Thread: Your experience using reclocking etc. with Aurender?

A friend let me try a master clock, a nice unit from Ideon. It takes the USB from my ACS10 reclocks then output to DAC. I have only USB output.

When researching another device the manufacturer actually told me that Aurender had a good USB output signal. I mean he could have opted to sell me something but was straight with me. That made me feel good about my Aurender and faith in humanity, LOL

My friend had good luck with the Ideon and upgraded to an even better clock.

With the Ideon in my system I first thought it helped but I think I was just hearing the difference, and, there is a difference. With further listening and comparing I decided I did not like the effect.

With the clock I get a slightly larger sound stage and somewhat bolder sound. On the other hand the bass is bolde but loses some definition and I lose some of what I can only describe as musicality. With tracks like Dvorsak's Piano Trio the melody diminishes some with the clock, sterilizes it some. Same with most tracks but you can really hear the difference on music with a good sense of melody or emotion.

Any experiences with adding clocks or other digital enhancements to any Aurender? I'm not looking to add anything I just wonder how others have done in this area.

If your USB is asynchronous isochronous (99% are today) then the clock in the server and any other upstream components doesn’t really change the DAC’s jitter performance. The DAC is in full control of the timing using its internal clock.

This is when people will chime in saying that adding clocks to their streamer with a USB interface to the DAC dramatically improved the soundstage height, depth, air, and instrument timbre. So there’s that.

If you are using AES/EBU or S/PDIF then the clock in the streamer really does matter as it controls the data timing to the DAC.