Follow up from the earlier Post!

In the earlier post I went into a lot of detail on this topic, so you might want to refer this post as well. In this second part I wanted to compare the new Accusilicon 338. I now finally received these with the Chinese parcel service but still needed some patience… I wanted to put the participating clocks three/four days under power before doing a listening test.

Test solution

Listening to other DIY the performance is only at max when the clocks are under constant power for a few days at least. So I needed to have a kind of clock supply for 4 clocks. Easy to make for a DIY of course. As I went on, I realized I could add a Bluetooth 4-way switch (I had lying around in my Arduino box …) and make A-B-C-D coparing selector… solder iron hot and there we go:

With the Bluetooth relay, I could switch between: standard XO, Tent XO, Accusilicon 338 (the new ones) and the Andrea clock. I listened to some top recordings on 44.1 tracks (ripped Stereo play CDs) – One extra socket just to keep that clock warm….

The test setup

DDDAC1794 PBT – one deck and Audio Creative OPTs
Standard DDDAC power supply
Clocks are supplied by Ian linear PI and UC conditioner 3,3Volt (So not from the fifopi itself)
Andrea clock still supplied with a standard LM317 supply (next step to see what that does)
Streamer PI3 with RoPieee

Listening …

As described above here is an overview of the test setup. The Relay selector A-B-C-D is controlled by an iPhone app…

My observations:

The standard FiFoPi XO is indeed more like to check if everything works. Sound quality is comparable with S/PDIF input on my DDDAC1794 mainboard or a very good CD player (nothing wrong with this, but to set a base level)

The Tent clock, as described earlier in the first post, puts a clear frame in spatial sound stage and adds detail and texture to voices and instruments.

Accusilicon 338 actually is actually very good! this will add all of the above another step forward and plays more dynamic. Somewhat more “live” experience

Finally switching to the Andrea clock is really a joy. The definition of voices instruments and Bass is excellent. This gives an impression of more natural sound and the bass is more defined and punchy.

For what it is worth, on a scale from 1-10, I would rate like 1-4-8-10 But that is extremely subjective 😉

Conclusion and next steps

In terms of practicality, the Accusilicon 338 is extremely easy to use, just drop the DIL14 in the FiFoPi socket and you can play 44.1 – 382 kHz tracks….

With the Andrea clock, I had the “BEST” clock (44.1) and hence could not try high resolution tracks. For that I need two doublers (and another setup again for the 48 family) I also will need to totally re-build my DAC? Or add two SMA inputs at the back leading to the squared board on the FiFoPi?

Well it is a hobby, so probably this will happen sometime in the future, but hell, why not an Andrea clock in a DIL14 ?? 😉

As next steps I will compare the Accusilicon 318 against the 338 (need to open up my DAC and get them out into the “clock warm holder” – after that I will start comparing power supplies for the Andrea Clock Oscillator (Not the squarer board, that was already on ultra low noise in this test)

Look out for part 3 and part 4 !