Big Ben with Ensemble - HOLY SHITE!

[Arthur]

Originally Posted by piano

Try being more polite.

The Tchiaikovsky Symphony was not recorded by me. The playback of the CD was much clearer.

Recording with a better clock yields a better recording.

Play back of any CD with a better clock yields a better clearer sound.

I'm sorry if I sounded impolite. I'm a respectful person, but English is not my mother language and I know by experience I can tell things in a way I don't mean! My apologies.

As for playback clocking, I see what you mean. But, still, you should be able to print your experience of a better sound: if you hear a difference in your monitors in a A/B test, this difference should translate, recording one of your Ensemble outputs. Am I missing something here?

[Kiwiburger]

The thing you are missing is that this is all about the playback of a CD. You could buy the same CD - it's not going to prove anything, because you will be listening on your own D/A with it's own clock.

You could re-record the audio - and subject it to D/A and the A/D - with Big Ben and without. That would probably yield two different files, one with more jitter than the other. But if your personal monitoring D/A has a lot of jitter, you won't be able to judge the difference. You might even prefer the jittery one - because sometimes a hazy version of a faulty sound (or picture) is preferable to a clear version that exposes the damage.

I use a Benchmark DAC-1 for jitter-free monitoring now, and it was a life-changing experience to bypass my CD player and soundcard DACs. I expect the Big Ben is doing a similar transformation to the Ensemble.

[Arthur]

Originally Posted by Kiwiburger

The thing you are missing is that this is all about the playback of a CD. You could buy the same CD - it's not going to prove anything, because you will be listening on your own D/A with it's own clock.

You could re-record the audio - and subject it to D/A and the A/D - with Big Ben and without. That would probably yield two different files, one with more jitter than the other. But if your personal monitoring D/A has a lot of jitter, you won't be able to judge the difference. You might even prefer the jittery one - because sometimes a hazy version of a faulty sound (or picture) is preferable to a clear version that exposes the damage.

I use a Benchmark DAC-1 for jitter-free monitoring now, and it was a life-changing experience to bypass my CD player and soundcard DACs. I expect the Big Ben is doing a similar transformation to the Ensemble.

OK, I get it. I have a DAC-1 too and recording, then converting again analog outputs to share my experience obviously won't do. Thanks.

[chet.d]

FWIW & IMO,

ensemble clocked by big bin = better definition, more clarity, seems tighter. Stereo image seems to benefit as well.

I was skeptical at first but to my ears (and 2 others in the studio not told which playback was which) the difference went from subtle to pretty significant.
I think it's appreciable just with the the D/A playback, but more so when tracked via big ben A/D and played back via big ben D/A.
As I went back and forth between the ensembles internal clock and external/big ben,
the differences seemed clear (notably with complicated transients like those of a piano).

I realize that some people question the benefit of external clocking when your converters have their own internal clock... the types of jitter introduced and all the variations seem pretty involved, but to me it just sounds better.

In my humble studio, I think they might just belong together.

But... the next step is going out digital into masterlink to burn a cd of the files w/ and w/o big ben and see.

[Shenes]

OK, lets keep flogging this some more since it's obviosly not quite dead yet What people are saying is:

• Manufacturers and esteemed experts like mr Katz are unanimous about that the clocking of modern converters can't be improved by external clocks (unless the the internal clock is faulty), it's based on theory and by design it's always true. Some converters suffer less from external clocking but it's never a improvement.
  (When syncing 2 or more devices together there are better or worse ways of doing this, an external clock is sometimes a better alternative than deriving sync from the source singnal or FW.)

• Users/listeners/retailers claim that a external clock sometimes can improve the sound (clocking?) of converters.

From this you can draw different conclusions. But only one of them can be true.

1. External clocking can improve internal clocking. Mr Katz, the manufacturers and their theory are wrong. They missed something (or they are lying...). For this to be true their theory or design must be proven faulty.
2. It possible to scientifically prove that people find a subjective sound improvement in what really is a objective degeneration. (like tape compression or transformer saturation). There are sonic advantages with less then perfect clocking. (Digital is the new analog)
3. Some of the devices on the market are being faulty in their design. Not meaning "less than top class" but plain "faulty" as in broken. They should be taken back to the factory and be fixed under warranty.
4. Placebo effect, people hear what they want to hear. It's impossible to scientificly prove a difference in sound. In this case it's really a non issue apart from people loosing money on unnecesarry investments and the spreading of audio mythology.

If my logic is faulty please correct me. But otherwise only one of these statements is true. (It would be interesting if #2 is correct...) I don't care wich one of these is true though.

regards,
Johannes

[mrtomm]

Last week I was listening to a MOTU with 3 different clocks.
Int. and 2 external.
They all sounded different!

Anyway, Logic only works with a Mac.

Tom

[Shenes]

Originally Posted by mrtomm

Last week I was listening to a MOTU with 3 different clocks.
Int. and 2 external.
They all sounded different!

Anyway, Logic only works with a Mac.

Tom

Different as in differently good/bad or just different?

Logic, you got me there... But reason is still dual platform, right?

[skybluerental]

i have used big ben quite extensively and without question it improves the performance of any converter to which i have connected it.

it is very noticeable.

yes, use the ears.

[Audio Hombre]

Originally Posted by skybluerental

i have used big ben quite extensively and without question it improves the performance of any converter to which i have connected it.

it is very noticeable.

yes, use the ears.

if i bought one, i'd have to say the same thing.

[Digibear]

Originally Posted by Francis Vaughan

Anything that gets a DAC away from having to recover the clock from an external data source is good.

Do you mean that external clocking of a device (from any other source), for example by dedicated BNC connection, will be better than deriving the clock signal from a data line like AES/EBU or S/PDIF?

[raal]

Originally Posted by Audio Hombre

if i bought one, i'd have to say the same thing.

i own apogee 16X, antelope clock, lynx aurora 16 and digi 192s. also own a HEDD 192 but that's in a different city and i haven't shot it out against the others, so let's leave that one out for now.

won't say which combination of clock/verter sounded better when we compared (better to me = closest representation of the analog source in sound and stereo image). i will say that in our place, different clocks yielded noticeable and repeatable results during blind tests on the apogee, aurora and digi DAs.

[WildCowboys]

No matter who came to what conclusion, those results are totally worthless and wrong if they did not meet the following criteria:

1 - there has to be instant switching between the different setups
2 - the setups have to be clibrated to less than 0.1dB level difference
3 - it has to be BLIND, noone must know which setup they are listening to.
4 - the impressions have to be written down in multiple runs
5 - the listening samples should be short&repeated

I doubt anyone did their testing like this. I guess everyone listened to one thing, connected another setup, waited for it to lock, sat back on his arse and pressed play again, knowing what they are listening to and having a totally biased, unscientific impression, believing this impression has anything to do with "converter & clocking quality"

The psychological things are much stronger than people believe. It is amazing how much people trust their guts before they experience how wrong this usually is in audio.
I once had a preamp AB test uploaded....a known expert round here, someone who compares gear as a profession, listened to one of the A vs B examples. Then he told me which one was highend and which one was the cheap box, having no dimension, 2D sound, no depth etc......it turned out I made a mistake uploading and he jusdged the EXACT SAME FILE AGAINST ITSELF. So anyone who thinks they are safe from psycho sh*t is DEAD WRONG.

Rock!
Pat

[StarfishMusic]

ok no tech stuff for me in this one relatively. RME ADI-8 DS converter, Hammerfall 9652 card. Listened to the same song we'd been working on for the 1000th time that day. Flipped on the new Big Ben that just arrived. Sounded better period. improved clarity, greatly improved reverb, better softsynths too. no placebo. We knew the before sound 100%. Although you could make the argument that as i read from earlier: The big ben only effects the playback and not the recording. When we run tracks out through a high end analog processing chain and back in, we are indeed recording the playback. Why exactly would a better clock only improve your D/A, I'd have to think it effects the recording too, it's just harder to A/B the results, without 2 identical systems. Placebo may indeed be true for some ppl, however you have to give credit to the people on here that listen to sound in a deep way all day long. Apogee themselves said the sound would be improved, the trick was finding the very rare BNC TERMINATOR, that apogee told us to get.

