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Uptone ISO Regen Review and Measurements

RB2013

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I didn't know record players used clocks??
That's funny! Ever see one of these - I loved mine. Ice King you are the best straightman yet! LMAO!

Thanks for playing! God this is so fun...it's how that roundy thing doesn't spin out of control...

VPI SDS speed controller
download (2).jpg
 

RB2013

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So are they socketed on the Gustard?
Well not exactly 'socketed' but through the hole mounted vs SMD. Here is a pic of the same Chinese OEM clocks removed from a similar Chinese DDC the Melodious MX-U8:
IMG_0585.JPG

IMG_0587.JPG


Those metal can OEM TXCO's are a bit of a bugger to desolder (best if you have two soldering irons and some help), usually they can be salvaged, not always.
 
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amirm

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Oh, I see now. If you give the link to the SMD to socket from digikey I can order that together with the clocks. To lazy to go and get the specs and try to match :). They are cheap enough that I don't have to bother you to send them to me. :)
 

RB2013

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Oh, I see now. If you give the link to the SMD to socket from digikey I can order that together with the clocks. To lazy to go and get the specs and try to match :). They are cheap enough that I don't have to bother you to send them to me. :)
Just DIP8 std pins. Good Luck!
 

RB2013

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OK, I'm getting a better handle on where you're coming from - found your posts on another forum, and recognise the language used to describe the listening experience. You've learnt sufficient over the years to mount the hurdle that has to be overcome for digital to blossom ... my path was quite different: I accidentally stumbled upon "special" CD playback 3 decades ago - one day the Big Sound popped out because I had been fussy enough in my tweaking to get sufficient right - everything changed at that moment; and I've been on a journey exploring the in's and out's ever since ...
Well you were quite lucky! I got diverted to vinyl for 15yrs...after a dozen top end turntables another dozen high end cartridges - same for phono pres it just wasn't doing it.
Here is where I got off that path...that was 10yrs ago...digital was advancing and especially computer based digital. For a fraction of the cost of a Dynavestor XV1s - the digital source quality I have now is far superior.
old setup.JPG


The SQ now is beyond what that system could produce...and recent DC power supply developments...like the amazing LT3045 have brought unprecedented levels of detail, transparency, and dynamism.

Hint - power filtering at the AC socket is of course important - but even more critical is a 'distributed power filtering regime' - that is DC filtering right before the input of the various devices in the USB chain (and there are a few in mine). The LT3045 has extremely low noise of it's own (0.8uv) and excellent wide freq PSRR:
ca371e817535dd3a2ee9f400172b8581 - Copy.jpg

-76dB at 100kHz - out to -52dB at 10Mhz. Running a DC source from a low cost high power external LPS like the TeraDak R-Core DC30W (R-cores have lower AC leakage then most Toroidals, and better AC ripple rejection due to their design)- mine modded with ultra low impedance Nichicon HW caps (rated 10,000hrs @105c) to supply the intial DC current to a series of distributed DC LT3045 boxes at the device ot be powered. DC cable noise pickup is min by using very short (6in) star quad silver/teflon wire copper braid shielded cables to connect the LT3045 to the devices.

So bringing this all back to the LSP-1:
I had a Uptone LPS-1 for an extended period - it was good -this is way better - cheaper and far more flexible. And NO noisey SMPS needed as an energizer.

Using DC'Y' cables one DC-30W can feed a number of LT3045's at various voltages (the LT3045 has very low drop out (260mv) and can handle up to 4VDC input to output range). Output voltages available in a range of voltages. And they are cheap! $23 for the .5A and $25 for the new 1A versions.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LT3045-S-Ul...737282?hash=item3ae51933c2:g:hR8AAOSwU8hY4TzV

They do come as bare boards and some soldering is required, as well as mounting. I have some pre-made available for the non-DIYers:
http://www.usaudiomart.com/details/...ear-technologies-lt3045-regulator-ready-to-u/

So you see I'm not adverse to using engineering, specs and test measurements to locate interesting and low cost paths to better SQ. But for me it's the plugging in and playing - listening that is final arbiter. I know many here will find that Philosophically flawed.

