Word Clock under $200??

[Dark star Balla]

I just seen ART SyncGEN Wordclock and Sample Rate Generator anyone know anything about this piece? It connects 4 and run up to 192K

[Jules]

OK Charlie! grease up the cat!

Oh... ...wrong punch line, sorry.

Carry on...

[recordinghopkins]

I have a Syncgen that I used to use all the time. This thing is a great bang for the buck. I used it with the spdif digital black outputs connected to gear that didn't have WC in.
I've changed my setup and now it just sits in a drawer. PM me if you want to know more.

[recordinghopkins]

Originally Posted by Jules

OK Charlie! grease up the cat!

Oh... ...wrong punch line, sorry.

Carry on...

How much is your studio's monthly power bill

[NothingTheory]

Originally Posted by Dark star Balla

I just seen ART SyncGEN Wordclock and Sample Rate Generator anyone know anything about this piece? It connects 4 and run up to 192K

I use the ART syncgen clock, I think its a fabulous device for $99. Once I started using it all my sync problems literally dissapeared including any random pops or clicks on devices.

The specs are decent, and are better than most low end "built in" clocks, and you cant find anything better till you start to spend closer to $500 like the black lion clock, but it only has 3 outputs and I too needed 4.

[mynaemisjonas]

Word clocks are kind of a bad idea. You should read up on it. I wasted money on silly bnc cabling. Right now my profire lightbridge and nuendo 8 ch converter are sync'd to my rosetta 800 via adat. They are all using their own word clock respectively but are in sync with eachother. No clicks, no pops. The recording i did before realizing this was full of jitter. Which was a pain to edit out. Maybe rethink the whole thing?

[mynaemisjonas]

It might depend on your unique setup though

[Dark star Balla]

Originally Posted by mynaemisjonas

Word clocks are kind of a bad idea. You should read up on it. I wasted money on silly bnc cabling. Right now my profire lightbridge and nuendo 8 ch converter are sync'd to my rosetta 800 via adat. They are all using their own word clock respectively but are in sync with eachother. No clicks, no pops. The recording i did before realizing this was full of jitter. Which was a pain to edit out. Maybe rethink the whole thing?

I've never used a wc before but I think I have too many pieces trying to eliminate the clicks, jitters & occasional pops. When I try to run my DAW in 48 or 96K I get speed ups and jitters like crazy. I mainly use a FW-1884 & DA-7 but now I'm adding an 828MKII to the mix.

[NothingTheory]

Originally Posted by mynaemisjonas

Word clocks are kind of a bad idea. You should read up on it. I wasted money on silly bnc cabling. Right now my profire lightbridge and nuendo 8 ch converter are sync'd to my rosetta 800 via adat. They are all using their own word clock respectively but are in sync with eachother. No clicks, no pops. The recording i did before realizing this was full of jitter. Which was a pain to edit out. Maybe rethink the whole thing?

I have never heard this before. I dont think there would be multiple $5k range word clocks on the market for high end if they were a bad idea. What is the source of this ?

Not saying there is no other way though, but it has been rock solid for me.

[donsolo]

The theory as to why word clocks are bad is that you're asking the converter to catch up with the clock which may actually lead to more jitter and distortion in the top end.

That being said, many people LIKE that sound.

I run an external Lucid Gen192x.

The thing about running an external clock is if you're doing everything by optical, ADAT carries word clock information but I still run an external off BNC because I find it to be a more stable setup.

I think where you introduce more problems is if you don't know how to switch your gear to clock slave which does in fact, cause problems.

I don't think a $200 clock is going to be more stable than any single piece's internal clock, you should try to use one piece as the clock and sync the others to that though.

[NothingTheory]

Originally Posted by donsolo

The theory as to why word clocks are bad is that you're asking the converter to catch up with the clock which may actually lead to more jitter and distortion in the top end.

That being said, many people LIKE that sound.

I run an external Lucid Gen192x.

The thing about running an external clock is if you're doing everything by optical, ADAT carries word clock information but I still run an external off BNC because I find it to be a more stable setup.

I think where you introduce more problems is if you don't know how to switch your gear to clock slave which does in fact, cause problems.

I don't think a $200 clock is going to be more stable than any single piece's internal clock, you should try to use one piece as the clock and sync the others to that though.

Ok thats interesting, thanks. but the converters have to have clocks so i guess i dont get the difference between internal or external over a cable at the speed of light.

anyways, the problem for me was less about a reliable source and more about how do i get many multiple devices to sync. splitting bnc caused issues. using multiple methods caused issues ( combo of bnc, adat, aes, etc out of my digi 003 for example). having something with 4 separate outs that all my devices could use was the trick. I dont have to split or chain my main devices, and if i do add something its not the 5th or 6th downstream or split device. it just works and i can spend time in the daw and not fiddling with gear.