Also I do bet that something like a $7000 Dreamsound Prism would have a better internal clock than a big ben. at that point the bnc wire itself might make a bit of difference compare to the internal one. and your right, maybe the apogee ad16x and da16x which have that big ben clock inside is better becuase it's all internal, but then you have to sync one to the other because the AD and DA are on seperate units.

[raal]

Originally Posted by WildCowboys

1 - there has to be instant switching between the different setups

check

2 - the setups have to be clibrated to less than 0.1dB level difference

we calibrated to within .1dB - less was not possible.

3 - it has to be BLIND, no one must know which setup they are listening to.

check

4 -the impressions have to be written down in multiple runs

didn't do that. no need to. there were two of us in the room and we both got it right every time.

5 - the listening samples should be short&repeated

check

I doubt anyone did their testing like this. I guess everyone listened to one thing, connected another setup, waited for it to lock, sat back on his arse and pressed play again, knowing what they are listening to and having a totally biased, unscientific impression, believing this impression has anything to do with "converter & clocking quality"

we listened to prerecorded material, running through a fair amount of analog gear (fatso, LA2As, pultecs or 480L in combination or alone) to ensure fast and seamless switchability. one clock at a time on two different converters. we could always tell which was closest to the unconverted analog source.

The psychological things are much stronger than people believe.

but listening blind can give you a better idea. results with eyes open and closed can vary drastically as you pointed out.

[Francis Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Digibear

Do you mean that external clocking of a device (from any other source), for example by dedicated BNC connection, will be better than deriving the clock signal from a data line like AES/EBU or S/PDIF?

In a word, yes.

But to be more specific. AES3 and its ilk (S/PDIF) are flawed interconnection designs. If they carry a signal, that signal contaminates the clock recovery process in a manner that is difficult to totally solve. For all sorts of reasons. It contaminates the clock in the worst possible manner, with signal correlated energy. So the products of this contamination have audible and universally bad sounding effects.

Anything you can do to remove this contamination is usually a good thing. So, if you clock your data source (say DAW) from an external clock (one that comes over a clean link, with no other signal - so BNC word clock, or AES3 with digital black), and also clock your DAC from that same clock (which you need to retain sync) things will probably improve. The best answer is to clock the data source from the DAC. But this turns out to be a difficult thing to actually do in practice.

Even then external clocks can have problems. AES3, even with digital black is specified with very loose tolerances, and can suffer from significant ringing in the link, which makes clean clock recovery difficult. Coax too has issues.

[nativeaudio]

Originally Posted by Shenes

OK, lets keep flogging this some more since it's obviosly not quite dead yet What people are saying is:

• Manufacturers and esteemed experts like mr Katz are unanimous about that the clocking of modern converters can't be improved by external clocks (unless the the internal clock is faulty), it's based on theory and by design it's always true. Some converters suffer less from external clocking but it's never a improvement.
  (When syncing 2 or more devices together there are better or worse ways of doing this, an external clock is sometimes a better alternative than deriving sync from the source singnal or FW.)

• Users/listeners/retailers claim that a external clock sometimes can improve the sound (clocking?) of converters.

From this you can draw different conclusions. But only one of them can be true.

Hmf.

"Manufacturers and esteemed experts like mr Katz are unanimous....."
"Users/listeners/retailers claim that a external clock sometimes can...."



I'm not really participating in the discussion here, but, looking at these links from Mix Magazine, EQ Magazine and Apogee - all agreeing that using an external clock (Big Ben) does improve the sound... which conclusions can we draw from that?

A) The internal clocks in all the interfaces they used as a reference were faulty.
B) The reviewers in Mix and EQ and the manufacturers at Apogee Digital are only "users/listeners/retailers"?

If the text above is correct, at least one of these conclusions are true.

[Francis Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Shenes

• (When syncing 2 or more devices together there are better or worse ways of doing this, an external clock is sometimes a better alternative than deriving sync from the source singnal or FW.)
• Users/listeners/retailers claim that a external clock sometimes can improve the sound (clocking?) of converters.

From this you can draw different conclusions. But only one of them can be true.

If you restrict it to these two parts of the alternatives there is no contradiction whatsoever.

