on the TAS forum with interest.

 

By contrast my only tool to measure the performance of my gear is my ears, trial and error experience with a much smaller range of gear than you have to hand. Still, I have enough to notice a few repeatable patterns / correlations.

 

So one repeatable phenomenon I've observed recently I'd be interested in knowing if you've ever tried to measure, is the audibly beneficial effect of signal grounding and vibration damping on external clocks and DACs. Addition of a Quartz Acoustic ground box to a spare BNC or s/pdif RCA of the Leo Bodnar, the LHY OCK-2 and my R26 DAC lifts their performance markedly, a more dynamic, spacious yet less digital sound. Vocals softer, more full bodied and papable. Ditto re adding A5 sheets of fo.Q's potent 2mm thick damping sheets (SH-22K/21K) to the chassis of each of those three as well as my LHY SW-8 switch. In the case of the petite LB I have it sitting on a sheet. This signal grounding benefit is on top of my baseline of a Puritan PSM156 power conditioner and their Ground master with dedicated ground rod.

 

The effect of the signal grounding and vibration damping is additive and sufficiently pronounced (my system sounds much better with it) it wouldn't surprise me if was measurable /observable in a cleaner square wave and/or lower phase noise at lower offsets. I'd be interested in your observations here.

 

To acknowledge the thread topic I'm not yet an EtherRegen owner... Waiting for the ER 2 release, but would suggest ER owners might wish to try fo.Q damping on their ERs given how potent an effect it has on my LHY switch.

 

Indeed @Dandou is well placed to try this should he so wish...

[Jakenz]

1 hour ago, dylanesque said:

In the early days with my Aqvox SE switch, I had such an improved effect of chassis and signal grounding of unused ports, using the Puritan GM. That I added Puritan route masters and connected all on my digital chain for good order. But did not see much cumulative improvement than just over the Aqvox switch. Did not do reduction and isolated testing. 
 

(For good order, then added 2nd Ground and route masters for the analogue chain, for signal and chassis grounding) 

 

I like that we both have Puritan + GM setup, albeit with systems at rather different levels. At the risk of going a little off topic, how did you initially signal ground with a Puritan PSM + GM prior to getting the Route Master?

 

Back slightly more on topic, a cheap / easy and very effective clock cable tweak I and a number of others over at Headfi have recently tried with satisfying results is this: using copper foil tape with conductive adhesive to wrap the BNC male/female junctions at both ends of the clock cable. Funnily enough I was indirectly prompted to try this by @JohnSwenson 's emphasis on the quality of shielding being key for sine, which I predominantly use, sounds best in my system.

 

I had also read separately in a RF radio context that very high frequency RFI/EMI finds easy ingress / egress (particularly the latter) through even the smallest pin holes or discontinuities in shielding, easily reducing shielding effectiveness by tens of dB. In particular RF pigtails* with their additional junctions are not great, shielding has been shown to drop by tens or potentially scores of dB. So when I got the Minicircuits HP filter recommended by John I found myself looking at a series of BNC junctions. Which got me thinking about the mechanical and potentially conductive/shielding imperfection of the often loose BNC junction vs say an SMA screw type connection. So I wrapped the whole filter (the two BNC junctions) at the DAC end in copper foil and it sounded clearly better. I did the same at the clock end for the cable/clock junction - a similar additive improvement. Tried it with a range of clock cables (I have about 5, tried it on the best 3), they were all satisfyingly improved.

 

The character of the audible improvement is similar to reducing jitter by other means I've experienced (signal grounding, better clock cables etc) - a more full bodied, spacious and dynamic sound with less edginess and glare. I can't listen without it now, my system sounds a little shrill, thin and flat without it. 

 

This is another easily audible change I'd be interested in knowing whether it shows up in measurements of clocks & DACs.

 

*I'm aware many DACs and other clocked devices have - of necessity - internal pigtails from the clock board to the BNC female jack on the back of the DAC. My R26 has this with an MCX to BNC pigtail. Following the lead of @Stellabagpuss and @rodthebod I replaced the pigtail with an MCX/BNC adaptor (no cable in between) to which I directly attached my Harmonic Tech clock cable, including foil wrapping the entire BNC junction, now sitting just above the circuit board. Sure enough this brought further improvements of the character I describe above. However it was quite impractical as put too much lateral stress on the tiny MCX socket and couldn't fit through the back panel without modification. Or even close the lid fully. I'm not in a hurry to do this, so just a proof of concept/validation of a theory for now. Perhaps I'll replace the pigtail with something better as I understand @MartinT is doing.

 

Sorry a bit of a spiel there, but hopefully not too off topic and of some interest, especially to the folks on this thread with the ability to see if this shows up in measurements.

[Jakenz]

2 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

It is nice to see Cybershaft agree with what we keep explaining to people for the past couple of years: 

That impedance match of clock>cable>device matters only when square-wave clock is used; Does not matter at all for sine-wave clock.

 

Indeed!

 

FYI Cybershaft repeat this as a standing statement on their product page for their new pure silver 75 ohm cable, without which assurance fewer of their target market of Cybershaft 50 ohm clock-owning clients would be interested methinks. 😉

 

https://cybershaft.shop/products/75ohm-pure-silver-bnc-cable

 

 

[Jakenz]

3 hours ago, doitttt said:

Does Capacitance pf have anything to say in the clock cable
the shorter cable has less Capacitance maybe down 15pf
for 30cm or 300mm cable

Interestingly Cybershaft, at the bottom of the silver cable page you linked to, say cable  capacitance and length is a factor for square wave, but not sine. Presumably this is based on their experience measuring phase noise across a variety of equipment & cable designs and combinations.

[Jakenz]

22 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

Well you are not breaking any rules but Thomann Music might be.  I am sure that Mutec’s exclusive USA importer will be none too thrilled to hear that a German dealer is trans-shipping this hot new clock for 28% off the official $2,499 list price. 

 

Expect removal of German VAT of 19% for export outside the EU accounts for much of this difference, so @russellbobbyis probably getting it cheaper than German locals can (assuming US customs duties and/or sales taxes are not material).

[Jakenz]

5 minutes ago, Superdad said:

That misses my point. Dealer cost on the REF10 Nano is about $1,500–worldwide, convert that to whatever currency you wish—with various taxes being a separate matter. 
So you have one German dealer selling worldwide for about $300 over cost. That really sucks the incentive out of the product for Mutec’s entire dealer/distributor base. 

Yes, I wasn't disagreeing with your point, indeed I agree the US distributor is unlikely to be at all happy with being undercut, just making an observation re a pricing factor in play.