Topic: Comparing AES and INT Clock modes
I was surprised at the strange behavior of ADI-2 Pro FS when internal master clock is activated.
https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=27856
MС says its nothing special on his own measurement gear, so I decided to make several measurements with RMAA software. Everyone can download this program and repeat my procedure. http://audio.rightmark.org/index_new.shtml
All my measurements were performed with ASIO 24/96 via XLR connection in the loopback mode. Thus, we have eliminated possible interference with unbalanced connection.
At the first three lines, the signal was fed to the AES input from an external digital transport (SOTM dX-USB HD). Blue line shows results of classic AES/SPDIF as master clock. A measurement shows that as most “clean” output without any strange artifacts.
Next line (Black color) shows small artifacts above 10 kHz. It was happened when I keep AES as Master but turn SRC (AES-In). They are below 140 dB and increase the harmonic ratio only for 0.00001%, but still this is a high-frequency band so it would be better to avoid that.
The most strange and littered output (Red line) turns out on the mode (Clock Int + SRC). It was recommended (by RME's manual) as the jitter killer for SPDIF connection. So we can see exactly the opposite issue! Look at symmetric peaks around the main 1 kHz were added. Also it was new artifacts in the high-frequency band over 10 kHz.
Fortunately, this disgrace is not present on USB playback (Green and Gray lines), when I play signals via USB not AES. But even in it, as the IMD and crosstalk measurements shows, there is a slight loss to compare with classic AES.
Surprisingly, the position of the master clock (Int or AES), in some incomprehensible way, also affects on output of the device even on the USB playback. For example, if you look at the scan of the lower noisefloor, some artifacts will be observed only when INT master clock was On.
I would like to hear comments from other forum members. I believe that RME does a fantastic job for improving these projects. It seems to me that in this issue looking not like error of bad hardware, but rather a software recalculation on the DSP level. That is, I believe this problem can be fixed in the next firmware.