Except when power is off to the house, my clock is always on, usually with the display off, with Dither turned on.
Pete, Miguel, Greg or others. I just got a Rossini Clock and didnât want to start a new thread. As many of you have mentioned, itâs a good practice to leave the Clock on 7 x 24. If I go away for a few days, I usually disconnect my equipment from the wall as South Florida can have some nasty electrical storms.
2 questions.
- Approx how long does it take the Clock to get up a good operating temp?
- If I want to A/B the SQ with the external Rossini Clock vs. the built-in Rossini Clock, can I just change the Sync Mode setting from MASTER (internal clock) to AUTO WORDCLOCK (external clock)?
Thanks, Brian âŚ
Hi Brian,
From the Rossini Clock manual (page 13):
Clock Accuracy:
Better than +/-1ppm when shipped, typically +/-0.1ppm when shipped and
stabilised. The calibration is stable over a temperature range of +5°C to
+55°C.
Start-up time:
Typically 1 minute to rated accuracy.
So if you want to A/B with and without the Clock there is hardly a issue with a good operating temp. So you can just switch on/ off the Clock from its front panel Power button.
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Give the clock a day - why not? Would it really matter if it is 1hr or 1day? Probably not a lot but temp stability is very important here so give it a day. I never ever turn mine off.
Yes, switching sync mode will do what you think. Pressing the power button on the front panel will stop the clock signal but not the clock.
Thank Ermos and Miguel
Hi Miguel,
Temp stability for dCS clocks is not so very important, actually. Please read this:
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Understood. They can argue whatever they want, but as a physicist I can tell you temperature means vibration and stability in this sense is important. To what degree it is unclear, but since anyone using the clock should be leaving it on all the time, and since 1 day or so seems like a good time scale to let it stabilize, I will against all of the tech speak, recommend a day anyway.
Since we got Ermos and Miguelâs Clock juices flowing, Iâm going to ask another question thatâs likely has been asked many times before, but the responses are all over the map.
In your opinion, whatâs more important to achieve the full benefit of the Rossini Clock, the BNC cables or the power cable?
I currently have Audioquest Diamond BNC cables connected to the Clock and also have a set of Wireworld Starlight Gold 7 I plan to try. Iâm currently using a middle of the road power cable, likely not up to Shunyataâs level. Iâve only had a day with the Clock settling in and my early impressions are the highs may be slightly more open and clear sounding (less congested). The clave on the opening of âGracelandâ seems to have a longer decay, but the improvement is more subjective than obvious. As I said I want to be sure Iâm getting the max benefit of the Clock.
Iâve seen some in this forum recommend spending the most you can afford on the Rossiniâs Clock power cable. Iâve seen some state that Shunyataâs Omega Clock-75 BNC cables made a noticeable difference while others mention that an affordable set of Bluejeans or Geistnote Apogee Wyde Eye BNC cables may be all thatâs needed.
My experience with the Rossini DAC is it sounds noticeably better with Shunyataâs highest model Omega QR-s power cable. I didnât have to listen intently to hear the improvement, it was obvious. If it matters, I have a full loom of Shunyata cables including the Everest power distribution device.
Which leads me back to my earlier question - does the Rossini Clock benefits more from BNC or power cables? âBothâ is an acceptable answer but for cost purposes, which would you upgrade first?
Thanks,
Brian âŚ
All I can say is that the Rossini Clock benefits more from a good power cable than the Rossini DAC.
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For my part I observed a substantial improvement in sound quality when I installed the BNC 75ohm Nordost Valhalla II cables between the Rossini and the clock.
I donât know. Both?
Black Cat Mini Tron were a substantial upgrade over my previous Geisnote clock cables. Ben @all2ofme was extremely impressed when he came over for a demo. We had another friend over as well, a headphone amplifier designer, who scratched his head in disbelief at how much of a difference there was. Several on this forum are using Black Cat including Marco @anon30536008 who is using the full Tron version.
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@samre007 Rejean - Were you ever able to audition Valhalla 1 Clock cables to compare to Valhalla 2?
No, I never tried the Valhalla series 1, my old clock cables were the SOtM-BNC75.
