Is there any benefit in using the USB input/SPDIF output of a Puccini clock to feed a USB source converted by the clock to SPDIF to a set of Meridian DSP speakers, or is the clock only beneficial if the “final” DAC is synchronised to it ?
The Puccini clock cannot feed a USB signal to the Meridian DSP speaker. It converts USB from e.g. a computer, to S/Pdif. This is important as this is therefore not asynchronous and it will also not be possible to synchronise source and the DAC in the DSP speaker as AFAIK the Meridian has no wordclock input to utilise the wordclock output of the Puccini.
If using the Puccini clock/DAC combination, It is feasible ( though not known) that the crystal reference in the clock is better than the one in the Puccini DAC. However they could be the same . Of course it is possible that you may prefer one or the other subjectively but without detailed knowledge of the clocks it is difficult to judge if this may not just be phycological. Nevertheless if you like it, enjoy.
Sorry bit confused here - isn’t the point that with most USB to SPDIF converters, the clocking is adaptive and therefore much more jitter prone. I am of course aware that the DSP speakers have no clock input.
My question is would there be any audible benefit in sending an asynchonously clocked SPDIF to the speakers rather than the adaptively clocked signal sent by the average £50 USB-C/SPDIF coax adaptor ?
It would be pointless to feed the signal from any DAC to Meridian speakers as all that happens is more analog to digital to analog conversion steps
Yes, I agree with this. I therefore cannot see the advantage using the analogue output of a 20K+ Vivaldi to a DSP speaker which converts it back to digital, applies DSP, then uses a reasonably cheap DAC chip to turn it back to analogue. Some appear to do this.
I am unsure what asynchronously clocked SPdif is. Grateful if you could expand.
Sorry I should have used the phrase “SPDIF generated from an asynchronous USB conversion process”.
Hi Guys,
If you are going to go USB to S/PDIF for any purpose then using a Puccini U-Clock is probably going to be one of your very best options for doing so - its S/PDIF output will be clocked to the Puccini’s clock and so will be inherently very low jitter which is a problem with “lesser” USB to S/PDIF interfaces - so if you have a need to take a USB audio output and convert it to S/PDIF and you have access to a Puccini U-Clock then the U-Clock is most definitely a damn fine way to do it and the resultant S/PDIF feed will be right up there with the best for timing accuracy.
I hope that helps.
Phil
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Thanks Phil, that is indeed exactly what I wanted to know.