Apogee Big Ben MASTER CLOCK

Zoom

Product Info

For years audio professionals have been asking when Apogee was going to make their legendary clocking technology available as a stand-alone master clock. Well, there's no time like the present. Introducing, Big Ben, a radical new studio timepiece that will set the pace for all master clocks to come.

At the heart of any word clock regeneration is a phase lock loop (PLL). Currently, and most commonly in audio applications, the PLL is a combination of analog and digital elements without the ability to dynamically adapt to the nature of the external clocks. That's where Apogee's new C777 clock comes in. The C777 utilizes an entirely digital process, that Apogee has developed using themost advanced Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) technology available along with DSP based digital filtering. The result? The most aggressive jitter reduction ever. With a stable, crystal based digital PLL ticking away as it's heart, Big Ben is able to intelligently manipulate incoming signals and adapt to them accordingly.

Not that you would expect it from a master clock, Big Ben gives you the option of real-time format conversion. Use Big Ben's intuitive digital display to go from S/PDIF to AES, AES to ADAT, ADAT to S/PDIF, etc.

With an eye toward future connectivity standards, Big Ben has room to grow with a Firewire card option that will provide clockingand format conversion functionality to Firewire equipped devices.

ALF maximizes Big Ben's clocking ability with an intelligent low pass filter. Because the C777 has made all incoming signals into data (1's and 0's) Big Ben is able to dynamically compensate for excessive jitter and even improve already acceptable clock signals to levels unattainable until now. No matter what your input looks like, ALF can adapt and overcome all obstacles to create a stable, reliable, low jitter clock source.

So, Big Ben is masterfully handling external clock signals and all of their anomalies and you've got your jitters under control. What if Big Ben encounters theultimate disturbance in clocking, a dropped signal? Not to worry, with “SureLock” Big Ben will compensate by remaining locked on the last relevant frequency sent by the delinquent device. When the signal resumes, Big Ben will gradually, and smoothly re-synchronize without interruption.

Very often in an elaborate audio chain word clock signals are improperly terminated. Big Ben will chime in with a visual indication of over or undertermination on it's digital display for each word clock output, allowing you to troubleshoot more quickly and get back to business.