dCS Puccini Clock


I had yesterday the oportunity to hear for first time the Puccini clock.

I must admit that I was a little sceptical. The system consisted of:

Howland preamp HP-200 SE
Howland amp RADIA SE
Avalon Indra
Transparent power cleaner / station ?
I can't tell which cables

Well the effect is quite amazing and you can easily recognize it in a blind hearing. If I have to describe it I would say, you become aware of the hall / the space in which the recording has been done. The difference is very noticeable when you switch the clock off, suddenly the music sounds dryer, shorter and the space all around the whole music desapears.

I heard:
Luiz Bonfa plays and sing Bossa Nova (Verve)
Bruckner 4th by Jaap van Zweden (bad SACD & interpretation)
Bruckner 4th by Günter Wand (the last recording)
Ports of Call by Eiji Oue (Ref. Rec. bravo Prof. Johnson you are a great sound engeneer!)

One of these days I will take it home and have a test on my system ... and will make some blind hearing with my wife ;-)

I will report then about the experience.
clavil
strangely on my system which is very holografic, the clock is producing less difference than on the Indra / Howland combination mentioned here above.
I am running the clock with the cables delivered by dCS.

positive effects
- the space beetween instruments is a little cleaner
- the general colour seems a little dryer when I take the clock off

? effect ( I still don't know if it'is positive or not)
- the tonal balance has changed, more high frequencies and less direct power in the medium / bass

I am quite perplex
I just got this info from dCS:

"March 24th will see the release of v1.10 software update for Puccini Player that provides a number of enhancements to Puccini Player. All dCS distributors will be sent copies of this update disc for the Puccini users in their country. I can also mail you a copy if you would like?

Features provided in this update include:

- Lock time for digital inputs is substantially improved
- A menu allows the user to lock to wordclock on per-input basis for digital inputs
- It is now possible to turn off the LEDs when the display is set to “Off”
- Upsampling from digital inputs is now possible, dependent on the user buying a unit-specific license from our website

All Puccini users should be encouraged to install this update.

For users who want to purchase the upsampling feature from dCS, this update is a pre-requisite and must be installed before upsampling on the digital inputs can be enabled. We recommend that if users want to hear the differences that upsampling makes then they play a CD in CD mode with upsampling disabled. This can be done in the menu section by setting the CD upsampling page to PCM.

Hope this helps

David J M Steven"
So they're going to charge extra for upsampling? Isn't the Puccini 20K already? That's just so wrong.