Word Clock Questions

[ad0lescnts]

1. Engineers always tell me word clock makes all the difference in the world in audio quality, and stability of pro tools. what do you guys think?

2. Can you daisy chain a digi 002 (no BNC connectors) to a big ben (one in/one out ADAT) AS WELL AS an external 8 channel ADA converter to get 16 channels clocked from the big ben? or since it is ADAT will it only clock the original 8 channels from the digi 002. I see that the new digi 003's have ADAT and BNC, and that really seems to be the only advantage to spending the extra money on the 003 instead of the 002. But if you can use an external word clock and use external converters at the same time with an 002 then that would be great.

Let me know thanks!

 

[fraserhutch]

1. Engineers always tell me word clock makes all the difference in the world in audio quality, and stability of pro tools. what do you guys think?

2. Can you daisy chain a digi 002 (no BNC connectors) to a big ben (one in/one out ADAT) AS WELL AS an external 8 channel ADA converter to get 16 channels clocked from the big ben? or since it is ADAT will it only clock the original 8 channels from the digi 002. I see that the new digi 003's have ADAT and BNC, and that really seems to be the only advantage to spending the extra money on the 003 instead of the 002. But if you can use an external word clock and use external converters at the same time with an 002 then that would be great.

Let me know thanks!

1) Absolutely.
2) I don't know. I've never used the big ben to sync via adat and I wouldn't know how that works.

 

[Micter]

1. Engineers always tell me word clock makes all the difference in the world in audio quality, and stability of pro tools. what do you guys think?

2. Can you daisy chain a digi 002 (no BNC connectors) to a big ben (one in/one out ADAT) AS WELL AS an external 8 channel ADA converter to get 16 channels clocked from the big ben? or since it is ADAT will it only clock the original 8 channels from the digi 002. I see that the new digi 003's have ADAT and BNC, and that really seems to be the only advantage to spending the extra money on the 003 instead of the 002. But if you can use an external word clock and use external converters at the same time with an 002 then that would be great.

Let me know thanks!

If you are wanting to use external converters I would just get some Apogee converters and be done with it. They all have the basic Big Ben clock (same technology) built in to them. It's sort of a stripped down version but very good. The other thing to look at would be the Black Lion mods to the 002. That upgrades the clock as well as the pres IIRC.

 

[SonicAlbert]

You would clock the external ADA converter to the Big Ben, and then sync the 002 to the lightpipe input, which is coming from the external converter. Probably some extra jitter added, but they will be clocked together. It would indeed be better to be able to clock all the digital units directly from the master clock without daisy chaining.

Daisy chaining works if the various units have BNC word clock inputs and you can use a "T" connector or the unit can be made to pass through. Some say that is better than using a WC distributor. But obviously that's not an option for the 002, which has no dedicated WC I/O.