[donsolo]

Originally Posted by NothingTheory

Ok thats interesting, thanks. but the converters have to have clocks so i guess i dont get the difference between internal or external over a cable at the speed of light.

anyways, the problem for me was less about a reliable source and more about how do i get many multiple devices to sync. splitting bnc caused issues. using multiple methods caused issues ( combo of bnc, adat, aes, etc out of my digi 003 for example). having something with 4 separate outs that all my devices could use was the trick. I dont have to split or chain my main devices, and if i do add something its not the 5th or 6th downstream or split device. it just works and i can spend time in the daw and not fiddling with gear.

I've never met a converter without an internal clock.

The difference is the stability of the clock. A less stable clock will cause jitter. BNC is probably the way to go but you need to daisy chain the stuff, not split.

[NothingTheory]

Originally Posted by donsolo

I've never met a converter without an internal clock.
BNC is probably the way to go but you need to daisy chain the stuff, not split.

We may be talking semantics but for BNC the proper way is to use T connectors and termination resistors. in fact the ART syncGen unit comes with more than you'll probably need. Termination resistors are CRUCIAL and I've seen several other threads recommending them in every case, even a singe point to point.

Going into a device "IN" and chaining out of a device "OUT" to another device is a bad idea, at least for low end gear. In particular the ART DIGITAL MPA pretty much would not work for me at all in this manner. Overall , If its a pass through the termination impedance never seems to be what you need and if its an active store and forward method ( via a chip ) then you get latency. Going one way BNC and the other via Light also is a bad idea because the chip that converts from electrons to photons also has latency.

The problem with using T connectors is depending on the impedance of the end devices you use may or may not be able to chain 5 or 6 devices from a single source and that was one of the problems I was having.

So to the original OPs question all I can say is what I've experienced, which is tribal knowledge, so with however many grains of salt you'd like. But I bought the ART SyncGen out of desperation because I was having so many issues. I bought it as a stop gap until I figured out what better clock I wanted to buy at some higher price... and I can say that all my problems completely disappeared. Gone Poof. That was over a year ago and I completely forgot about buying a better clock and have been spending my cash on other gear until such point that I again notice that that piece of gear might not be up to snuff... but so far its working well for me.

the specs on the ART is less than 100pS of Jitter. The Black Lion Unit appears to be 1-10pS and is the other unit I was looking at.

[recordinghopkins]

If you have more than one digital device, they can't all run on their internal clocks, obviously. So all but one of your pieces of digital gear will always run on an external WC source. It's not a sacrifice to provide a master clock and slave all digital pieces to it.

WC over BNC is more reliable and leads to less jitter than WC over ADAT.

A star configuration with dedicated lines to each device ought to be the first place to start, then T-connections when you run out of WC outputs.

Some devices are self terminating (syncgen) so unused WC outputs don't need a terminating resistor.

[mynaemisjonas]

3 devices syncing only with adat here, no problems.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by Dark star Balla

I've never used a wc before but I think I have too many pieces trying to eliminate the clicks, jitters & occasional pops. When I try to run my DAW in 48 or 96K I get speed ups and jitters like crazy. I mainly use a FW-1884 & DA-7 but now I'm adding an 828MKII to the mix.

If you are connecting these devices via ADAT you are already sending a sync signal. But you have to select which of your devices is the Master (basically, which clock you are going to follow) and make the other devices Slaves. You cannot have two set to Master. So the trick is to find out which of your devices is supposed to have the best clock, and use that as the master. It is as simple as making that selection in the various apps for the devices in your signal chain. Done deal, no cost. You've already paid for a clock, there is one in each of your A/Ds. I don't see where adding another cheap one will improve anything.

[recordinghopkins]

Indeed, my clocking is elaborate with both WC and ADAT used with no problems.

[Dark star Balla]

I think I've narrowed it down to the Art syncgen & Lucid CLKx6 (mainly because of the AES/EBU connections) tho I do not know what purpose they'll serve on a clock. But an added bonus? Right?? The 2 users of the syncgen make good cases especially price. But I would like to know the purpose of those SPDIF & AES/EBU connections first before making a final decision.

[KRStudio]

spidif and AES/EBU are digital formats just like ADAT. If you do not use these formats they will not be of use to you.

[Dark star Balla]

Oh I know what they are. I use them. I meant I didn't know what purpose they served connected to a clock

[KRStudio]

OK, sorry about that. Both formats also carry WC info. You could hook up an Apogee x series over AES/EBU and the Apogee will read the WC info while you use the BNC connectors for other gear. Same with SPIDIF.

[recordinghopkins]

Yep. The Spdif connections are for syncing gear which has no wordclock input, but does have an unused spdif input. No audio, only clock signal.

[totalgear]

What about a Tandy alarm clock second hand for $10? Seriously one would benefit more by doing own research to understand the core principles first.

[Dark star Balla]

@KRStudio & recordinghopkins Thanks I understand now. @ tg why post on a topic if you have nothing useful or constructive to contribute? This is research asking questions! Don't hijack my post. I would not do it to you.