After spending many hours of pleasurable listening with the Birdland DAC in my system, I sent it back to the company for the installation of the Re-Clocker board. As promised, I'm writing to report the results of the upgrade. For those of you who do not know about this marvelous unit, you can read the review here.

It is well documented that jitter and its associated distortion is one of the most critical factors in giving the digital aficionado the willies, offering them a hard, aggressive quality not associated with the best in vinyl playback. It's also one of the major factors that led to the development of the newer higher resolution formats, DVD-A and SACD, bringing us closer to the analogue waveform. It is also the raison d'etre for the development of the outboard DAC.

I reconnected the Odeon to my Musatex Melior CD transport with Acoustic Zen's Silver Byte digital interconnect (with the supplied BNC adapter) and to my Kora Eclipse preamplifier with Acoustic Zen's Matrix Reference II interconnects. I also used Acoustic Zen's Gargantua and Gargantua II power cords through out. The chain was completed by using Acoustic Zen's WOW interconnects to the InnerSound ESL Mark II amplifier and Acoustic Zen's Hologram II speaker cables to my modified TMS Adiabat 8.5 speakers. At various times I substituted the WOW interconnects with the Matrix IIs to see if there would be major changes.

Gilles Gameiro, the wonderful mind behind Birdland products, describes the technical subtleties of the Re-Clocker: 'The Re-Clocker board for the Odéon-Ag is an upgrade similar to out of the box reclockers. One of the big advantages in having the reclocker inside the unit is that the signal path from the reclocker circuit to the DAC is controlled on a printed circuit board designed to act as a perfect transmission line. Thus, there is no added jitter introduced by an additional interconnect as in the case of out-of-the-box solutions. The ReClocker upgrade for the Odéon-Ag uses an extremely stable crystal quartz oscillator which wields an incredible final jitter smaller than 0.03ps. That is less than 0.00000000000003 seconds !!! This number is hundreds to thousands times smaller that the jitter typically observed on most commercial DACs. With such low jitter measured at the input of the Digital to Analog conversion chip itself, the analog output is virtually free of jitter distortion. Such a clean conversion yields an incredibly smooth and natural analog sound free of the aggressive or bright characteristics typically observed in digital systems.'

I burned in the unit for about 100 hours of continuous play and was now ready to seriously listen and evaluate what this new re-clocker card did to the sound of my system (unfortunately, I didn't have a unit without the upgrade available for direct comparison -- since it had been my reference for several months, I was intimately familiar with its sonic characteristics). In my previous review I raved about the virtues of the Birdland DAC and ended the review by congratulating Gilles Gameiro on his achievement. Well, he's excelled once again. All of the virtues I commented on in the original review, without the re-clocker card, were surpassed with it in the unit.

The first attribute one notices over the original unit is an improved degree of smoothness and liquidity accompanied by greater detail. This is not an easy achievement. Typically, many systems that achieve greater detail often do it at the expense of musicality, liquidity and naturalness. Not so, here. Cymbal strikes were more tactile with initial percussive hits followed by that shimmering, vibrating sound, moving along the metal decaying into space. One could actually follow this progression of the sound as its component parts transitioned from one into the next. As such, a 'complete cymbal experience!'

A beautiful listening experience came courtesy of a Pablo CD : Take Love Easy, Ella Fitzgerald/Joe Pass, recorded in 1974. This gorgeous collaboration between two jazz giants proved to be a masterpiece. Ella, here a little older and with more huskiness in her voice, and Joe, with his magic guitar, interacted beautifully. The Odeon DAC brought every nuance and subtlety forth. Textures and inner detail were in abundance as Ella's huskiness and Joe's riffs were there for the enjoying. I hadn't heard this CD in a while -- it has never sounded as smooth. The Pablo CD was followed with CBS Masterworks Mozart Symphony's 40 and 41, Rafael Kubelik and his Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. Again, a revelation. The level of inner detail and the unraveling of musical complexity opened a light on the orchestra. This was made even more enjoyable by an improvement in the dynamics, that quiet to explosive crescendo that brings us closer to the live performance. Too much fun!

It is always informative and sometime surprising to listen to my reference recordings when a new piece of equipment enters the audio chain. In this case it was more than just more of a good thing, it raised the digital bar. Is this upgrade worth another USD$400.00? If one is serious about their sound system and already possesses the Birdland DAC, go for the upgrade. If one is considering an outboard DAC, the Birdland has to be high on your list. It is definitely worth the money.