Cheers
 
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RB2013

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Dip8? The clock seems rectangular and different dimensions than Dip8.
This might be more help - the steps I followed:

Sorry DIP 8 from a different project - like I said it's been a few years since I did this.

Crystek CCHD-957 family oscillators were designed especially for high definition audio applications. From the specification, they have pretty impressed low phase noise performance.

I got the backorder from Digikey two weeks ago. It took me two month! But both Digikey and Mouser keep in stock now.

Of course you can solder it directly to a 14 pin IC socket by wires, but I think making an adapter would be much better. I got the adapter PCB today. The assembling is easy. First, I solder the CCHD-957 on the top of the PCB, then, flip it over, solder a 1n, a 104 and a 1u bypass capacitors on the back. And then, plug in four IC pins into the corner positions of a 14 pin IC socket and fit them into the four holes from the back of the adapter PCB. The last step is soldering the four pins to the pads at back. Now, with the adapter, CCHD-957 could be used as a standard 4 PIN DIP XO at anywhere.

I put both 22.5792 MHz and 24.5760 MHz CCHD-957 oscillators with adapter hookup into my double XO FIFO clock board. It looks nice. I caught cold yesterday and lost some listening sensitivity. I will do some comparison test on them once I’m getting better.]quote/]
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digi...-project-ultimate-weapon-fight-jitter-17.html
If I remember I bought the SMD to four pin adapters from Ian
 
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amirm

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Oh just found this on that DIY thread!
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/1731447-post13686.html

Nelson Pass
United%20States.gif

The one and only



Join Date: Mar 2001

Quote:
Originally posted by JPV
Difficult after that to trust yours ears as main test tool.

If you can't trust your ears, then you don't have much reason to be
measuring audio, either.


cool.gif
He is right. Problem is, audiophiles are trusting their imagination far, far more than their ears. This is why as soon as we make the test blind, the night and day differences they thought they "heard" goes away. Shouldn't be the case if they were relying on their ears as the ears remained the same in both instances.

Happy to show any day, any place that Nelson doesn't know when it is his ears, or his brain that is giving him data in sighted listening. :)
 
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amirm

amirm

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This might be more help - the steps I followed:

Sorry DIP 8 from a different project - like I said it's been a few years since I did this.

If I remember I bought the SMD to four pin adapters from Ian
So is that a commercial SMD PCB adapter or did he have it custom designed?

Is there a point to be made with the non-SMD part just the same? Was the 950 through hole and better clock than what is in there?
 
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amirm

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amirm

amirm

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Superdad

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Thought folks might enjoy hearing further about the mechanisms explaining why we think (and hear) differences in upstream clocking:

Someone started a thread here, https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...does-it-matter/?do=findComment&comment=735512
with this post:

9 hours ago, Sound Hound said:

hi folks,
I'm putting together an 8 channel system with DDX amps for experimenting with ambisonics and multiway active setups.
since my background is computers and I've only recently forayed into audio, I'm a bit mystified by jitter and precision clocking.
I get that galvanic isolation and a separate, clean power source are important to the audio bits beyond the computer.
but I don't understand why the USB connection between such needs to have more than a reliable/accurate transfer of data.
does the jitter transmit stray signals into the latter stages? if not, then the only place high precision clocks are warranted is in driving the DAC or DDX stage.
surely any USB implementation is sufficient with the data adequately buffered.
reclockers?! iPurifiers?! pah - audio voodoo!

I'm cynical but ready to be enlightened!
thanks....


[John is in a good [typing/explaining] mood and has been more forthcoming about his ongoing research behind all this, so here is what he shared today:]
-------
Hi Sound Hound,
I have been working on this for years, I'm getting close to a complete end to end measurement, but test equipment to properly measure this stuff doesn't exist, I'm having to design and build my own as I go along. I can measure pieces of the chain now and the rest hopefully coming soon. Part of the slowness was getting laid off and retiring and moving to a new state. I now have a working lab again and am working on the next piece of test equipment.

