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Auralic LEO GX DAC Clock Review

Cortes

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I *think* you can go with dCS.

There is still hope. There exists the business of expensive clock cables to lift even more the performance, as everyone knows the clocks are very dependent of the cables. Should Amir tested with these Habst cables cited below he would have sold his AP machine to purchase a whole lot of them.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/31857-mutec-ref-10-masterclock/page/33/?tab=comments

Here is the link to the Habst clock cables: http://habst.de/digital-xlr-rca-bnc.html You can email the proprietor, Daniel, through the web contact form for more information.

As you have read on this thread and possibly elsewhere, clock cables affect the performance and sound quality of the master clock. The Habst cable is an excellent choice, but there are other options as well. I can personally vouch for the Habst cables as I use them in my system.

People have generally found the shortest possible length is preferable for clock cables. A major advantage of the Habst cable is that it can be grounded to an unused BNC output on the REF 10, which significantly improves sound quality. I ground mine to a Synergistic Research Active Ground Block for even better results. You could probably do the same with your Entreq.

BTW, getting more personal. What do you think of golden ear guru 'austintop'?.
 

garbulky

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@amirm so after you rebooted, it would be good to show what the difference was without the clock? For instance if the performance was identical measured, then what would be the point of the clock (as you suggest).
 

Xyrium

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He said "lego" in the description....nice

Was thinking of placing a LaCrosse temp/humidity unit with atomic clock function, on top of my DAC to listen for audible improvements. Of course, my plan is to use isolation blocks, platinum litz wire, and a handful of those massage stone thingies on top (I might throw in a rain dance), to ensure that I meet all audiophile expectations. ;)
 

Veri

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Jitter in consumer audio reminds me of the Y2K bug, millions spent on a problem that was mostly not there, and was blown way out of proportion.

Almost all the small studios I know that bought those antelope clocks, sold them after the confirmation bias phase wore out.

That's really just sad, smaller studios basically being taken advantage of. Guess that's audio for you...

Positive note: Auralic managed with this clock not degrade the DAC. This is an accomplishement.
In a way, yes. You can bet that most "audiophile" DACs with external clock inputs will perform worse using the external input option than using the default internal one. This Auralic performs the same with both. An accomplishment it is. Entirely unnecessary it is too, ironically... a proper USB>I2S controller performs just as well :p who'd have expected it. Facepalm.
 

murraycamp

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A steamer? Can they beat Red Pro's $70 Amazon price?

View attachment 46711


I suspect that there is no audible difference between this steamer and other steamers costing much more. At least, when I hooked up a steamer to my dac it didn't sound different. Just more humid.
 

murraycamp

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If you want the best .. then ...

Buy a Matrix Audio element X (< $3k) or any of the cheaper dacs reviewed here that are also audibly transparent.
 
Last edited:

beefkabob

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"Listening Tests
I played through a few of my reference files and I was shocked to hear a bit more detail. There was more air between instruments. The bass was ever so slightly quicker. I don't think I have ever heard a DAC sound this good before!"

LOL!
 

BYRTT

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Some better clocks for subjective tests ...:)

Clocks.png
 

pavuol

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OK guys, enough of cheap jokes and satire!

I teach you a serious lesson.
Do you know what does an expression "utopia" mean?
It is a hypothetical case in which Amir after this review of Auralic product posts another one of the same brand and states:
"It was kindly sent to me by the company."

1475351.png
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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Positive note: Auralic managed with this clock not degrade the DAC. This is an accomplishement.

Negative note: ASR is destroying my richness dreams. What am I to buy when I get billionaire?.
Top of the list would be buying me a panther without its head broken!
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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@amirm so after you rebooted, it would be good to show what the difference was without the clock? For instance if the performance was identical measured, then what would be the point of the clock (as you suggest).
It was identical to the version with the clock. And the review test without. I had to send this unit out to its owner due to time constraints so didn't see the need to repeat that.
 

Francis Vaughan

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There is a curious piece of technical slight of hand going on with atomic clocks here.
As glossed over, the clocks also contain crystal oscillators. In reality, for a rubidium clock, it is always the crystal oscillator that is delivering the clock, not the atomic clock. The bare rubidium clock has quite dreadful phase noise (aka jitter). What it does however have is long term accuracy. So the rubidium source is used to condition (basically control the frequency of) the crystal over long periods.
A quartz crystal oscillator has great precision, the atomic clock great accuracy. Together you get an accurate precise clock.

