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A digital revelation

Over the past year, I've been assembling a brand new system using Infinity Prelude MTS speakers, a Legacy power amp, a Parasound preamp and DH Labs speaker cables. Since this is also used as a home theater, I was using a JVC DVD player feeding an MSB Link III with upsampling. After the first few speaker placement and tweaking sessions, the sound was adequate but not consistently spectacular and I thought the missing ingredient might be equalization. I borrowed a DBX Quantum mastering processor for experimentation and found that in bypass (no eq), the sound was better than I'd ever heard before. The reason for this was that jitter was virtually eliminated by the processor. I couldn't afford a Quantum for this purpose but found that a Monarchy DIP performed quite well and was a major improvement even if it never quite approached the Quantum.

After searching for a while, I found a reclocking device called the XO3 ($118 USD). It's a small PC board with an ultra low jitter crystal, a power supply, and an S/PDIF reclocking circuit. You must have a CD player that uses one of 5(?) available clock speeds and you have to do some spicing and dicing inside the machine as well as figure a way to mount it and get the S/PDIF out of the box. This can require some ingenuity and patience but let me assure you the results are spectacular. It's obviously not for the cost-is-no-object crowd and it's much more painful than connecting a device like the DIP but I've never heard better digital. I've also hot rodded my MSB which probably helps too.

Has anyone out there had any experience with this device?
jlambrick

Showing 1 response by pilar

pilar
24 posts
 
I recently installed an Audiocom DVC-1 Master Clock and separate DVC-1 Power Supply in my Pioneer DV-525. Both items were closeout priced at Reference Audio Mods for $100 each. Luckily, specific instructions for the mod were available for the DV-525, as installation requires removal of tiny surface mount resistors and the old clock and trimmer. Once these items are removed you are pretty much committed, since replacing them is not going to be easy. I am no EE, but I was able finish the upgrade in about three hours by paying close attention to the instructions.

I had previously been using a Monarchy DIP feeding a ModWright massaged Link III. The new clock was better in all respects- much, much less of the awful digital glare. Inspired, I ordered a fistful of Black Gate capacitors and replaced all the stock ones on the DVC-1 power supply and noticed further gains in smoothness. Completely convinced, I sold the DIP.

*On a side note, I want to heartily recommend the glass (not plastic) toslink cable from a company called Sound Professionals. This low cost ($58-1.5m) cable sounds fantastic and has really surprised me at the potential of the optical interface. Better than coax (for me) even with the Bybee filter on the Link DAC's input.

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