TSS Two Chassis Super DAC

Elk you are a hoot…But judging all Harley riders as land pirates is not very nice…Some of the nicest people and professionals I know own Harley’s and surly give of their time and energy to a lot of local needs and charitys in and around my area,not to mention rest of the country also. :sunglasses:

Surly? Now you’re talking bikes!

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I have the Femto 33 clock installed in mine! :wink:

Which for the benefit of others who might not know, it’s this…

(the cost of his clock module alone is worth about what the twin box TSS wonder DAC is guessed to be priced at)

oh yeah…you updated your post whilst I was doing mine.

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I had to look up what a femto was…

femto = one quadrillionth i.e. 1/1,000,000,000,000,000

So the clock in his MSB DAC is spec’d at 0.000000000000033 seconds of jitter.

I think TS mentioned elsewhere the jitter spec in his clocks.

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This Harley rider isn’t too bad.
Harley police rider

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We’re femtoBillionaires ; )

How do you measure such a thing?

Very carefully?

Here’s a guy doing it at TI:
https://training.ti.com/engineer-it-how-measure-additive-jitter-fanout-buffers?cu=884184

Here’s the current version of his measuring device:
https://www.keysight.com/en/pd-1081579-pn-E5052B/ssa-signal-source-analyzer-10-mhz-to-7-ghz-265-ghz-or-110-ghz?cc=US&lc=eng

Note the price: $99,308

I’d like to get a more modest version for my purposes, but I’d have to sell a lot of DACs to pay for it:
https://www.picotech.com/oscilloscope/9300/picoscope-9300-software

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What about a beer or two with him…maybe he needs a good DAC and has some regular spare capacity at his device :wink: Wouldn’t be the first hightech used with good connections for high end purposes, of sometimes a grade just institutions not companies can afford.

The important part here is, as Ted has said many times, short term stability and jitter reduction rather than long term. In other words, these crazy super accurate femto clocks are nice for the Bureau of Standards but fairly meaningless when it comes to audio.
Long term stability, which is their main point of appeal, cannot be heard. Short term accuracy and low jitter are what we can hear and for this, these expensive clocks can often times be only as good (and sometimes worse) than other solution without so much
fanfare and expense.

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MSB, dCS, Esoteric owners etc would disagree with you on that aspect…it’s widely accepted (by owners and reviewers alike) that externally clocking, or upgrading an internal clock module, sounds better on those products. People don’t spend $30K on a master clock generator if there is no audio benefit in doing so.

If you’ve read Ted’s explanations about this, you’ll know what he’s saying. No need to built a clock that only loses a second in a million years for audio playback timeframes, if you can do it in a much cheaper and potentially better way for audio. The long term accuracy of the femto clock does not automatically guarantee it is the best way. Not saying it does not improve the sound of the given DAC it’s built for, though of course some would question why a $40k or $100k DAC needs help clocking.

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People disagree with me on all sorts of things. :slight_smile: That’s ok.

I know people get invested in their tweaks, some of which make sense, others don’t or for the wrong reason. I was just pointing out that technically speaking a long term accuracy clock as those you’re describing offer zero benefits from a technical
standpoint. Perhaps there’s some isolation benefits. But just not those. The fact that the timing of the clock is the same now as it will be in 100 years is not relevant to the human ear.

Paul,I will let you know in a 100 years if this is true or not…:exploding_head:

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Paul (and Ted),

Both of you are correct.

And that’s EXACTLY what MSB is addressing with their Femto clocks - ie. Uber-consistent metronome-like heartbeat of the master clock whose unflappably unwavering and accurate pulses becomes the synchronous conductor of the entire digital system.

External clocks are problematic because of the inherent jitter present in the cables and connectors. Odd frequencies generated by rubidium clocks like 10.0MHz and 22.5792MHz are for satellites, not audio.

MSB’s clock resides next to the DAC modules - right where it’s most effective. And it generates frequencies which are relevant for audio: 44.1kHz, 48.0kHz (and multiples).

Tho your post is mostly accurate, a minor nit: 22.5792MHz is 512 * 44.1k and in fact is the best one for doing 174.8kHz being twice as fast as the stereo AES3 S/PDIF bit rate for 174.8kHz - the corresponding 48k/192k clock rate is 24.576MHz which can also be seen quite often in DACs. You are absolutely correct that 10MHz is not great for audio since it has to be converted to a multiple of 44.1k and that conversion will add jitter.

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looks like from the control console

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