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clocking

saemskin

Established Member
at the risk of revealing what I dont know, I must ask. What is the purpose of smpte or word clocking? My midi 8x8 interface has smpte, my audio card had word & smpte, my fx processors have one, the other, or neither.

What, where, and why?
Should I be attempting to sync as much as I can when I can, or is this not necessary? I dont do any external recording with the exception of my own voice, and that is only once in awhile. I mainly create instrumental works. My 4 synths I play (mostly) via midi from my host DAW.

The reason I ask is that in this months EM magazine, this fellow says his Big Ben is the most important piece of equipment as it helps create the highest quality audio possible because everything is lined up nicely. I not sure about application in my case. Opinions?
 

Cabbage

Active Member
Hi there,

Word-clock is for syncing different digital devices at a sample level. If you have one device sending a digital audio stream to another, they must be synced, or else there will be a slight crackling (sometimes it is very, very slight, so you have to look out).

Normally, devices are synced over the digital audio connections (such as ADAT or SPDIF) but they must be configured to do so correctly. Word clock is an alternative to this, but generally you do not need one.

Word clock sync normally gives less jitter than sync over a digital audio stream (especially ADAT gives lots of jitter), so if you have two devices with word clock input and output which would otherwise be synched over ADAT, it would improve sync if you stick a word clock cable between the devices (in parallel with the ADAT litepipe).

Note that the jitter performance of a device is normally reduced when a device is syncing to something external, so it is normally better to use the internal clock. So in order to minimize jitter: When recording you should have the device containing the AD-converters run on its internal clock (and be the clock master). In play-back, the device containing the DA-converters should run on internal clock (and be master).

What Big Ben can do is to clean up a jittery digital signal. Newer DA-converters also claim to do this, and are therefore recilient to jittery input.

For the sound quality of your recorded sound (that is voice in your case), only the jitter of the AD-converters matters. But since the internal clock normally gives a better result, you are pretty much stuck with what you have. For VSTi lower jitter in the DA converters inprove the sound quality, but only of you monitoring if you mix in-the-box. For external synths, syncing is not an issue.

Super-clock is an alternative to word clock that can potentially give better jitter performance since it is 256 times more acurate.

SMPTE is more used for syncing the transport of tape mahines, video recorders and such. I have no real experience with this.

Sorry about blabering...

Petter
 
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