Meh, good dacs don't "improve" just because you hear a difference with an external clock. It's different because the distance added noise which changes the sound. And most people say, "it's different so it must me better." Just buy a better dac and be done with it. Lol.
DACs, external clocks, and what's what
There seems to be more hype about DACs than about anything in this overhyped hobby. I'm considering a new DAC and have been dragged down this external clock rabbit hole.
It seems that lots of DAC vendors are pushing external clocks. Even high end DACs like Wadax studio player, dcs products, Master fidelity NADAC-C, etc., claim that an expensive external clock is absolutely necessary to reach peak performance. Others, such as MSB and EMM Labs-its owner, Ed Meitner, in particular, counter that the clocking function is best performed closest to the conversion so as not to introduce the inevitable issues-noise, etc., that can come with adding more cables and connectors to the process. Most importantly, they point out that the internal clock still performs the ultimate clocking function, not the external clock. According to this camp, a well designed DAC with a high quality internal clock cannot benefit from an external clock and the added box may even be a detriment in addition to a waste of money. Cynics imply its just a money grab.
I understand how external clocks can benefit professional setups where there are multiple components to consider. I have a hard time understanding the mechanism by which a simple, typical two channel dac would benefit. Both my dcs Bartok and the Studio Player are one box solutions. I've auditioned the Studio Player (no external clock) and think its really good. Also have recently heard the EMM Labs and Berkeley Reference 3P, all sound really good without an external clock.
On the other hand, these clocks are selling-even very expensive ones-and lots of folks say they hear a difference.
I'm certainly not a DAC designer. I think no one knows more about this stuff than Meitner, or the MSB folks, but this is quite confusing, at least to me. Lots of stuff in our hobby comes down to subjective preference, but this seems to be a case where one side must be right and the other is wrong. Which is which? If you think an external clock provides a substantial improvement, how so?
Just looking for insights and opinions from this esteemed group. Not trying to start a fight-just hoping to shed some light on this because its an important consideration in making buying decisions.
Thanks.
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@ericrhodes1 wrote:
Come on, now you’re just being obtuse. Look, I know very well what’s merely "different" and what’s better - I have both the setup and ears/years to tell the difference. And besides you don’t appear to have made your own experiences in this field other than leveling preconceived, obstinate assumptions, so there’s really no point in continuing this discussion with you. |
@inagroove Its interesting to me because its not just a matter of subjective opinion, its the difference in what seems to be irreconcilable design choices.When Meitner says of making the clock remote "its not even logical to even think about it" that doesn't leave much room for interpretation. The MSB designers likewise rejected the desirability of external clocks to achieve best performance on a recent episode of Hifi Five. Its consequential for consumers. Consider the Master Fidelity NADAC-by all accounts a superb dac for 27.5, but it costs an additional 27.5 to get the external clock. It seems that Master Fidelity is telling us, in the context of clocks-we've made a great dac but can improve on the internal clock and thus sound quality only by adding an external clock-we cannot get to peak performance only by further optimizing the internal clock-which, of course, would be cheaper. On the other hand, EMM Labs offers its flagship DA2i for $35k-very highly regarded dac. No external clock is offered. EMM seems to be telling us that it has optimized the internal dac and cannot design an external clock that has any chance of improving performance and might have the opposite effect. My question is not whether external clocks make a difference, its whether the same level of performance could have been achieved without the very high cost that comes with an extra box. If so, there is a lot of unnecessary expense to achieve optimum performance. I can't answer the engineering question but it does seem that the EMM/MSB design choice is not necessarily in their commercial interest-they could likely sell a lot of extra boxes if they took that path. In the end, its a personal choice and whatever makes you happy works. Obviously, you can get great performance taking either path.
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To illustrate a point I want to make, before 2000, DAC’s consistently sounded better with high resolution material. Afterwards, especially after 2010, this gap narrowed a lot to the point where RedBook (44 kHz/16-bit) sounds much better than it used to. It makes it hard to justify high resolution recordings in the same way, and especially MQA. However, if you used an older DAC you’d say "well, of course high resolution sounds better!" It turns out that older DACs just didn’t have great Redbook playback like they do today.
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