[theblue1]

Originally Posted by Lagerfeldt

I see I'm not the only one fighting this myth

Yes... I've gone many rounds on this issue, all righty. Me and Max Gutnik (marketing guy from Apogee) have hit the mats more than a couple times and I finally managed to get him to state things in a way that I could (sort of) live with:

For the record, we do not recommend buying Big Ben for the sole purpose of improving the percieved accuracy of your converter. Most often, the folks looking to do that, would benefit much more by just spending a little extra money and buying an Ensemble, or Rosetta 800. Clocking is just one aspect of what makes a converter sound good, so if you can improve the analog section, filtering and PSU as well as the clock, you are better off, even if the clock is not quite as good as the one in Big Ben (on the other hand, if you upgrade to the AD/DA-16X you get it all). But that does not mean the thousands of people who have heard the difference Big Ben makes are crazy. As we have attested to, they are not.

Max Gutnik (Apogee) Good Clock - Bad Clock?

And he is on record as conceding that slaving a given AD to an external clock will tend to increase jitter over the same unit using its internal clock as master, as well. (Although I believe he suggests that Apogee's proprietary noise-shaping technology somehow makes the increased jitter sound more accurate than the same unit in a more jitter-free standalone clocking mode; this is an aspect of his argument that I utterly fail to comprehend.)

But, as Max indicated, he still maintains that many people perceive the sound as more accurate and, he feels, that's most important.

And, of course, none of my comments should be perceived as suggesting that the Big Ben or other units are not necessarily excellent at doing the job they were designed to do: provide a master clock in complex rigs where daisy-chaining from the 'lead' converter is inconvenient or impractical.

And, as synthoid indicates, a tool like the Big Ben can be a heavensent in a complex rig where there are the kinds of issues he describes.