| Here's my take on this question. (I have a Big Ben, but I wouldn't recommend getting one unless you have a really compelling need for it.)
One situation where you need a word clock generator is that you have so many devices slaved to word clock that a daisy chain would be too long or impractical to cable together.
Another situation is where you need format conversion in the word clock itself. For example, you need to derive a word clock from an AES/EBU signal, but to send it to a device that has a BNC word clock input.
Another situation is that you need to multiply or divide the word clock frequency -- to clock converters at 96KHz, but synched with a 48KHz word clock.
Another situation is that your word clock source is unsteady, and the "unlocking" of slaved devices creates noise or some other kind of nuisance. There are some pieces of gear that have word clock outputs, but the word clock outputs either stop altogether or "glitch" when the gear changes state. I've used timecode synchronizers that have this problem, and SP/DIF connections have this problem too. This can create annoying pops and clicks at the slave device. A word clock generator solves this by always producing a steady word clock output, so that slave devices seldom or never need to lose their lock to it.
Simply repeating a word clock signal to a few slave devices is seldom a good reason to get a word clock distributor. If you have a really corrupted word clock source, you probably shouldn't be using it as a master word clock in the first place.
-synthoid |