But, and this has been well covered above, for a single audio stream, there is no value in the added accuracy. In profesional applications where you are recording with physically separated units, you need to keep everything lined up to avoid nasties when trying to mix them together (this is mostly an issue in movie production, where sound guys might be on foot with a self contained recorder, unable to be synced via a master clock.) The other use is in TV studios. TV studios would keep a rubidium source as a master clock, which meant that they could be in sync with other live content from around the planet, and thus a smooth switch of source could be effected with no loss of frame sync.

The technical slight of hand is that the quartz oscillator will never perform quite as well when the conditioning system is operating versus running standalone. For the most perfect jitter performance the atomic clock should be removed.
 

LMDA1

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There is still hope. There exists the business of expensive clock cables to lift even more the performance, as everyone knows the clocks are very dependent of the cables. Should Amir tested with these Habst cables cited below he would have sold his AP machine to purchase a whole lot of them.

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/31857-mutec-ref-10-masterclock/page/33/?tab=comments

Here is the link to the Habst clock cables: http://habst.de/digital-xlr-rca-bnc.html You can email the proprietor, Daniel, through the web contact form for more information.

As you have read on this thread and possibly elsewhere, clock cables affect the performance and sound quality of the master clock. The Habst cable is an excellent choice, but there are other options as well. I can personally vouch for the Habst cables as I use them in my system.

People have generally found the shortest possible length is preferable for clock cables. A major advantage of the Habst cable is that it can be grounded to an unused BNC output on the REF 10, which significantly improves sound quality. I ground mine to a Synergistic Research Active Ground Block for even better results. You could probably do the same with your Entreq.

BTW, getting more personal. What do you think of golden ear guru 'austintop'?.

wow, that was scary.
 

digicidal

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So for ~$14K more than I paid... I could be able to hear the same level of transparency after waiting more than an hour... as I can hear within seconds of powering on my DX7 Pro? I can live with that. ;) Although to be fair, you do get a much nicer looking pair of boxes for the difference.
 

SpyB

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Thanks Amirm, I was under the same impression. However, with that, shall I say following statements made by dCS:

"In a digital audio system, samples must be accurate in level and time but jitter, which exists in all digital systems, can result in timing errors in these samples, causing the analogue signal to be reconstructed inaccurately."
Ref: https://www.dcsltd.co.uk/products/vivaldi-clock/

are completely trash talk? I knew there are many big names also produce masterclock for Hi-Fi.

It is just hard to believe they all try to sell sneak oil to us.

Some other useful testing reference: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/does-your-studio-need-digital-master-clock


DCS Bartok, $15,000 more "BS" and we have a new terminology "Sneak Oil" they sneak into you mind with "BS" and when you are well oiled

with the audiophile massage / they sneak into you bank account and extract the $$$$$, then when you finally discover ASR,

you feel very foolish indeed that you have been sneaked into buying "BS"
 

Soniclife

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Jitter in consumer audio reminds me of the Y2K bug, millions spent on a problem that was mostly not there, and was blown way out of proportion.
Whoever your source for the y2k wasn't a big issue, ignore them from now on, it's BS. It was a big issue, but lots of people fixed it before it happened, it's a classic case of people dismissing something they didn't understand.
 

FrantzM

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Whoever your source for the y2k wasn't a big issue, ignore them from now on, it's BS. It was a big issue, but lots of people fixed it before it happened, it's a classic case of people dismissing something they didn't understand.
+1
 

hugodlc

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Whoever your source for the y2k wasn't a big issue, ignore them from now on, it's BS. It was a big issue, but lots of people fixed it before it happened, it's a classic case of people dismissing something they didn't understand.

I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't real, same as jitter, but I feel the amount of time and money spent by a lot of people that are/were not really affected by it is/was similar. (This is my observation based on my experience and YMMV)

I heard a lot of Y2K scare from people and companies around my circle, and some if not most of them hired consultants, and in the end they were already Y2K compliant from the start.
I felt this is similar to having an external atomic clock to "fix" jitter (that isn't there) and pay a large sum of money for it.
 
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