Antelope AudioIsochrome 10MusedAntelope Audio Isochrome 10M Rubidium Atomic ClockAntelope Audio Isochrome 10M Atomic Clock, Antelope Audio OCX: Early version but a ABSOLUTE REFERENCE Rubidium Atomic Clock: This is best used with the Antelope Audio Isochrome Trinity also lis...1687.50

Antelope Audio Isochrome 10M Rubidium Atomic Clock

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Ships fromLos Angeles, CA, 90077
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Antelope Audio Isochrome 10M Atomic Clock, Antelope Audio OCX:

Early version but a ABSOLUTE REFERENCE Rubidium Atomic Clock: This is best used with the Antelope Audio Isochrome Trinity also listed separately but available together for the low price of $2,995.

Also available separately on Audiogon the Antelope Audio Zodiac DAC & Volikus.


Can be used as a word Clock, creatively as a Audiophile wanting the best sound or as a recording mastering device.

Jeff Ehrenberg Does Not Have The Jitt  youtube link @

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNJpzaGdTjw


Antelope Audio:
Isochrone OCX & 10M clock generators




Reviewed by Jessica Thompson





































In a digital system, the word-clock signal is used to generate a
common time reference amongst all system components. It not only
regulates data flow so that everything works together synchronously, but
more importantly, it controls the spacing between sample words during
analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion. Utmost consistency
in that spacing is crucial for transparent conversion. Inconsistent
spacing (and/or a misshaped clock signal)-commonly called jitter-results
in distortion to the audio signal. All standard digital audio
transmission formats have an embedded clock signal so that downstream
devices remain synchronized to upstream devices. Optionally, a master
word-clock signal (generated from an external device or from one of the
in-stream devices) can be used to synchronize any devices with a
dedicated word-clock input.
The topic of digital clocking is popular right now-on gearslutz.com,
here in Tape Op (see issue #67's letters section), and generally among
recordists. Why so hotly debated? Because changing the clock source can
have a highly significant impact on sound, yet there is no solid
consensus as to what clocking scheme is best. Regardless of the hard
science behind the design and performance of word-clock generators, the
aesthetic impact of different clocking devices remains both subjective
and context-dependent, as with any piece of gear in our racks. So as
reviewers, we have chosen to sidestep the technological debates as much
as possible and move forward with two simple findings: different clocks
make the same recordings on the same system sound different; and in some
cases, that difference is big enough to convince one to buy one clock
over another.
The heart of the Isochrone OCX ($1500 street) is a
temperature-controlled oven housing a discrete, transistor crystal
oscillator. According to Antelope, this translates to higher stability
and four to ten times lower jitter in the clock signal compared to the
competition. The OCX supports sample-rates from 32 to 192 kHz, and-this
is a bonus-it is capable of outputting multiple sample-rates
simultaneously (though we didn't use this feature). Take a look at its
back panel, and you'll find eight BNC word clock outputs; two AES/EBU
and two S/PDIF outputs; and a 256x Superclock (Digidesign) output. This
sleek, 1RU-height silver box could easily be the classiest looking piece
of gear in your rack. One design element we particularly liked is the
prominent, red LED readout of the sample-rate. It is front-and-center
enough to remind you of the sample-rate, which we suspect will prevent
the occasional clocking mishap. (Allen confesses to having mixed a song
tracked at 48 kHz at the slower and lower-pitched 44.1 kHz for about
twenty minutes before catching on.)
The Isochrone 10M Rubidium Atomic Clock, the OCX's sleeker, more
expensive 2RU-height companion ($6000 street), is designed to enhance
the OCX with atomic clocking technology. When interfaced with the 10M,
the OCX switches from its crystal oscillator to the 10M's Rubidium core.
Basically, the rubidium element disciplines the crystal to its
hyperfine oscillation (over 6.8 billion Hz), which produces 100,000
times better accuracy than your Swiss-made quartz-driven watch. We're
talking a deviation of one second in 1000 years. This is the same
technology used for satellites-about as true rocket-science as you can
get. (Just in case you're worried, the manual assures us it's not
actually radioactive.) as if they instinctively found space in front of
and behind each other based on how wet or dry they were. Apparent
loudness went up a notch, without changing the volume of anything
(perhaps a psychoacoustic phenomenon-we're not sure), and there was
noticeable low-end extension. Beyond the details, the whole of the parts
was a total pleasure to listen to and evoked a far more vivid image of
all aspects of whatever mix we put up. The10M just made the music far
more engaging and emotional (and only made the current MP3 paradigm seem
more criminal).
In fact, with everything we put up, the 10M was a mind-blower, but on