What bugs me all the time is that so often people are making a comparison and they don't know or understand what the clock path is. There are many times where it appears to the ignorant that the converter is internally clocked when it isn't. About here the comparisons become meaningless.

[mrtomm]

Originally Posted by Shenes

Different as in differently good/bad or just different?

Logic, you got me there... But reason is still dual platform, right?

You R correct about that, as is there new shell app. "Within Reason"

I agree that a "blind test", if you can do it, is the way to go.
We have people who have done them, and say they hear a difference.
I'm talking about a MOTU box.
Yes, I sat on my ass on the couch and just listened.
The only thing that changed was the clock.
Same source, same level, unless clock changes level, and we all agreed.
Since I had gotten an external clock that was about $400, I sure wanted that one to sound the best.
Too bad 4 me!
The clock from a Focusrite LC sounded better to me.
Still the purpose of the test was, could you hear a difference, and the answer in this case was yes.
Test it yourself, if you have doubts, cause then you will have your own opinion.

As for me, I'm tired of ing up a tree.
Life's too short, and it's getting shorter with each keystroke.

Sooooooooooo..............
I think I'm gonna go get a Prism Orpheus and start making music instead of listening to the difference in word clocks.

All the best guys,

Tom

[Shenes]

Originally Posted by Francis Vaughan

What bugs me all the time is that so often people are making a comparison and they don't know or understand what the clock path is. There are may times where it appears to the ignorant that the converter is internally clocked when it isn't. About here the comparisons become meaningless.

I totally agree. Apples and oranges... But if some people appear to be pissing away money and are happy about that, why should we care.

[skybluerental]

Originally Posted by Audio Hombre

if i bought one, i'd have to say the same thing.

never bought/owned one.
just worked in a couple places that had one and did a quick A/B a few times of mix playback.
you dont have to switch back and forth more than once to hear the difference if you have experienced ears.

ive used big ben with apogee, motu and digi converters.

the only converters i cant imagine it helping are RADAR or other super special high end designs like crainsong, mytek, etc.

the difference is more profound when more than one converter box is being clocked and/or the converters are lower quality (ie. MOTU).

[kosmokrator]

..anyone already compared the differences using the same clock, but clocked internally vs. externally?
f.e., playback trough DA-16X clocked internally vs. locked to a AD-16X?

might try that tomorrow..
Sebastian

[Francis Vaughan]

Originally Posted by skybluerental

just worked in a couple places that had one and did a quick A/B a few times of mix playback.
you dont have to switch back and forth more than once to hear the difference if you have experienced ears.

The problem with this is that it sounds like exactly the scenario I am complaining about.
What were the two clock paths, A and B?

If you compared the standard replay path of DAW to DAC over AES3, versus a clock path of DAC and DAW both receiving clock from an external clock generator, then you have not compared an internal to an external clock, and the entire comparison is invalid.

What you have done is compared the jitter attenuation capability of the clock recovery off AES3 versus external clock. These are very different beasts - and neither involve the use of the DAC's internal clock in an unsullied form. I would not be surprised in the least that the external clock sounded better. But it does not prove that high quality external clocks improve converters, it proves that clock recovery over AES3 is just plain bad.

[mrtomm]

Read a post from a RADAR user, who said an external clock made a difference too.

Tom

[skybluerental]

Originally Posted by Francis Vaughan

The problem with this is that it sounds like exactly the scenario I am complaining about.
What were the two clock paths, A and B?

If you compared the standard replay path of DAW to DAC over AES3, versus a clock path of DAC and DAW both receiving clock from an external clock generator, then you have not compared an internal to an external clock, and the entire comparison is invalid.

What you have done is compared the jitter attenuation capability of the clock recovery off AES3 versus external clock. These are very different beasts - and neither involve the use of the DAC's internal clock in an unsullied form. I would not be surprised in the least that the external clock sounded better. But it does not prove that high quality external clocks improve converters, it proves that clock recovery over AES3 is just plain bad.

they still sounds better clocked with the big ben.....................
IMHO.
isnt that what this is all about?
SOUND?
the comparison is, converter A using no big ben compared to converter A with big ben connected and selected as the master clock.
which one sounds better?
what is invalid about subjectively comparing the sound of those 2 different options on playback?
does connecting the unit improve the sound?
no matter what the math, the big ben is improving the sound compared to no big ben in mine and many others opinions...........
whether it actually affects the converters or not doesnt mean squat when you listen to playback. if the apogee clock makes the converter box sound better, then it is improving the sound of the overall unit itself and thats whats important to an engineer.

