Wyred4Sound - Do clocks age?

FWIW: I had a re-clocker - which required another digital cable and another power cord. Of course, each cable affected the sound. After much experimenting, I simply went back to one clock with the best of the cables. Sounds much better.

Do the clocks degrade with time? I have wondered about this as well, but I think the electrolytic caps will give up long before the clocks do.

Do the clocks degrade with time? I have wondered about this as well ...

I have no particular knowledge regarding that question, but it wouldn't surprise me if such concerns arose as a result of flawed extrapolations from the fact that over time digital watches and clocks gain or lose time.  "Flawed" for two reasons:

1)That would occur to some degree even if nothing at all in the watch or clock changes over time, just as a consequence of its initial inaccuracy.

2)If the master oscillator in such a device were to gain or lose the equivalent of say a minute per year, due to some combination of initial inaccuracy and changes in accuracy that may occur over time, that would amount over a period of 10 years to an error of less than 0.002%.  In a digital audio device that would result in a corresponding change in pitch, which would seem unlikely to be perceivable even to those having perfect pitch.  0.002% would mean, for example, that a tone of 1000 Hz would be reproduced as 1000.02 Hz.

What might matter is significant degradation over time in the jitter performance of the device, but FWIW I am not aware of any credible evidence that would raise concern about that possibility.

Regards,
-- Al
  

So have any of you received your Remedy reclockers yet, and have you had a chance to listen? I began writing about my experience with it (it's doing some very nice things in my system) but haven't posted it yet because it has turned into a full-blown review and I'm still editing it. I hope to have it ready soon.

Mine should arrive tomorrow.  I probably should get my ARC DAC 8 out and start warming it up.

My test bed will be using a Logitech Squeezebox Touch to the ARC.  Based on Hi Fi, the ARC is quite sensiutive to jitter except in the USB portion. We'll see if I hear anything.

I really regret ordering it, right now the Mytek DAC's are on sale and I should have ordered one instead. :)  Well, I'm sure I'll have it on Audiogon soon. :)

Best,


Erik