one track, we actually found ourselves more interested in the lyrics.
Fascinating. A stripped-down, crawling version of Neil Young's "Harvest
Moon" by the nomadic singer Jess Lee with Allen backing on a simple
organ part was rendered in such detail with the 10M that individual
harmonic overtones in Jess's voice (tracked with an SM58) almost seemed
like individual sonic elements. The organ (run through a vintage RCA
tube PA into a Sennheiser MD 421) fanned from one warm shade of orange
into a complex spectrum of warm, burnished tones; and previously subtle
oscillations became rhythmic pulses Allen hadn't heard so clearly since
tracking it. Somehow, these details drew both of us far more deeply into
the story Mr. Young weaves in his lyrics and into Jess's lonesome
interpretation. The recording took on a vitality and intimacy that was,
it seems, hiding somewhere in the digital code.
So, can a clock make a difference? Ha! Especially when you've got a
sensitive mixer/producer and a discriminating mastering engineer geeking
out on a really nice system in a well-treated room. But what about the
so-called real world? Is the OCX going to help a recording made with the
clock wheezing its weary way through the world's worst D-A converter
and a pair of 10-cent laptop speakers? We printed mixes from the four
different clocks to find out, and in a blind test, we were able to hear
differences on a laptop, for sure. However, the differences were
certainly diminished by the limitations of the playback system-if you
can even call a laptop a playback system. But we don't work our butts
off to make laptops bring people to tears; we do it so that no matter
where a recording ends up, it has the best chance of being rendered in
all its intended qualities. And as we look toward brighter days-when
MP3s have gone the way of the Edison Cylinder-there is no time like the
present to consider tools that will generate zeros and ones that will
outlive the current lo-fi trends and shine like diamonds in the
high-fidelity renaissance of the future.
Whether you're on a prosumer system and can use the OCX to bump up your
rig, or you're a world-class mastering engineer or mixer who can afford
the 10M, both of these clocks are capable of making a big enough
difference to warrant serious consideration of a purchase. In the case
of the discerning, high-level professional, it's apparent that the
margin for sonic improvement is often pretty narrow, yet we assure you
that trying the 10M is worth it. As we said, we'll leave the
technological arguments to those with the minds for it, but if you're
like us and want to do all you can to render human musical performances
with as much depth, dimension, detail, and love as possible, give the
Antelope clocks a listen, and hear for yourself what they can do for
your recordings.
Gear Reviews(continued on page 74)/Tape Op#68/73
In our test of the OCX and the 10M, we first utilized The Farm, Allen's
mixroom in Brooklyn. Here's the setup: Pro Tools HD interfaced directly
from the Core Card to a Lynx Aurora-8 converter, which is connected
digitally both to a Cranesong HEDD 192 for A-D-A conversion to a stereo
analog mix-bus insert and to a Dangerous Audio D-Box for monitoring. By
connecting the OCX to the word-clock input on the HEDD, we were able to
switch the system's master clock between the Lynx (PT HD sees it as the
internal clock), the HEDD (PT HD sees that as the external Word Clock),
the OCX (by telling the HEDD to use its external word-clock input) and
the OCX with the 10M attached. (The D-Box uses its digital input as its
clock source.) If you're still reading, what this all means is that we
could easily switch between four different clock sources and all the
digital gear would sync to whichever clock we selected.
We threw up a number of different mixes, and our first impression was,
"Hey, different clocks really sound different." Both the HEDD and the
OCX as the masters seemed to impart a similar amount of information and
fidelity to the playback, but the HEDD afforded a stronger center, while
the OCX offered a slightly-wider stereo field. One way to describe it
is that the HEDD presented a convex soundstage and the OCX a concave
soundstage-two rather different shapes holding about the same amount of
information. The HEDD also seemed to give a bit more midrange presence,
while the OCX resulted in a little more detailed highs. In less abstract
terms, the HEDD rocked out with a bit more sonic glue, and the OCX was a
little more elegant and spacious. The Lynx clock didn't reveal as much
detail, especially in the airy region, but also in the deeper lows (and
Allen always clocks his PT HD system externally to the HEDD for this
reason). On the whole, the OCX would be an excellent choice to anyone
looking to find an external clock to improve the sound of any digital
system with internal clocks that might be worth improving.
Where the OCX really showed its stripes was on a Digi 002 system,
belonging to Brooklyn-based engineer Matthew Agoglia. Matt's room is a
great example of a "real world" mixing and tracking room-Digi 002
running through a Hafler power amp into Yamaha NS-10Ms that were
awaiting new woofers. From within Pro Tools LE, we put up Emmylou
Harris's song "Deeper Well" off of the Daniel Lanois-produced album
Wrecking Ball, a track filled with endless sonic details and effects
