Clocking & Soundcard Questions - WC or ADAT

[joris de man]

Hi Guys,

I've for a while been using an EMU 1820 card with my Nuendo rig. I only use the digital I/O of the card; it pipes with ADAT into a digi ADAT bridge which is wordclocked to my Lucid Genx96-6.

I'm wondering two things:
a) Is there any difference in clocking it to another device with ADAT or clocking it directly with WC?
b) does the quality of the audiocard matter as long as I'm using digital I/O?
I.e would there be any diffference in using a Lynx card as opposed to this EMU one if I'm */only* using digital I/O?

I suppose the Lynx might have less jitter, although I would imagine the Genx to take care of some of that.
I usually work at 48/24

Cheers,

Joe

[feyshay]

I'm confused about your question. What is your EMU clocked to--anything or just internal. If it is not locked onto another digital device (by wordclock or digital input), the EMU must be internally clocking, no?
The digi is obviously clocked to your Lucid. However, the ADAT input is coming from something that is not clocked to the Lucid.

I think what you are getting at is that the Lucid clocks the Digi and the Digi clocks the EMU, right? Like a daisy chain.
It would be best to clock your soundcard to the Lucid directly. If you cannot, then theoretically the Lynx would lead to improvement, since you could clock everything to it. Or get a Big Ben (which has more than just BNC out). You could clock your EMU to the Big Ben by spdif.

I've daisy chained in the past, though, and found no difference in audio quality.
For example, I have a mini-me clocking a MOTU Traveler and a Kurzweil KSP8. I then have a POD XT Pro clocked to the Traveler (but notice no degradation in sound--other than the shitty degradation of amp sim).

[joris de man]

Hey Fey,

Sorry if I wasn't clear; but yes, that's exactly what I'm doing.
The Emu is clocked via Adat to the Digi which in turn is WC clocked to the Lucid.
The reason I was asking was because I was wondering whether it would be useful to get the WC mod for the Emu or not.
The genx has 6 wc outputs which are all in use at the moment.

The other thing I'm wondering is if there are any differences in terms of quality to soundcards when they are being used digitally.
I would think not, but perhaps an enlightened soul can inform me about this

Cheers,

Joe

[feyshay]

I'd be curious to hear others' responses. I would think that your interface would be the most important thing to have clocked properly, since everything goes through it. I've heard daisy chaining is not a good thing, and that is an important part of your chain.
Let's see what comments you get on daisy chaining. I think the problem here is that the quality of your EMU clocking will depend on the quality of your DIGI clocking.