On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:16:37 -0000, Frnak McKenney
wrote:

Am I asking too much?

Hi Frnak,

Judging by the questions and responses, I would have to say "Yes."

To this point you haven't exactly demonstrated you have a problem,
just a complaint of a signal of poor quality to a human's perception.
For the clock itself, that complaint is arguably weak.

Let's just examine the evidence for the problem: There is none!

You have a clock that has 100mS resolution, and yet you have never
said how much it is off. 100mS? 1S? 10S? 1 minute? 1 Hour? All,
or any part of any of these metrics?

As Reggie would have chimed in at this point "If you can't measure it
and express it with a quantifiable, then you don't know anything."

Of course, your only source of accurate information is the one you are
suggesting has a problem. It probably doesn't have a problem, but
then how does one use this source's accuracy to check itself? You
would need a second clock to check it, and we would be hearing your
complaint in stereo.

I've calibrated time standards to the nearest 100nS and it is
accomplished at one sitting, no need for total connectivity such as
you might imagine (unless the clock you have is especially crappy).

Your clock has a resolution of 0.1 second. There are roughly 1
million ticks of the display in a day. A simple XTAL oscillator at 10
MHz would exhibit 50ppm stability and in a day wander up to 0.5
second. The next day it might wander back, the day following it might
slip below by 0.5 second. You would be hard pressed to confirm this
with over the air matching to the strike of the WWV gong - except if
the clock is especially crappy (and it could be). The same XTAL might
also exhibit an absolute error of 50ppm and accumulate time error.
This would be far more noticeable over the course of a week (you could
confirm the error by listening to time announcements - but you have
been silent to this issue).

These worst case errors all presume that the internal circuitry cannot
over the course of 24 hours manage to pull out one of 1400
synchronizing opportunities to phase lock out the error. These
circuits are generally optimized to accomplish just this (they work
fine in watches with a 60KHz signal after all). Your clock may be
especially crappy (but that is unlikely).

The clock synchronizing circuits don't have to listen to the bandwidth
of noise you hear, the speaker is for your convenience, not the
clock's. I am sure that it works fine with only 1 LED lit - this is
not a case of "can you hear me now?"

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC