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drrd

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  1. I used to own an AES16 and Lynx 2 but sold them both in the end. At the money I just wasn't happy with the SQ of their digital outputs. I needed something to feed the pace-car and I picked up a Lynx One on ebay for like £4. I think the digital out on it sounds at least as good as the other Lynx cards.<br /> <br /> Set up is easy, you're just sync'ing the card to an external clock instead of using the on-board clock. It's a drop down box and click affair in the Lynx software, nothing more. Never had any stability issues with Lynx, the settings stick and are there when you launch windows, so yes it's set and forget. <br /> <br /> I guess there is potential for higher rates to have less buffer time but you'd hope Steve would have tested that out. I'm also running at 44.1 so couldn't comment.<br /> <br /> I'm interested in trying out a Weiss AFI1. I think that and the pace-car will sound better than the Lynx-pace-car combination. The Lynx-pace-car combo sounds better than the other option I tried which was with my m-audio firewire box sync'd via spdif and feeding the pace-car. For that i just used an ADC that I have to sync to WC and then output sync'd spdif, the m-audio box sync's to that. It's possible the Weiss unit may sound better on it's own than with the pace-car, you never know.<br /> Steve does say that source quality makes no difference to the pace-car but I would have to disagree there. It improves things a lot though.
  2. I'm using a lynx card and pace-car. The pace-car definitely improves the sound quality, quite a lot actually.<br /> <br /> I wonder whether the re-clocker badge is a slight misnomer. It buffers the data stream and it has a high quality internal clock for the output. The input to the buffer has to run at the same rate as the output otherwise you get breaks in the stream with an under or over run. So the pace-car has a word clock output and the digital source is sync'd to this. Now i'd say that just sync'ing the lynx card to an external clock is 're-clocking' it. The forums are full of talk about the effects of an external clock on a digital source. There's a difference but on it's own it's not that major a difference to my ears. When you then run the digital stream into the pace-car though it's being temporarily held and then output again after being buffered. It's trying to do in real time what happens when you record music to your hard drive and store it as a file - treat it as just data and strip the timing (jitter) element from it before sending it out again. You only have the data and the way it's clocked as variables which can affect sound quality with digital streams and the pace-car doesnt alter the bits.<br /> <br /> Actually the clock rate at the input and the output sides of the pace-car's fifo buffer are exactly the same which is why i think the reclocker name is maybe not quite right. The pace-car has to fix the source clock rate so as not to under or over run the buffer but i think it's a buffer foremost. That's what's doing the jitter reduction and that seems to be where Steve has put most of his effort in optimising the circuit design, power supplies etc.<br /> <br /> As with everything you probably have to try it and see. I would be surprised if you didnt hear a noticeable improvement in SQ.
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