tumbling around in the background. The difference between the 002
standalone and the 002 clocked to the OCX was absolutely revelatory!
There were elements in the tracks that simply didn't make it to the
speakers without the OCX. We listened to a lot of stuff and found the
same thing over and over. It's hard to imagine a single purchase that
would upgrade a system in this realm so significantly and pervasively.
Everything one does on this system-tracking, monitoring, mixing,
printing, bouncing-is going to be significantly improved.
Back in Allen's studio, we hooked up the 10M to the OCX (a simple BNC
patch), threw up one of Allen's mixes, and the whole world changed. It
felt like there were about five extra spaces in the stereo field where
one might have placed an element of the mix, and elements we hadn't
heard before stood out plain as day. Things like acoustic guitar finger
squeaks, the singer's moist mouth mutterings, more of a ride cymbal's
over and under-tones, aspects of a kick drum's raspy attack, reverb
tails, tape-echo trails, and even compression artifacts were showing up,
seemingly from out of thin air. The soundstage gained a depth that
seemed to reduce masking between elements that occupied the same
frequency range, as if they instinctively found space in front of and
behind each other based on how wet or dry they were. Apparent loudness
went up a notch, without changing the volume of anything (perhaps a
psychoacoustic phenomenon-we're not sure), and there was noticeable
low-end extension. Beyond the details, the whole of the parts was a
total pleasure to listen to and evoked a far more vivid image of all
aspects of whatever mix we put up. The10M just made the music far more
engaging and emotional (and only made the current MP3 paradigm seem more
criminal).
In fact, with everything we put up, the 10M was a mind-blower, but on
one track, we actually found ourselves more interested in the lyrics.
Fascinating. A stripped-down, crawling version of Neil Young's "Harvest
Moon" by the nomadic singer Jess Lee with Allen backing on a simple
organ part was rendered in such detail with the 10M that individual
harmonic overtones in Jess's voice (tracked with an SM58) almost seemed
like individual sonic elements. The organ (run through a vintage RCA
tube PA into a Sennheiser MD 421) fanned from one warm shade of orange
into a complex spectrum of warm, burnished tones; and previously subtle
oscillations became rhythmic pulses Allen hadn't heard so clearly since
tracking it. Somehow, these details drew both of us far more deeply into
the story Mr. Young weaves in his lyrics and into Jess's lonesome
interpretation. The recording took on a vitality and intimacy that was,
it seems, hiding somewhere in the digital code.
So, can a clock make a difference? Ha! Especially when you've got a
sensitive mixer/producer and a discriminating mastering engineer geeking
out on a really nice system in a well-treated room. But what about the
so-called real world? Is the OCX going to help a recording made with the
clock wheezing its weary way through the world's worst D-A converter
and a pair of 10-cent laptop speakers? We printed mixes from the four
different clocks to find out, and in a blind test, we were able to hear
differences on a laptop, for sure. However, the differences were
certainly diminished by the limitations of the playback system-if you
can even call a laptop a playback system. But we don't work our butts
off to make laptops bring people to tears; we do it so that no matter
where a recording ends up, it has the best chance of being rendered in
all its intended qualities. And as we look toward brighter days-when
MP3s have gone the way of the Edison Cylinder-there is no time like the
present to consider tools that will generate zeros and ones that will
outlive the current lo-fi trends and shine like diamonds in the
high-fidelity renaissance of the future.
Whether you're on a prosumer system and can use the OCX to bump up your
rig, or you're a world-class mastering engineer or mixer who can afford
the 10M, both of these clocks are capable of making a big enough
difference to warrant serious consideration of a purchase. In the case
of the discerning, high-level professional, it's apparent that the
margin for sonic improvement is often pretty narrow, yet we assure you
that trying the 10M is worth it. As we said, we'll leave the
technological arguments to those with the minds for it, but if you're
like us and want to do all you can to render human musical performances
with as much depth, dimension, detail, and love as possible, give the
Antelope clocks a listen, and hear for yourself what they can do for
your recordings.

























The above is from: Tape Op is a bi-monthly magazine devoted to the art of record making.





Subscribe for free here:
http://tapeop.com/reviews/gear/68/isochrone-ocx-10m-clock-generators/







                                     < =================== >

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   David Weinhart
Weinhart Design, Inc.
   President & CEO

The Audio and Video Expert
e: [email protected]
   www.weinhartdesign.com

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Los Angeles, California 90077

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