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Comment by newqer | Hacker News Reader

Boy this brings back memories. When I was at school this was my bible. I graduated my embedded systems programming study, with my field of study being DSP. Soon after I started my changed careers pretty fast, but I still look back on DSP with much love. I'm still fun at parties, though. E.g. when somebody criticizes the CD, being worse than analogue LP's. Also when people invest top dollar in speaker cables, while the single most area to invest is being overlooked. Fixing the DA clock-source results is far better music quality, then any speaker cable will ever can.

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>Fixing the DA clock-source results is far better music quality, then any speaker cable will ever can.

I read this as a having a decent quality DAC inline between the source and listening device will do more than expensive speaker wire?

Yes, I think that's what is being said. A lot of the usb hifi dacs have their own clock for this exact reason

>Fixing the DA clock-source

What do you mean? Are you claiming to be able to hear 50 ppm clock inaccuracy?

The parent didn't claim 50ppm clock inaccuracy but I think their claim is very credible.

For example, the uC I am working on right now has built-in DACs which are good enough for audio and a 5% accurate internal clock (uncalibrated). If a vendor cheaped out and didn't use a proper external oscillator and/or didn't calibrate the clock (which is presumably the code the parent wrote) then the frequency would be basically one half step off on an equal tempered scale which is definitely audible for most people.

http://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/NoteFreqCalcs.html

You're correct! When sound is recorded, it will be transformed from analog to digital. This will be done with a very high quality clock source. At home when you play your music it's often on a DAC with a bad clock source. You can hear this easily because the timing of the samples is off. The reconstructed waveform is different because of the wonky timing (jitter). Replacing the clock source (soldering) within a cheap CD player with a high quality one, will make it sound a much better.

http://www.tentlabs.com/Components/cdupgrade/xo2xo3/index.ht...

Audiophoolery, this website also sells 200 euro volume knob, says it all.

Nonetheless I will elaborate, 100ps jitter you are being warned about in the description of this must have clock module will be detectable to any human with hearing reaching 10 GHz range.

I recommend https://xiph.org/video/

Except no one uses basic RC oscillators in Audio gear, and the cheapest bottom of the barrel crystal has already mentioned 50 ppm accuracy and excellent stability.

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