I'm thinking of buying a tascam fw-1884 and it says it has word clock. but i don't know what that is.
any info would be great.
jay.
any info would be great.
jay.
What is word clock
- Thread starter xparkerx
- Start date
It's the timing signal that all digital audio needs to opperate correctly. It can be come from inside the device (converter, sound card, digi mixer, ect.) or from one of those others, either combined on the digital audio line (light-pipe, spdif, ect.) or a dedicated BNC/coax style word-clock connection.
Any and all the devices in your set-up must follow only one clock source.
Think I got that right.
Wayne
Any and all the devices in your set-up must follow only one clock source.
Think I got that right.
Wayne
ok
i think i gotcha. Does that have anything to do with latency?
i have an echo mona right now.. and the main issue is that after i get say 6 tracks down any tracks i record after that end up about a 1/4 second later than then should be. So then i have to move them manually which is a total pain. I run nuedno 1.6 and have a p4 1.8ghz with 768 megs of ram.
any ideas?
i think i gotcha. Does that have anything to do with latency?
i have an echo mona right now.. and the main issue is that after i get say 6 tracks down any tracks i record after that end up about a 1/4 second later than then should be. So then i have to move them manually which is a total pain. I run nuedno 1.6 and have a p4 1.8ghz with 768 megs of ram.
any ideas?
Massive Master
www.massivemastering.com
Elaborating - It's just a master timer so everything is in sync. It is vitally important, but doesn't (shouldn't) affect latency.
John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com
John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com
lpdeluxe
The Precision Bass Guy
Word clock is what keeps the samples synchronized in a digital recording environment.
Analog sound is digitalized by taking samples every so often (44,100 times each second for CD-standard sound) and analyzing each sample for transfer to the next device. There are basically 2 parameters: sample rate (44,100, 96,000, whatever) and bit depth (16-bit, 24-bit, etc). Each sample is called a "word" and its length is the bit depth. This is necessary in order for the next machine down the line to reassemble the music from the samples based on their rate and depth. For this you must have a word clock, which synchronizes the samples so Device A is dealing with the same data as Device B and Device C & D. If all the samples are synchronized, it sounds like music. If not, there are problems like dropouts and freezes and in fact some devices won't even play digital music back unless there is a clock to synch to.
Word Clocks come in several flavors, but basically one device (or word clock distribution amplifier) has to be the master and all the others must be slaved to it. Any digital device needing word clock will have a way to set it as master or slave or its manual will warn you to slave any other devices to it. Some formats, like ADAT lightpipe, carry word clock in the data stream, and you have to make sure that the master is "upstream" and that the slaves are "downstream" [remember that ADAT lightpipe is one way].
Check out this website: http://www.rane.com/digi-dic.html
It has a tremendous amount of information in a form that you and me can understand.
Hope this helps.
Analog sound is digitalized by taking samples every so often (44,100 times each second for CD-standard sound) and analyzing each sample for transfer to the next device. There are basically 2 parameters: sample rate (44,100, 96,000, whatever) and bit depth (16-bit, 24-bit, etc). Each sample is called a "word" and its length is the bit depth. This is necessary in order for the next machine down the line to reassemble the music from the samples based on their rate and depth. For this you must have a word clock, which synchronizes the samples so Device A is dealing with the same data as Device B and Device C & D. If all the samples are synchronized, it sounds like music. If not, there are problems like dropouts and freezes and in fact some devices won't even play digital music back unless there is a clock to synch to.
Word Clocks come in several flavors, but basically one device (or word clock distribution amplifier) has to be the master and all the others must be slaved to it. Any digital device needing word clock will have a way to set it as master or slave or its manual will warn you to slave any other devices to it. Some formats, like ADAT lightpipe, carry word clock in the data stream, and you have to make sure that the master is "upstream" and that the slaves are "downstream" [remember that ADAT lightpipe is one way].
Check out this website: http://www.rane.com/digi-dic.html
It has a tremendous amount of information in a form that you and me can understand.
Hope this helps.