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RE: It's apparent

Posted by Jim F. (A) on December 22, 2009 at 10:47:58

In Reply to: It's apparent posted by Presto on December 22, 2009 at 10:13:56:

> That Jim has lots of studio experience.

No studio experience whatsoever, in fact.

> Which is why he is a "bits is bits" believer. . .

I dunno, I would have thought that a "bits is bits" believer
would be inclined to think that what you get out of a mass-market
CD player is as good as you can (or ought to) expect.

> There is no mention of any concern for which box is clocking what,
> and what the sources for jitter are in that chain.

In that chain, the sound card in the computer is obviously
the master clock. Perhaps not optimum for "serious listening",
but for workstation use (getting the bits from Computer A to
Computer B through Box 1, Box 2, etc...) perfectly adequate
(I do not have loss-of-sync or dropout problems.)

Each box is clocked by its own S/PDIF (or I2S) input.
That's what S/PDIF does, you know -- it embeds the clock
in the data stream.

Nevertheless, I was able to hear what I heard, while monitoring
that "workstation" system.

When I play back the **end product**, my clocking is beyond
criticism. An Apogee Rosetta 200 feeds its clock **back**
to a sound card (EMU 1212), and serves as the master clock
(on an ADAT optical bus, reclocked for each system by that
system's own Apogee Big Ben). Is that concern enough?

> The sheer number of digital cables involved (alone) and Toslink
> conversions makes one go "Hmmmm..."

For workstation use, this is irrelevant, as long as none
of the data is actually lost. For real-time listening -- well,
some (most) of those boxes **are** reclockers.

You know, there was a real fad a while ago for "stacking"
reclockers. Two DTIs in a row? Wow! Six? Awesome! ;->

> and thinks he can process a digital signal with 10 different
> hardware boxes. . .

Yep. And these are not strictly studio boxes, either. They
were primarily marketed to audiophiles:

EDR*S -- a prototype of a system Audio Alchemy never got to
build. Based on the DTI Pro32, which was marketed to audiophiles.
In a more flexible form, this might have been of use to studios.

Perpetual P-1A -- primarily marketed to audiophiles, though
some studios have found it useful.

dCS Purcell -- created (as the dCS 972) as a studio tool,
until a genius (abetted by Jonathan Scull's review in Stereophile)
found a way to market it to audiophiles.

Meridian 518 -- this is (or was; it doesn't do more than 48 kHz)
a serious tool for CD mastering, but was also used by audiophiles
for "sweetening" the sound of CD playback. Can't really tell
what Meridian's marketing intentions were, though.

Hey, I don't expect anybody to take me particularly seriously,
here. I'm just having fun!

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VH Audio

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