Big Ben-Can you hear the difference?

[HiLoc]

Hi guys
I did a session mix with Mr Apogee(B. clairmontain)
He ask for setup Sync IO as master clock send to The apogee Big Ben for distribution to apogee's DA, we have 192's
He explain to me that apogee had a single board for the 16 D/A and the distribution was better with the Big Ben.
So guys go to the bank to get a "better distibution"
He's recording his mix thru a AD apogee no soft limiter.
You like or not his work, Bob is a cool guy, no problem but I can't pay for subtil differences

People like sync audio D/A, I try the new HD IO..... not a massive difference except I had to drop the HD buffer to the minimum.

keep cool guys don't fall in deep technologic delirious

Big fan of Slate Digital, special thanks to Fabrice Gabriel ( algorithm guy )


Rock on

[booter]

Funny thing .. a guy from Benchmark (great converters ... used up at Skywalker Sound) told me when you have a cable sending clock from one device to another that a lot of jitter gets introduced from it going through the cable.

Has anyone done any true A/B X testing ... blind ... ? More difficult to set up but suppose to be a great way to really tell these subtle differences.

Cheers!

[daeron80]

Yep. The only reason I can think of to run clock along a cable from one machine to another is to keep multiple machines on the same clock. You'd have to have a really bad internal clock to make it worth it to clock it to something else purely for its own converters to use.

[music]

I had a big ben over for a session and did a bounce to disk with the BB and then turned it off and did a second BTD with the 192's internal converters. I then a/b'd the results in a blind test. I heard a noticeable difference between the 2 in the bounced files. The BB is definitely affecting the bounced audio. I heard a reduction in mud as well as an increase in clarity, width and detail with the BB. For me the bounced audio is affected in a pleasing way by the BB. In the blind test I picked out the BB every single time. I could really hear the difference and it was not a small difference.

[Greg Malcangi]

Daeron80 and others are correct. The conclusion of the Sound on Sound article was completely accurate and provable:

"Overall, it should be clear from these tests that employing an external master clock cannot and will not improve the sound quality of a digital audio system. It might change it, and subjectively that change might be preferred, but it won’t change things for the better in any technical sense."

So it maybe that some of you who have heard a difference preferred the difference that you heard in your studio. Be warned though that the difference you preferred is unlikely to translate to other studios or playback systems.

The only time an external clock would likely benefit sound fidelity would be when there are a number of pieces of digital audio equipment in the signal chain which need to be synchronised together. Most commonly though an external masterclock is required for many audio post workflows (syncing video and audio). Cable lengths and distribution can have an impact in these types of setups.

G

[music]

You are correct. It is subjective. I like the sound of my 192 with the Big Ben clocking the system. More pleasing to my ears. Maybe not more correct but better.

[Greg Malcangi]

Originally Posted by music

You are correct. It is subjective. I like the sound of my 192 with the Big Ben clocking the system. More pleasing to my ears. Maybe not more correct but better.

The 192 has a good internal clocking system and you are certainly not improving anything by externally clocking it with a Big Ben.

Of course, it's your choice but I personally wouldn't want to make my studio sound "more pleasing to my ears" knowing that I was reducing sound quality and probably making it sound worse everywhere else.

G

[daeron80]

Hey, we all know there's such a thing as good harmonic distortion. Maybe there's good jitter, too. It's a difficult thing to prove either way.

[Raggi]

Will a Big Ben make a difference on my Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 setup?
I use the 56 as clock synced to my OctoPre and other pre-amps.
It a totaly new system for me, so I don't have anything to compare it with yet.

[daeron80]

It sounds like you might have multiple devices with A/D converters running in parallel, but I'm not clear on that. If so, it might help to clock them all to something like the Big Ben. I think that was the deal with the O.P.'s situation - maybe Clearmountain had several 192s, each receiving from multiple Apogees, or something like that. In that case, there's no way to avoid having something act as an external master clock.