[mrtomm]

Originally Posted by Francis Vaughan

The problem with this is that it sounds like exactly the scenario I am complaining about.
What were the two clock paths, A and B?

If you compared the standard replay path of DAW to DAC over AES3, versus a clock path of DAC and DAW both receiving clock from an external clock generator, then you have not compared an internal to an external clock, and the entire comparison is invalid.

What you have done is compared the jitter attenuation capability of the clock recovery off AES3 versus external clock. These are very different beasts - and neither involve the use of the DAC's internal clock in an unsullied form. I would not be surprised in the least that the external clock sounded better. But it does not prove that high quality external clocks improve converters, it proves that clock recovery over AES3 is just plain bad.

And if you just use 2 external clocks and still hear a difference between them, then what?

Francis, I would be very interested, if you had the time and clocks,
if you have/would do some testing.
I say this not to provoke you, but to see if the experience might change your mind.

I did my flawed little test to see if there was a difference because I got an external clock for my RME( which I sent back).
Since the clock didn't even work on the RME, (A/C ,D/C buffer, blah....),
I tried them on a bud's MOTU.
After the results of the test, I've decided to go with new converters, even though I could tell a difference, it seems thats the most simple & elegant choice.

Hmmm I wonder if I fooled myself into getting new converters.

,

Tom

[Francis Vaughan]

the comparison is, converter A using no big ben compared to converter A with big ben connected and selected as the master clock.

Fine so far. But what was the clock when you didn't use the Big Ben? That is always the crux of the question. No one ever answers that question. Until they do they don't know what the cause of what they heard was. If they don't know they don't know how to get it right in the future, and may well end up spending money on something they don't need that doesn't help preserve the sound they thought they were getting. So, it is about the sound.

[Loki]

Originally Posted by Francis Vaughan

In a word, yes.

But to be more specific. AES3 and its ilk (S/PDIF) are flawed interconnection designs. If they carry a signal, that signal contaminates the clock recovery process in a manner that is difficult to totally solve. For all sorts of reasons. It contaminates the clock in the worst possible manner, with signal correlated energy. So the products of this contamination have audible and universally bad sounding effects.

Anything you can do to remove this contamination is usually a good thing. So, if you clock your data source (say DAW) from an external clock (one that comes over a clean link, with no other signal - so BNC word clock, or AES3 with digital black), and also clock your DAC from that same clock (which you need to retain sync) things will probably improve. The best answer is to clock the data source from the DAC. But this turns out to be a difficult thing to actually do in practice.

Even then external clocks can have problems. AES3, even with digital black is specified with very loose tolerances, and can suffer from significant ringing in the link, which makes clean clock recovery difficult. Coax too has issues.

I'm really hoping that "contaminates" in your comment is just a question of poor choice of English. Otherwise, you've never coded for clock or dealt with what the AES standards are.

Wordclock (BNC) is beneficially since it travels separately from other encoding methods (AES3/SPDIF/ADAT/MADI) which takes time to decode from the bit stream. There is no "contamination" but it will suffer some delay to decode. Obviously, delay is a critical concern to clock.

[chet.d]

Originally Posted by Francis Vaughan

Fine so far. But what was the clock when you didn't use the Big Ben? That is always the crux of the question. No one ever answers that question. Until they do they don't know what the cause of what they heard was. If they don't know they don't know how to get it right in the future, and may well end up spending money on something they don't need that doesn't help preserve the sound they thought they were getting. So, it is about the sound.

As far as the original poster and myself are concerned, it's been made clear that the benefits ensued clocking ensemble from big ben... as compared to clocking the ensemble to its own internal clock.
Also, I did extensively consider the placebo effect, and following that consideration, I can't deny it simply sounds better.
I think I'll digress at this point though. Whatever works for you.