Apogee Big Ben

It's About Time...
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.

A Cure for the Jitters – Apogee's new "C777" Clock
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 the most 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.

Added Flexibility with Format Conversion
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.

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

Intelligent Clocking with Apogee's "Adaptive Loop Filtering" (ALF)
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.

Termination Issues... A Thing of the Past
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 under termination on it's digital display for each word clock output, allowing you to troubleshoot more quickly and get back to business.