OK Rich if that is where you were going I am the one who misunderstood. Pro Audio is a totally different market. My assumption was that when you were talking about putting this into a high end DAC you were referring to an end user consumer unit that would be used in a home high end system. IF we are talking about pro equipment I totally agree with you that there is is great benefit to using this new technology. But the pro market has a very different dynamic that the home market. First off the people who are buying it are for the most part not paying for it out of their own pockets it is a company purchase. And secondly they are not using the equipment as a means to turn a profit. So even if if a unit based on one of these atomic clocks is significantly more expensive, the extra expenditure may be easily justified if the unit provides a better end product which in turn could lead to more sales and end up paying for itself in a short period of time. And thirdly the pro market offers possibilities of the types of cost savings you mention by being able to eliminate the need for a separate oscillator and it's associated expenses (chassis power supply etc. In the pro market this is a no brainer and I think has the potential to be very successful and indeed provide us as end users with greatly increase quality in our source material. I agree that this is a very exciting development and hope the technology gets widely deployed in the pro world.
However; you original post asked:
How long til this is in a "high end" DAC to replace the oscillator crystal?
Since this is a forum that deals mostly with home audio equipment I (obviously now mistakenly) assumed that your reference to "a "high end" DAC" referred to a home unit that would be purchased by an audiophile. And in that light I stand by everything I said. A consumer audio piece would be purchased by the person who would be using it making, would not provide and potential financial return and since consumer equipment generally does not use outboard oscillator there would be no savings from reduced chassis, power supplies etc. So none of the advantages discussed above can be used to offset the additional costs of an atomic clock chip. All I did was respond to what I thought was a very specific question as to when we might see this technology used in some of our home audio equipment. And it is still my opinion, as someone who makes his living doing economic costing and pricing evaluations of high tech engineering projects, that from a purely economic basis the $1500 per piece price simply makes these clocks impractical for use in even the more expensive high end DACs on the market today (again, Pro equipment is a different story). Every piece of retail audio gear is designed to a price point of some kind. I never said that anybody's goal should be to design to the lowest price possible. A manufacturer must always make tradeoff between price and performance and decide where in that space he wants to play with each piece he sells.There is certainly room for gear in all areas of that spectrum. My only comment was that given the price of the clock and the price of most of the high end DACs on the market today I did not think that it would be practical to expect a manufacturer to set aside a high enough percentage of his overall parts budget to cover the cost of one of these atomic clocks. When the clock price drops (as I'm sure it eventually will, although I can predict when) I am sure we will start to see product offerings that incorporate this technology.
I never said anything about ignoring the technology or made any other kind of value judgement as to its potential use. Hey, I am an engineering geek. I love new technology like this and would love to see it in wider use. I just felt that right now the price was a show stopper, nothing more, nothing less.
I very much agree about the demand for excellence and innovation driving the hobby. But from a practical side innovation is always expensive (especially when developed for the military) and no matter how good a technology is it will never make its way into a retail product until it can be produced at a price that in line with the consumer willingness to pay.
I really thought I was giving a very focused, economically based answer to a narrowly worded question. I'm not really sure how this got interupted as a value judgement, but to the extent that it got anyone upset, I apologise.
Lastly, just on a philosphical basis, even if I was making a value judgement (which was not my intent), I an confused as to why this would be a problem. Doesn't damn near everything we discuss on Nervosa involve some like of value judgement (i.e. Is the money/effort/time I am putting into this component, tewak etc. worth it in light of the performance increase I will get when I am done?) Why is the discussion of this chip/technology different than anything else we talk about? (Not a complaint, just a thought piece.)
