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Title: Digital clocks and masters Post by: Chris V on July 07, 2007, 12:57:50 pm This thought has intrigued me for a while. :dntknw:
The signal starts from my PC which I guess has a clock, into the Fireface which also has a clock capable of snc or master and then to my TacT 2.2XX (DAC) where there is probably another clock. Now sonically I believe its best to have a master clock running the whole system, but which one is it and how do you ensure it has taken control. :whistle: :whistle: Cheers Chris Title: Re: Digital clocks and masters Post by: PeterSt on July 07, 2007, 02:00:30 pm Hi Chris,
The PC has no physical clock for controlling audio data. It has a software clock though, which can not act as a master which can be synched to. For your Fireface this implies that it will always act as master clock, which you can see in the screen behind the yellow icon (no matter whether you tell it to be master or not, it just is master and it shows that). Only when you connect another audio device to the input concerned, it can be a slave (or set to master). If you don't have such other device to try, you can connect it to itself (a digital output to a digital input). The lights will show accordingly. If there would be a wordclock input on the TacT, the Fireface could control the TacT's clock physically (say, via the backdoor), which then would give better results on jitter. The wordclock connection is a BNC (plug) connection; I don't know whether that's on the Fireface400 (on the 800 it is). The wordclock is a pro audio thing and not applied much in the consumer world (I think). Peter Title: Re: Digital clocks and masters Post by: Chris V on July 07, 2007, 06:40:55 pm Thanks Peter, that makes it pretty clear. The 400 does have the in/out BNC word clock connections ;), but
the Tact 2.2X does not have an input for word clock. I believe there are several clocks inside doing the business. Out of interest, are there any NOS DACS (TwinDAC+) that currently have a word clock connection? Cheers Chris Title: Re: Digital clocks and masters Post by: PeterSt on July 07, 2007, 06:52:40 pm The TwinDAC+ doesn't have it. Maybe very expensive DACs do.
Just Google for DAC wordclock (no quotes surrounding). I didn't do it. :) Maybe you get too much pro audio stuff. Then try "audio dac" wordclock (keep the quotes there). And further to your imgination. :yes: |