While you go on to explain what you mean a little bit at the end, I do take issue with the statement that wordcolck and SMPTE are the same thing on digital machines. If certain machines support position markers and transport commands over wordclock, then that's a non-standard use of the technology and it's not something I've ever seen. I've never seen a system that sends transport or position control over word. Conversely, SMPTE is far to slow to sync digital clocks. As far as it being a thing of the past, anyone who works with video or with synching analog gear to digital will tell you otherwise. I'd much rather have proper frame synch than try to line things up in post - I've done that and I don't like it.
As far as newer portable machines not supporting SMPTE, it doesn't really surprise me, but I just don't want anyone coming away with the impression that wordclock and SMPTE do the same thing.
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Originally Posted by ghellquist  In digital recorders it is the same thing really. When sampling is done at exactly the same speed in both machines they will stay in relative positional sync forever once recording is started. This can only be achieved reliably with "sample clocking", usually done through a word clock connection. The only thing left to cater for is exact starting time of the recording, easily compensated for by sliding samples in post production. A clap to synch to is an easy answer.
Word clock allows samples from several units to stay in synch down to a very low jitter (less than sample time). This will allow for a stable stereo picture even if you record the left and right channel on two different machines. This of course goes for surround stability as well.
SMPTE is generally not supported by todays crop of boxes, so we can quickly rule that one out. It is more or less a thing of the past with ADAT-s or (shudder) reel-to-reel.
Several of the boxes today support Time Code, used mostly on film recordings. The implementation of time code is done by putting the start time of the recording into a special field in the .wav file (the format used is called bwav). Time code here does not compensate for diffent sample speeds so units will slowly drift out of synch.
Slow drift between the clock in two machines can to a certain degreen be compensated for in software by resampling. The function could be called time stretch or something like that.
The 7xx boxes allows you to connect one cable between two boxes which transfers both word clock and start/stop commands between them. It is not perfect but it brings home the bacon. In contrast the MR1000, to my knowledge, has no way of synching two machines.
Gunnar |