Adventures with Clock Cables

My Aurender N20 has a Word Clock BNC input and my MSB Discrete DAC has a Word Clock BNC output. Vince at MSB recommended that I connect these devices with a 75 ohm clock cable. This allows the MSB Clock to be the master and the Aurender Clock the slave. There is a selection within the Aurender Conductor app that allows you to select this synchrony.

Last year I tried this connection using a $35 75 ohm BNC cable from Blue Jeans and the result was easily heard. Smoother presentation and better soundstage. Two months ago I thought I would see what additional improvements I could get by upgrading the clock cable. I called The Cable Company, where I borrow all my cables, and spoke to Ethan who is quite knowledgeable. I was going to demo the Shunyata Theta cable but it was on loan. Ethen suggested I try the Alpha which was a lot more than the Theta but I figured at least let me see what this does. I was skeptical that any significant improvement would be worth the cost.

A day or two later the cable arrived and after swapping out the Blue Jeans I was shocked to hear a significant improvement specifically in soundstage transparency and overall refinement. Now I was curious at least to see what the Sigma and Omega versions would do.. These were a lot more than I wanted to spend but I decided to try them. After evaluating all three over a week I can say I preferred the Alpha. The Sigma and Omega I felt at least for my system had too much noise reduction that slightly damped the highs. So I ordered the Alpha. Once hearing it I could not go back to the Blue Jeans.

About two weeks later I received the new cable from Shunyata. The cable that I borrowed and still in my system was the previous version before the new X Series was introduced. So the new cable I got was a Alpha-X. To my delight this cable sounded even better than the one I borrowed. All of the characteristics of the original Alpha were subtly but noticeably enhanced. In other words it was even better.

Amazing to me this improved my system to this degree as the clock cable does not transmit any sound or audio information. Just timing. But apparently there is noise that rides along and adds jitter to the clock signal causing artifacts that are audible.

Anyway if you have an external clock call The Cable Company and borrow a few Shunyata clock cables and see for yourself what improvement you can net.