31-Oct-2015, 18:55
I had some time to try my Remedy Reclocker today. First impressions? The little box is actually quite nice, with very good build quality for what it is. I know some people on here care deeply about power supplies, well the Remedy comes with a particularly nasty looking, and very small, wall wart. Is this a problem? I'm not sure, but plug it in and it produces power, so all good.
The main thing of interest to me was to see if it can improve the quality of the Toslink output from my Panasonic TV (TX-P50VT65B, for those that might be interested) when fed to the Devialet. Today I tried some back to back tests, the set up as follows. Tivo via HDMI to TV, Toslink to reclocker, Toslink to Devialet. I had recorded a selection tracks on the Tivo, such that I could do direct A B tests with identical source material. I also had the luxury of a friend 'round today, who was willing to blind test. (Someone who historically has blind picked a D800 over a D250 and AES/EBU dual mono link cable over RCA to RCA link on a D800, so has a good ear for these things)
The results are perhaps not what you might expect. I have read many good things about the Remedy Reclocker, so in terms of expectation bias I was expecting a clear improvement. However, things were very marginal. On first listen I thought there was possibly a slight improvement in overall definition with the Reclocker, but it did seam very marginal. We switched back between with and without the reclocker, and on second listen, I was not so sure, the only real conclusion I could reach was that any improvement was at least very marginal. My friend listening "blind", had a very marginal preference to the sound without the reclocker after the first back to back listen, then later stated that there was very little difference at all. I have to say this has surprised me a little. So I am now thinking why. Of course one conclusion could be that the reclocker isn't any good, however, I do note that reviews, and others on this thread have reached very different conclusions. Another possibility is that the Toslink output of the Pioneer is in fact very good, or at least clocked very well. This being the case, a Reclocker is not going to improve anything, it will just reproduce what was already a decently clocked signal. Another thought is that the basic quality of the source material via the Tivo, presumably low bit rate and compressed format, simply is not open to much improvement. From what I have heard today, my money is on the Panasonic actually having a decently clocked output, perhaps this combined with the "low res" TV derived source material leads to the "makes no difference" conclusion. Also, it is perhaps worth noting that with or without the reclocker, everything sounded pretty good, despite the questionable source material, so maybe the Panasonic does simply have a decent digital output.
Anyway, I do have a number of other thing I wish to try. For example, I do have a Pioneer BDP-450 Blu-ray / SACD player. This is not a particularly expensive piece of kit, I only occasionally watch Blu-rays, so have little need to buy a £1000 Oppo or similar. The Pioneer also has the ability to work as a music server, running off external USB memory. A while back, I tried this with the Devialet, just as a fun experiment. Although the Pioneer sounds fairly decent with the Devialet, running off Blu-ray or SACDs, in this music server mode with a USB drive, it did not sound very good at all. So I'm thinking that trying the Pioneer with the reclocker, with both SACD's and USB drive derived music, might be an interesting test. I also have a fifteen year old Musical Fidelity A3CD player with digital output that I could try. I will at least try the Pioneer tomorrow, and report back further.
The main thing of interest to me was to see if it can improve the quality of the Toslink output from my Panasonic TV (TX-P50VT65B, for those that might be interested) when fed to the Devialet. Today I tried some back to back tests, the set up as follows. Tivo via HDMI to TV, Toslink to reclocker, Toslink to Devialet. I had recorded a selection tracks on the Tivo, such that I could do direct A B tests with identical source material. I also had the luxury of a friend 'round today, who was willing to blind test. (Someone who historically has blind picked a D800 over a D250 and AES/EBU dual mono link cable over RCA to RCA link on a D800, so has a good ear for these things)
The results are perhaps not what you might expect. I have read many good things about the Remedy Reclocker, so in terms of expectation bias I was expecting a clear improvement. However, things were very marginal. On first listen I thought there was possibly a slight improvement in overall definition with the Reclocker, but it did seam very marginal. We switched back between with and without the reclocker, and on second listen, I was not so sure, the only real conclusion I could reach was that any improvement was at least very marginal. My friend listening "blind", had a very marginal preference to the sound without the reclocker after the first back to back listen, then later stated that there was very little difference at all. I have to say this has surprised me a little. So I am now thinking why. Of course one conclusion could be that the reclocker isn't any good, however, I do note that reviews, and others on this thread have reached very different conclusions. Another possibility is that the Toslink output of the Pioneer is in fact very good, or at least clocked very well. This being the case, a Reclocker is not going to improve anything, it will just reproduce what was already a decently clocked signal. Another thought is that the basic quality of the source material via the Tivo, presumably low bit rate and compressed format, simply is not open to much improvement. From what I have heard today, my money is on the Panasonic actually having a decently clocked output, perhaps this combined with the "low res" TV derived source material leads to the "makes no difference" conclusion. Also, it is perhaps worth noting that with or without the reclocker, everything sounded pretty good, despite the questionable source material, so maybe the Panasonic does simply have a decent digital output.
Anyway, I do have a number of other thing I wish to try. For example, I do have a Pioneer BDP-450 Blu-ray / SACD player. This is not a particularly expensive piece of kit, I only occasionally watch Blu-rays, so have little need to buy a £1000 Oppo or similar. The Pioneer also has the ability to work as a music server, running off external USB memory. A while back, I tried this with the Devialet, just as a fun experiment. Although the Pioneer sounds fairly decent with the Devialet, running off Blu-ray or SACDs, in this music server mode with a USB drive, it did not sound very good at all. So I'm thinking that trying the Pioneer with the reclocker, with both SACD's and USB drive derived music, might be an interesting test. I also have a fifteen year old Musical Fidelity A3CD player with digital output that I could try. I will at least try the Pioneer tomorrow, and report back further.
