I’ve been trying out using an Antelope Liveclock with my Bartok. Only one at the moment and set to 48K on input one. I have the Bartok set to ‘Auto’ on the clock settings and, when playing anything at 48K, or a multiple thereof, it’s correctly shows the W1 symbol which tells me it’s using the clock.
All’s been fine for a few weeks except for this morning. I powered on and now, with the clock connected it keeps on resetting! It boots up fine and shows W1 0/48 on the display. However after 10 seconds or so the screen refreshes and shows ‘No Input’. There’s a clatter of relays and then the W1 0/48 comes back. It keeps on doing this. I tried getting in quick and selecting a 44K album and it started playing it, now showing M 16/44.1 (as expected) but after a few seconds it did the reset thing again. The only way to stablise it is to completely disconnect the clock input cable from the back - just switching off the clock wasn’t enough; I had to completely disconnect the cable.
So are we thinking Bartok fault or clock fault? I can probably take the clock to work and connect up a scope but, with all this cov19 stuff it probably won’t be until late in the week.
Steve, since you only have a single clock input, you should set the Bartok to that explicit clock input port rather than “Auto” (which is designed to automatically range between the two clock inputs).
So, since you’re using Clock port 1, set your Bartok’s Sync Mode to WORDCLOCK1
So I thought I’d try the clock on input 2. So all off (after running for several albums fine with no clock connected and set to Master mode) and connect the liveclock to input 2. Powered it all up. Waited a couple of mins. - all fine. Played a few tracks - fine. All off. Moved clock back to number 1. Powered up. All fine!! So this BEFORE @Anupc suggestion.
Anyway now set with only WORLDCLOCK1 set… have to see what happens. Damn I hate these sorts of faults
Update… after 4 days of faultless operation I think we can put this one to bed now. No idea why things went daft at the start. If I’d have had a 'scope handy then I could have quickly resolved where the fault lay but ‘there you go’. My gut feeling is the clock had a power on paddy. Maybe I should leave the clock on all the time rather than switch it on/off along with the Bartok?
tbh I prefer to leave the Bartok properly off. The reason is our overhead village mains can sometimes be a bit twitchy… I’m talking short frequency on/off things. The last time this happened it almost killed the controller for our heating! God knows how the Bartok would have coped with that. However the clock is a lot cheaper than the Bartok so I could perhaps risk that on all the time. I spoke with dcs re. better to leave on or off and their reply was off was fine since the unit didn’t take long to warm up anyway. Unlike NAIM products where the strong advice is on all the time and I used to get VERY twitchy if the mains bounced!
Steve could have his power supply monitored by UK Power Networks ( for some reason I am assuming that Steve is in Blighty. If not there may be a local equivalent) as I believe that fluctuations of the scale he mentions are not supposed to occur. I actually had my supply monitored for a week when I thought there was a problem. A small recorder was installed at my hovel. I was right. There it was, the 240v had dropped to 235v for an entire 5 seconds at 2:00 am one night. Disgusting
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