You asked:
Yes, I'll need to pick up a cheapo omni mic at least to carry out the tests. Maybe I can borrow it from a friend though. I was recommended some software a time ago, but any additions are welcome.
XYZ wrote:
Finally, even if JBLs clocks are fairly good, they are non-upgradable, and your Black Lion clock won't matter since you will be listening to the JBL clock.
But does that matter even if the monitor is slaved to my microclock via S/PDIF? I'm pretty much a novice so sorry if that's a silly question
Not a silly question, and the answer is yes it still matters, and just to make this more complicated, somewhat. In theory, there will be some benefit. In practice, you are now at the mercy of the clock recovery capability in the JBLs. A little on ADAT synch. ADAT optical, as you probably know, is just a serial stream of digital audio. So your 24-bit samples are serialized, clocked out to the speakers, where the speakers stand back the stream of ones and zeros back to a series of 26-bit samples, which are then converted to analog audio. So, with only a single light pipe, how do you get the ADAT to send both the serial stream of data AND the clock? How this is done is to send the single stream of ones and zeros at a multiple of the sender's clock. Now, the receiver just has to "recover" this clock by sending the data to bot the D/A converter, and to a phase-locked loop. Now if the data was a perfect 101010101010101010101010..., clock recovery would be easy, you would have nice leading edges and a square wave. But that would be pretty boring sounding music. So the clock recovery with ADAT has to "infer" where the specific locations are when real data is sent. For example, if it were 1100101001011110000001010, you can still send this data to the clock recovery circuit, but you can see, when there are a bunch of zeros in a row, the receive clock circuit is not getting any information, so there is an opportunity for this PLL to drift a bit. When that 1 hits after all the zeros, it gets yanked back to being in synch, but it is not anywhere near as clean and clear as a nice perfect zero jitter square wave. Not sure if that conveyed why ADAT synch is not quite as jitter free as sending the data separate from a real, well terminated word clock.
The bottom like with all this is, if you ever want to enjoy the smoothness, clarity, imaging, and depth of really good DACs with a pristine clock, you won't get there with the JBLs. You can go ahead and bjy 100 or 500 or $1k per channel DACs, but you will be listening to the $5 DACs of the JBLs.
Again, I think JBL is a terrific speaker company, but for me, I'd avoid ones that have this room correction, unless you are sure you will never be upgrading your DACs
Oh, and if you want a cheap, flat, omni measurement mic, try out the Behringer ECM-8000. It will work great for you, and can be had for 20 bucks used. This is really a fantastically underrated mic.
Consider the source with all this [i.e. me]! I spent nearly HALF my ADC DAC budget just on the clock. Maybe you get the DRC speakers, and sell them later.
Finally, a really good clock, to me, is not so much about "better" sound, it is like "more" sound. You hear things that you had never heard. You hear phasing problems you didn't know existed, you hear harmony parts that seemed mushy before. Metaphorically, It is like reading text on a projector screen that is slightly out of focus. You can read just fine, but when someone takes that focus knob and dials it in, the crispness and clarity improve. Not the best metaphor; thought I'd give it a try.
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