Old 10-17-2019, 01:23 AM   #1
cremationritual
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Default Anyone using Apogee Big Ben???

Hey guys, Question. I have a MOTU 828es. I love it. Never have issues with it really. Im also using a Ferrofish pulse 16 for my analog hardware I/O conversion. Im using the Ferrofish as my main clock (slaving the motu off that).
Of course Im always looking into stuff to make my rig sound better and there are a TON of Apogee big bens going for $400-500 used online. I know they are a good clock because I see them in a lot of commercial studios. My question is, with the gear I have do you guys think it would be worth it to clock off the Apogee?
I hear they make your converters run more efficiently thus making your rig sound better (more headroom, better highs and lows etc etc)

wudda you guys think?
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Old 10-17-2019, 04:42 AM   #2
HIO
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cremationritual View Post
Hey guys, Question. I have a MOTU 828es. I love it. Never have issues with it really. Im also using a Ferrofish pulse 16 for my analog hardware I/O conversion. Im using the Ferrofish as my main clock (slaving the motu off that).
Of course Im always looking into stuff to make my rig sound better and there are a TON of Apogee big bens going for $400-500 used online. I know they are a good clock because I see them in a lot of commercial studios. My question is, with the gear I have do you guys think it would be worth it to clock off the Apogee?
I hear they make your converters run more efficiently thus making your rig sound better (more headroom, better highs and lows etc etc)

wudda you guys think?
Personally I don't think the Apogee Big Ben is going to be the holy grail of conversion improvement.

Apogee and depending on who you talk to there will say something along the lines that our clock (Big Ben) places the jitter in the sound spectrum where it's most pleasing to the ear than other clocks. Other clocks just place the jitter randomly with no attention to sound enhancement.

I believe when Big Ben was released it did everything you would want it to do as far as clocks are concerned and much hasn't changed since.

With all that said I use Big Ben daily and I love it and my clocking needs are more than efficient.

Sorry I cannot be more specific and I hope this helps in some way.
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Old 10-17-2019, 05:52 AM   #3
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I can't answer from experience, but just last night I was watching Eric Valentine's latest YouTube Q&A and someone asked a similar question about master clocks.

He said he had A/B'd clocks and couldn't tell the difference, so he doesn't care about them and advised that they should save their money.
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Old 10-17-2019, 10:30 AM   #4
cremationritual
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Originally Posted by Judders View Post
I can't answer from experience, but just last night I was watching Eric Valentine's latest YouTube Q&A and someone asked a similar question about master clocks.

He said he had A/B'd clocks and couldn't tell the difference, so he doesn't care about them and advised that they should save their money.
Ok good to know./ Guess Ill keep clocking off the Ferro
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Old 10-17-2019, 10:45 AM   #5
serr
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cremationritual View Post
Hey guys, Question. I have a MOTU 828es. I love it. Never have issues with it really. Im also using a Ferrofish pulse 16 for my analog hardware I/O conversion. Im using the Ferrofish as my main clock (slaving the motu off that).
Of course Im always looking into stuff to make my rig sound better and there are a TON of Apogee big bens going for $400-500 used online. I know they are a good clock because I see them in a lot of commercial studios. My question is, with the gear I have do you guys think it would be worth it to clock off the Apogee?
I hear they make your converters run more efficiently thus making your rig sound better (more headroom, better highs and lows etc etc)

wudda you guys think?
The introduction of that at the time newer clock technology was a big deal back then. "Stock" clocks in some digital devices could be jittery enough to degrade fidelity. This was noticeable.

I have the generation of Apogee interfaces that immediately followed and used the same clock circuits. (AD-16 and a Special Edition version of the PSX-100)
I also have a couple MOTU 828mk3 interfaces.

I remember a MOTU MIDI Timepiece clock being an upgrade to the internal ADAT clocks. Clearly noticeable. Then I upgraded to an Aardvark clock. Noticeable again. Then the Apogee Big Ben came along (included in their interfaces as well). The Apogee overall was an upgrade of course! Not sure how much changed between the Aardvark and the Big Ben clocks though. I tried A/B'ing with the Apogee internal vs Aardvark and I couldn't hear anything telling. After this point, clocks were in the pocket and no longer devices for concern.

The analog stages in your AD and DA converters are the bigger player. The Apogees don't sound better than the MOTUs because of the clock. It's because of the analog circuits in the front end of the AD stages and the back end of the DA stages.

Note that some of the concern with clocks is the added ability to stay in sync with noisy or jittery incoming word clock and perform under pressure in broadcast situations.
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Old 10-17-2019, 07:50 PM   #6
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Quote:
I hear they make your converters run more efficiently thus making your rig sound better (more headroom, better highs and lows etc etc)
I don't believe ANY of that! Assuming you don't have any dropouts/glitches etc., any "audio problems" are on the ANALOG side!!!


Somebody on the HydrogenAudio forum did some jitter experiments and in order to hear anything they had to make the jitter way-way worse than any actual soundcard. From what I've read if jitter is bad enough to hear, it's heard as noise. Of course, I've never heard it...


Most "cheap soundcards" have jitter in the parts-per million which is orders-of-magnitude better than the time variations you get from an analog tape recorder (wow and flutter). And although it's measurable, I never actually heard wow or flutter from a tape machine or turntable unless it was broken.


So, the main advantages of a master clock are to lock (synchronize) multiple devices together down to the exact sample and/or to minimize time-drift/errors between different recordings/takes.
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Old 10-17-2019, 08:09 PM   #7
pipelineaudio
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For fear of getting me banned, I will bite my tongue at thee clocks
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