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Does anyone use a re-clocker such as the "Remedy" from W4S, or any other competing brand/model?
I have a PS Audio Nuwave DAC; Would it be noticable?
Meat; It's the right thing to do. Romans 14:2
Follow Ups:
I guess the first thing to ask is if there is anything noticeable that you feel requires the additional Master Clock reference? If you are trying to use your DAC with a jittery source, then you are likely to benefit. However, the W4S device is using an ASRC device - you will notice that they market the device for use with streamers like the Squeezebox. The output is upsampled and fixed at 24/96. You will be upsampling the data at least twice. It is also best to reclock and maintain the input data rate and do any signal processing in the DAC itself.
To answer your question specifically, I have an Apogee Big Ben and a Grimm Audio CC1 which is about the cleanest clock on the market. I use these as a Master CLock reference for my ADC stages, but also to reclock the SPDIF input to my reference DAC.
Yes, no matter how good the DAC is, you can hear the difference. However, the difference is not what you might think it is! If you are expecting a night and day difference and "instantly hear details you didn't know were on the recording" then you may be a little disappointed.
The difference is greater harmonic accuracy and a more tangible soundstage with great width and depth. Details may actually appear less obvious because they are correctly positioned in space rather than being in a flat plane and therefore more obvious.
If you feel you need such a device, don't waste your money on low end products like W4S and Monarchy DIPs. I've played with a lot of those devices (Perpetual Technologies P-1A and Monarchy DIP) and they are toys by comparison to even the Big Ben. The sound will be different but not necessarily technically cleaner.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
Flood2;
Thank you for your well reasoned response as it is the kind of advice I was looking for when I posed the question(s).
Meat; It's the right thing to do. Romans 14:2
Don't most dacs today do reclocking in the dac?
Alan
Many of these external so-called re-clocking units are more correctly called re-sampling units. They utilize Asynchronous-Sample-Rate-Conversion (ASRC) technology, which alters the actual sample amplitude values in order to effectively filter jitter from the incoming signal. This process creates two independent clock domains, that of the incoming signal, and that of the re-sampled outgoing signal. There are also jitter reduction circuits which do not change the sample values yet still produce two nearly independent clock domains. These circuits typically utilize a speacialized memory function known as an asynchronous FIFO.A DAC box might internally contain either, or none of these two effective jitter reduction technologies. In addition, there is yet another common meaning for the term re-clocking, where in a new clock domain is not created, the data and any derived synchronous clock signals are simply re-aligned to the one existing clock domain.
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Ken Newton
Edits: 12/26/14
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