Convention Paper
Open Access
Clean Clocks, Once and for All?
AES Convention 120 · Paper 6700 · May 2006
Abstract
Network-based digital audio interfaces are becoming increasingly popular. But they do pose a significant jitter problem wherever high-quality conversion to/from analog is required. This is true even with networks such as 1394 that provide dedicated support for isochronous flows. Conventional PLL solutions have too-little jitter attenuation, too-much intrinsic jitter, and/or too-narrow a frequency range. More-advanced solutions tend to have too-high a cost. We present a new clocking technology that boasts high performance and low cost. It has been implemented in a recent audio-over-1394 chip. We show comparative performance results and explore system-level implications, including for systems that use point-to-point links such as AES3, SPDIF and ADAT.
