BIG BEN WORD CLOCK PRO

With the Big Ben driving the whole studio, we never have clocking problems, and our digital audio remains pristine. The Rosetta 800's sound fantastic (and personally, I wish I had gone with a pair of Rosettas instead of the Digidesign 192 I/O that I have in my Boston studio), and they incorporate a technology that Apogee calls Intelliclock for jitter reduction. Because we also have many other digital devices in this studio, it was a no-brainer to go with a Big Ben master word clock to keep everything in sync.

BIG BEN WORD CLOCK PRO

At our New York music-production facility, the main room has a Pro Tools HD rig with Apogee Rosetta 800 converters (equipped with X-Series-HD cards for direct connection to the HD cards). We've been avid users of Apogee's products at The Lodge for many years. If you sync all your digital devices off a single master clock (assuming all your devices have some way of receiving an external clock-see my comments on the Drawmer clock below), you will never need to change the sync settings of your devices, nor will you make the mistake of having any devices out of sync. There's also the very strong argument for convenience and consistency. Not everyone agrees, and I think ultimately, as with any gear decision, you'll have to listen for yourself to see if your setup sounds better (or at least different) with an external WC.

In a situation like this, an external WC can make a huge difference in the sound that you ultimately hear, especially if the D/A converter has a well-designed PLL circuit or if there's a jitter-reduction system ahead of the DAC circuit. But Bob also explains clearly (and cites ample evidence) that monitoring a signal thru daisy-chained digital devices (with each downstream device sync'ed to the embedded clock in the digital stream that originates at the A/D converter) can result in significant amounts of accumulated jitter at the final stage of conversion back to analog. Second, an external WC signal must be 'followed' by a phase-locked loop (PLL) circuit in any downstream device if that PLL is poorly designed or overtaxed, the PLL will exhibit more jitter than an internal crystal-based clock will. First, cables can distort the signal and therefore add jitter. If you've read Bob Katz's informative articles about jitter and his recommendations on clocking (you'll understand that in certain situations, it's better to sync your A/D converter using an internal clock instead of an external word clock (WC) for a couple reasons.

Big ben word clock