I agree Greg. When the first consumer dCS wordclock was released ( the Verona, sometime in the early part of this century) one was brought to me for a couple of days audition. Like diken 1957 I didn’t think it made a lot of difference and returned it. A couple of years went by and I had an opportunity to use one again. This time a metaphorical lightbulb illuminated above my head. So that’s what it does!
I think the reason that I didn’t get it first time around is that I was listening for the wrong thing in a typically audiophile manner; Is the bass better? Is there more detail? That’s not what the wordclocks do. It affects the overall presentation of the music ( not so much the sound per se) making it somehow more flexible, smoother, less trapped by the medium and closer to what we experience in live performance. I remember John Atkinson’s review of the Verona back then in Stereophile. He could measure the difference with it in circuit but found it difficult to find suitable words to describe the audible change. I will have to paraphrase his actual words but it was something like , the dCS stack sounds authoritative without the Verona. The Verona adds magnificence. Yep.