For me, I was using Cardas Clear BNC between my Rossini Clock and Rossini Player, but was completely blown away by how much better things sounded when the Cardas were replaced by AudioQuest WEL Signature BNCs (sadly at a rather significant price bump, as is too often the case in audio.)
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I finally completed my audition of power cables and 75 ohm Clock cables on my Rossini Clock. During all auditions I was aware of what @miguelito, @PaleRider and others mentioned to not expect the Rossini Clock to improve any specific frequency response like you may expect with speaker or interconnect cables and instead listen to the overall presentation of the music. This is sound advice as the Clock provides subtle SQ improvements such as improved air around the various instruments which is a big contribution to enjoying recorded music.
Power cables - I did notice a difference when auditioning different power cables but more expensive isnât necessarily better. I should state that Iâm a big Shunyata fan and opted for their Alpha v2 NR cable over their top end Omega QR-s power cable.
Deciding on the 75 ohm clock cables wasnât as clear cut as I didnât notice any difference between the 75 ohm BNC clock cables I auditioned. These clock cables included Shunyata Omega and Alpha vs, Audioquest Diamond, Cardas Lightning and a $60 set of Van Damme cables. I spent extensive time with each of these clock cable sets and never felt I could tell the difference if subjected to a blindfold challenge.
Many of you have stated that the power cable is more important with a Clock than the BNC cables which I concur with. Has anyone else experienced similar results that the Clock cables are not on the critical path?
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As always, a lot depends upon you, the listener, your system and your relationship to the music.
You describe the difference between using a clock and not as âsubtleâ where I didnât even find the Rossini worthy of purchase without the Rossini Clock.
Without the clock the Rossini sounds OK but it requires the clock to give you the sense of space I feel is vital - to hear the micro-reverberations that tell you if an instrument was recorded in an acoustically dead studio, a concert hall, or in a studio with reverb added to give it the sound of a concert hall.
Likewise the sound of clock cables. If youâre not sensitive to the differences, thatâs great, you can go with the most inexpensive functional cable you can find.
When I was auditioning cables to move up from the Cardas Clear I had been using, the difference between them and AudioQuest Wild cables was minimal enough to not be worth it.
But the AudioQuest Wel Signature? Oh boy.
There was just more âthereâ there. A more defined sense of where the performer was, or the space in which they were recorded.
This means nothing on a pop recording but everything on say one of the Sinatra albums where he is recording live in a studio with the orchestra behind him, or in an orchestra recording where you can sense the size of the concert hall. To me it made the difference between being able to pick out the violin is being over there and being able to pick out it was âtwo chairs inâ from the front.
Now, is this important to you, even if it is easily resolvable in your system? Thatâs a judgment call, and certainly in some systems a power cord will make more of an audible difference, especially based upon what you are using now. If youâre running a stock cord, it may be a huge difference, if you already have a good cable it again may be minor to minuscule.
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Some years ago, and Iâve described this experience elsewhere, I compared Transparent Reference and Chord Sarum clock cables. This was when I had a Puccini + Paganini clock. And the result? I couldnât tell the difference even though the Chord cable isnât even 75 Ohms (as I learned later). These days, with a better system, I have cables made by Laird which use Belden 4794R (solid core, silver plated, triple shield).
I like to think the Belden-based cable is âbetterâ than what dCS ship with their equipment, although I havenât attempted to compare the two and I wouldnât be greatly surprised if there is no difference. The Belden is about $30 per metre. I bought from that well known New York high end dealer B&H Photo Video.
I have enough curiosity to want to try other cables if they come my way - such as the Audioquest mentioned above - but I am otherwise content.
I believe Greg (@PaleRider) has recently been doing some very careful comparisons of clock cables.
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The one thing about power cables that I have found out to be key is that the entire set of cables acts as a noise sink. The entire chain - the power strip/conditioner youâre plugged into, the impact of other cables, etc, are key.
You can actually measure this with an Entech noise meter: measure the noise out of a plug, then plug the Shunyata NR to another output, and you will see a reduction in noise. The cable acts as a noise sink.
My point is that comparing power cables is tricky.
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