The classic you missed as you were actually doing the change -
John and I exchanged surprised expressions not believing what we heard

I was listening to some live music by Nils Lofgren, Dead Can Dance and some others last night. I was thinking that live music benefits the most from enhanced ambience and background detail. It really opens up the acoustic of the performance and puts you there.

Never would I have believed that my system would ever create such images, which have not been its strong suit in the past.

Two new 75 Ohm BNC cables have arrived for future experiments.

Canare LV-61S (RG59B/U).

Nope.  I said I wanted to experiment and I will.  Not by dropping a large amount of money on an 'audio grade' external clock until I've heard in my own system what effects an inexpensive but (hopefully) well selected clock will do for it.  I don't just want to buy 'the best', whatever that is, plug it in and be done.  I've never been like that.  I have learned countless things by trying, and sometimes rejecting, ideas.  Let me play for a bit!

By the way, system's sounding great at the moment.

I am 110% you will find the Martin route to audiophile nirvana its part of your DNA  but do not dismiss the Drawmer clock I suggested in an earlier post it is rather good and available on e-bay I feel as well. Excellent performance for a sensible outlay.

Pretty sure more than one or two fellows are well aware of the answer you seek regarding this matter if you dig deep enough you will find it, perhaps CC on CA would be useful source of info, suspect he has tried more than one or two of these devices  Mind you you have to be careful with some of the forums as those member's in charge can be quite susceptible to outside influences and not realise the damage they do to their own credibility.

One of the car communities I frequent had a spot of bother, it's recently emerged that one of the moderators actually worked for one of the main sponsors (you could not make it up!), while another one was quietly promoting brand 'x' surreptitiously whilst receiving regular 'free or ultra discounted' products that would appear in future not so blatant promotions and small reviews, close to 4 years worth 

Though these days nothing surprises me with the internet like how Trump gets away with anything, fake news and continuously spouted politically orientated closed minded bullshit from closet left wing people who run white collar jobs, oh and Volvo owners 

I now have a cute Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator (OCXO) 10MHz frequency reference for ham radio in my hands, based on the popular BG7TBL circuit. It cost the princely sum of £70.83 from AliExpress. Now I can have some fun experimenting with it, using both sinewave and squarewave signals to listen for how they perform.

This will hopefully be a learning experience.



The crystal oven is a DAPU unit, which seems to exist only in Chinese equipment. I have no information about its quality. Almost all of these crystal ovens are recovered from old mobile telecoms equipment, discarded when the operators upgraded to GPS or rubidium based clocks, so I expect it to be a used unit as with the vast majority of OCXOs on sale.

Showing the OCXO in place, connected up to both the EtherREGEN and the Mutec MC-3.  It's sitting on Black Ravioli Pads and features on top one of my new 1kg door stops from Germany.

Testing it by pulling either clock cable stops the music - the ER one after the Asus buffer empties, the Mutec one instantly.  It's good to confirm that when both units are set to external clock, they don't fall back to internal clock if the signal is lost, which could get confusing.

The OCXO case gets perceptibly warm, but the LPSU running both the ER and OCXO is quite toasty now.  That oven burns some power.

I also have another of David Brooks' fine MCRU PC-OCC DC cables coming to replace the stock Chinese power cable, and he is having BR make me a custom Eflos grounding box with BNC connector to ground the OCXO.

After testing that the BG7TBL OCXO was working fine with the EtherREGEN and Mutec MC-3, both set for external clock (the ER needs the clock switch set and to be power cycled, the Mutec needs the front panel setting for external 10M and reclocking), and giving it 6 hours to fully warm up, it was time to listen to what was going on.

I started with the ER alone and it was clear at first that the change was very little, if anything, depending on the track played. I couldn't hear anything obviously different in terms of dynamics, soundstage, bass to treble response or anything that I have a phrase for. Something was nagging me that it sounded different and, after a while, I decided that it just sounded easier on the ear.

My thinking was that the ER, with its notorious Crystek 575 oscillator, would be the better component to respond to an external clock although I have no knowledge of the clock used in the Mutec. So I expected little from this point onwards. I was wrong.

Jumping back a moment, I tried the Mutec on its own. I heard pretty much the same thing as from the ER: not a lot at first, then the slow realisation that this is nice and I’m enjoying the musical delivery. So far, so good and no step backwards with either component as I had feared. Proving that a stable crystal referenced sinewave master clock sounds at least the equal to, and actually better than, the internal clocks was a big learning moment for me.

So, without any further messing about, I connected the clock to both components and started a new session later on. By this time, the BG case was warm (and presumably the oven inside quite a lot warmer) and the LPSU feeding both the ER and BG was positively toasty. The ER consumes 10W and the BG about 18W max. so the 50VA LPSU is running at half capacity.

Listening to the sum effect of running the two sinewave outputs to the ER and Mutec, and allowing for some further warming up and settling, I was hopeful of hearing something more tangible. Well, I did, I heard a whole lot more music coming out of my system. Effortless, vivid, alive, right there, choose your own words, the delivery was wonderful. Ask me again to say what changed, and I’ll still struggle to define it. The bass is perhaps a touch more solid and potent. That’s it.

The best I can say is that my system is delivering music with new-found ease. Live music has phenomenal soundstaging, deeper than I have ever heard from my speakers (e.g. Nils Lofgren - Band Live), studio music has more immediacy and natural dynamics (e.g. Steely Dan – Pretzel Logic). Classical really benefits from the depth and low-level ambient sound of the recording space (e.g. Vivaldi – Four Seasons, Drottningholm). Nothing much has changed, but everything has changed, if you get my drift.

I am pleasantly in shock that £70 worth of Chinese made amateur radio clock (well, to be fair, a pretty accurate oven controlled clock made for telecoms use) could achieve anything very much, let alone what I’m hearing. My investment has been less than 1/20th that of the £1500 Teac CG-10M clock, one of the less expensive clocks on the market. I couldn’t be more pleased!

Bargain of the year - at least. Madness even.
Buying kit from different industry sectors can be like that

I would also like to see your updated diagram

How easy for the non tech punter to put that in place in their own system ?