The hypothesis goes thusly:

ALL crystal oscillators exhibit frequency change with power supply voltage change. This is known and well measured. A cyclical change in voltage causes a cyclical change in frequency which shows up in phase noise plots. For example if you apply a 100Hz signal to the power supply of the oscillator you will see a 100Hz spur in the phase noise plot.

A circuit that has a digital stream running through it will will generate noise on the power and ground planes of the PCB just from the transistors turning on and off that are processing that stream. This effect is very well known and measured. Combine this with the previous paragraph and you have jitter on the incoming data stream producing varying noise on the PG planes that modulates the clock increasing its jitter.

The above has been measured.

But shouldn't ground plane isolation and reclockers fix this? At first glance you would think so, but look carefully at what is happening. What is a reclocker? A flip flop. The incoming data with a particular phase noise profile goes through transistors inside the flip flop. Those transistors switching create noise on its internal PG traces, wires in the package and traces on the board. This noise is directly related to the phase noise profile of the incoming data. This PG noise changes the thresholds of the transistors that are clocking the data out thus overlaying the phase noise profile of the local clock with that of the clock used to generate the stream that is being reclocked. This process is hard to see, so I am working on a test setup that generates a "marker" in the phase noise of the incoming clock so it becomes easy to see this phase noise overlaying process.

This process has always been there but has been masked by the phase noise of the local clock itself. Now that we are using much lower phase noise local clocks this overlying is a significantly larger percentage of the total phase noise from the local clock.

Digital isolators used in ground plane isolation schemes don't help this. Jitter on the input to the isolator still shows up on the output, with added jitter from the isolators. This combination of original phase noise and that added by the isolator is what goes into the reclocking flip flop, increasing the jitter in the local clock. Some great strides have been made in the digital isolator space, significantly decreasing the added phase noise which over all helps, but now the phase noise from the input is a larger percentage, so changes to it are more obvious.

The result is that even digital isolators and reclocking don't completely block the phase noise contribution of the incoming data stream. It can help, but it doesn't get rid of it.

For USB (and Ethernet) it gets more complicated since the data is not a continuous stream, it comes in packets, thus this PG noise comes in bursts. This makes analysis of this in real systems much more difficult since most of the time it is not there. Thus any affects to an audio stream come and go. Thus just looking at a scope is not going to show anything since any distortion caused by this only happens when the data over the bus actually comes in. To look at anything with a scope will take synchronizing to the packet arrivals. Things like FFTs get problematic as well since what you are trying to measure is not constant . It will probably take something like wavelet analysis to see what is really happening.

The next step in my ongoing saga is to actually measure these effects on a DAC output. Again I have to build my own test equipment. The primary tool is going to be an ADC with a clock with lower phase noise than the changes which occur from the above. AND it needs to be 24 bits or so resolution. You just can't go out and buy these, they don't exist. So I build it myself.

I have done the design and have the boards and parts, but haven't had time to get them assembled yet. Then there is a ton of software to make this all work. Fortunately a large part already exists, designed to work with other systems but I can re-purpose it for this.

So it's not going to be right away, but hopefully not too off in the future I should be able to get to actually testing the end to end path of clock interactions all the way to DAC output.
--John Swenson
 

March Audio

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Sorry but the first sentence tells me all I need to know.

Phase noise is measurable and has been measurable for a long time. The idea that John is going to design, produce and verify The performance of a phase noise analyser in his garden shed that beats what is available from major manufacturers such as Keysight or Rohde and Schwarz etc is laughable.

Secondly he has not provided any evidence that phase noise at levels that are at the limit of current measureability is actually audible. He clearly hasn’t heard of auditory masking.

Right from the start this has been a “theoretical” problem in Johns mind, that on face value seems plausible and reasonable. As it is a plausible story if you don’t apply any critical thought to analyse it, it’s an easy sell to technically illiterate and gullible audiophiles.

Where John has completely failed is to do the professional engineering to back up the theory. He should have first proved that the phase noise at the limit of measureability is audible. Then validated that the products he designed actually improve the situation with measurement and of course by controlled subjective tests.

