Reference Clock for Vivaldi Master Clock

[PaleRider (Greg)]

@Gibraltar

After market clock vendors on the other hand will focus only on the clock and will be able to allocate more cost to the clock itself. That being said, the peformance criteria they focus on may not be the ones that a particular device needs, so there’s still no clear right answer.

I would agree that it is possible third party or aftermarket vendors could allocate resources in such a way as to refine or improve an offering. Seems to me certain power supplies are a good example. But where the device is already in the wheelhouse of the OEM company, I think the odds of that aftermarket company being better at it than the OEM go down. I am not saying it is impossible; I just see it as unlikely absent some specific evidence that they have the resources or expertise. I could start assembling reference clocks at my home and devote 100% of my time and money toward that effort, and I still couldn’t match in 100 years what dCS do in a month. Without competitive resources, the focus is not enough.

@Gibraltar

James’ explanation of why the Vivaldi clock doesn’t care so much about short term stability makes sense. But logically speaking I also can’t underand how long term stability is relevant to sound quality. Long term stabiliy is talking about consitent performance over years. An audio track is measured in minutes, and jitter in even smaller intervals than that. Any of these clocks will be incredibly stable over these short periods of time.

I found James’ explanations here instructive. I don’t think the argument is that long term stability itself directly contributes to SQ (which is part of Paul McGowan’s red herring claim that rubidium clocks are a “myth”). I read this as implicitly stating that the addition of the long term accuracy helps to make the Vivaldi Master Clock better at what it does. But I’m no engineer, so I have to accept it as stated, or look for more dis/proof.