The Micro Clock MKII is a simple, yet elegant design in external clocking. It features ultra-low jitter, third order crystal oscillators with a high current parallel drive circuit designed to maintain harmonic content of the signal regardless of loading conditions. In addition to this, proprietary noise reduction circuitry dramatically eliminates unwanted switching harmonics normally found in digital signals. The Micro Clock MKII is one of the best performing external word clocks in the pro audio market today.

When we introduced the Micro Clock MKII, we didn't anticipate the amount of demand and controversy that managed to accompany it. External clocking is certainly a hot button issue. Some folks maintain that there's no basis for it; that it's a sort of modern 'emperor's new clothes.' The reasoning behind this is that the device being clocked externally will simply filter the incoming clock signal through its phase locked loop, thereby eliminating any sort of benefit associated with the superior clock. In addition, the simple act of accepting the incoming signal and creating a new signal that's in phase will add some jitter.

The biggest problem with this theory is that we know nothing about the PLL filter in question; it's completely hypothetical. Many PLL's in pro audio are designed to filter out unwanted signals that are outside of the desired bandwidth, although some are configured to filter out unwanted harmonics that lie within the signal's frequency band. It's incredibly rare to find one that does both at the same time. In the case of the Micro Clock MKII, it outputs a high bandwidth signal that is rare to find in internal clocks. Whether or not an external word clock can improve the sound qua