Digital systems such as CD & DVD players are notoriously noisy environments, noise caused by the switching of logic circuitry, currents in the transport servo modulating the power supply, spindle motors, high frequency noise from switch mode power supplies and extraneous power supply noise. All these sources of noise contribute to power supply induced jitter on the master clock oscillator.

The speed and stability of the clock power supply is also highly important for optimal clock performance. A clock operating at 16.9344MHz is switching on and off more than 16 million times per second. If the power supply cannot keep up with the fast switching it will slow the edges of the clock wave form and compromise performance. Any fluctuations in the power supply will cause variations in logic level switch points and thus variations in switch timing.

The solution is a separate, super quiet, highly stable, high speed clock power supply which isolates any clock noise from the player and more importantly any noise that the player produces is isolated from the clock.

To achieve this Audiocom has developed a high performance power supply to compliment Superclock 4. The new power supply incorporates several keys features;

High Performance Linear Power Supply. A new higher current, higher grade toroidal transformer was chosen over the products predecessor. A toroidal transformer is very quiet in operation-with low or even zero mechanical hum. Toroidal transformers also exhibit very low levels of noise-inducing stray magnetic fields (typically 8 times lower than laminated stack type transformers).

For rectification we use high power, ultra-fast, soft recovery diodes HEXFRED type. The HEXFRED features combine to offer a rectifier with lower noise and lower switching losses.