These are just hifi garden shed products that have zero evidence of efficacy....and no, a bunch of gullible fanboy audiophiles on a forum claiming their night and day improvements counts for nothing. The only conclusion that an individual should come to if finding these products work is that their DAC is shit to be susceptible to the problem.
 
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DonH56

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I have covered phase noise and jitter in other threads and many, many others have discussed it in far, far more detail. It continues to be a big marketing point based primarily (IME/IMO) on the premise that we can hear the effect of jitter that is orders of magnitude smaller than the aperture time of an audio data converter.

The assertion that "ALL crystal oscillators exhibit frequency change with power supply voltage change." ignores decades of designs made to be insensitive to PVT (process, voltage, temperature) to a level far below what audio circuits require... And I really doubt it is true for all audio oscillators. It is another of those technically accurate statements that have little to no bearing on audibility IME (which experience does not necessarily match that of anyone else). Indeed, no oscillator has infinite PSRR, but in practice they can be made more than adequate for the application. And it ignores how clean (or not) the actual power supply and power decoupling network is to the oscillator. I have not looked much at audio clock circuits, but all the oscillator circuits I have seen have extra power supply filters to isolate them from the rail. Whilst I am sure there are good and bad oscillator designs, as Amir has (indirectly) tested and as I find in my day job, the "ALL" statement seems over-the-top and bordering on spreading FUD.

Measuring phase noise to the 140 ~ 180 dBc/Hz level is TOUGH. And any ADC used is going to add its own noise, both from its reference clock and internal circuitry. Then you need a good screen room, or at least screen box, to reduce external noise sources. I would use a different detector than an ADC but OTOH am spoiled by having access to test equipment that does a better job than I could hope to accomplish, equipment developed by teams of engineers working for years, with many decades of very specialized expertise. I'm just not that smart.
 

watchnerd

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I have covered phase noise and jitter in other threads and many, many others have discussed it in far, far more detail. It continues to be a big marketing point based primarily (IME/IMO) on the premise that we can hear the effect of jitter that is orders of magnitude smaller than the aperture time of an audio data converter.

The assertion that "ALL crystal oscillators exhibit frequency change with power supply voltage change." ignores decades of designs made to be insensitive to PVT (process, voltage, temperature) to a level far below what audio circuits require... And I really doubt it is true for all audio oscillators. It is another of those technically accurate statements that have little to no bearing on audibility IME (which experience does not necessarily match that of anyone else). Indeed, no oscillator has infinite PSRR, but in practice they can be made more than adequate for the application. And it ignores how clean (or not) the actual power supply and power decoupling network is to the oscillator. I have not looked much at audio clock circuits, but all the oscillator circuits I have seen have extra power supply filters to isolate them from the rail. Whilst I am sure there are good and bad oscillator designs, as Amir has (indirectly) tested and as I find in my day job, the "ALL" statement seems over-the-top and bordering on spreading FUD.

Measuring phase noise to the 140 ~ 180 dBc/Hz level is TOUGH. And any ADC used is going to add its own noise, both from its reference clock and internal circuitry. Then you need a good screen room, or at least screen box, to reduce external noise sources. I would use a different detector than an ADC but OTOH am spoiled by having access to test equipment that does a better job than I could hope to accomplish, equipment developed by teams of engineers working for years, with many decades of very specialized expertise. I'm just not that smart.

To be honest, this whole topic is an exercise in bikeshedding.

I don't know why anyone who isn't suffering OCD / audiophile nervosa would worry about such measurably low-level, almost certainly inaudible issues when there are so many non-low level, blatantly audible defects happening at the transducer (speaker / headphone) / room acoustics end of the spectrum.
 

dallasjustice

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84CA0D19-E409-4E9F-A5E9-A5D2F68E22D1.jpeg
And Homer Simpson gets elected to build the nuclear plant’s bike shed.
To be honest, this whole topic is an exercise in bikeshedding.

I don't know why anyone who isn't suffering OCD / audiophile nervosa would worry about such measurably low-level, almost certainly inaudible issues when there are so many non-low level, blatantly audible defects happening at the transducer (speaker / headphone) / room acoustics end of the spectrum.
 
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