Katz and Haines Team for Article

Famed author Bob Katz and Treelady Studios' Chief Mastering Engineer Garrett Haines have coauthored a new article concerning digital clocking and jitter.   The piece is a part of the team’s review of the Grimm Audio CC1 master clock, and appears in the January/February 2010 Issue of Tape Op Magazine.

“The last chapter in the Jitter Saga has yet to be written. But the penultimate chapter has just been written by Grimm Audio, who have challenged the most sacred concept, the commonly-held notion that internal clock always performs better than external.   Digital clocking has been a hot topic among audio engineers in recent years.   Someone started the idea that the built-in clocks found in most converters were poor.  And it snowballed from there.” So begins the article, which not only examines the performance of the Grimm CC1, but also includes head-to-head tests of many popular converters and clocks from companies like Digidesign, Apogee, Lynx, and others.

Almost a year in the writing, the review dispels many marketing myths that surround digital clocks, and explains the benefits and trade-offs of using a central clock.   In addition to testing the Grimm CC1 in their respective mastering studios, Haines and Katz sought outside ears by visiting tracking studios and doing double-blind shoot outs with the Grimm and other brand gear.

Bob Katz, owner and Chief Mastering Engineer at Florida-based Digital Domain, is the author of Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science (Focal Press), a book that is widely considered one of the best resources on the topics of contemporary digital audio and audio mastering.   Mastering Audio is available at Amazon.com, at the author’s website, and at fine booksellers everywhere.   Garrett Haines is the Chief Mastering Engineer at Treelady Studios and a Senior Contributor at Tape Op Magazine.