Jitter, Clocks and Soundblasters

mensan · Sep 15, 2005, 06:15 PM

Quote:

[...]

Just about any professional studio gear utilizes the proper Master/Slave relationship between digital source devices and converter devices. We did not invent it. The reason it works is that the master clock for the entire system is as close to the converter chip as possible. This is the single most effective way to accomplish jitter-free audio reproduction.

[...]

If you want top possible audio quality, the DAC must be digital Master and the card must be Slaved to the DAC. That's the first and most important prerequisite.

To Slave a soundcard, you have two choices:
--> WordClock (This is a high quality solution.)
--> SuperClock (This is the highest quality solution.)
Only some high-end audio cards have the SuperClock feature.

[...]

Excerpts from www.lessloss.com
Please remember that while this site's content is promotional, I am not in any way affiliated to it, i just wanted to discuss their concepts and their application to our cards.

So, here are my questions:
1) Does anybody know what wordclock and superclock exactly are? Do they exist in our SBs? Is there anyway to get such one port directly from the card's circuits?

2) What about our cards' clocks? I suppose there are many, including the live/audigy drive. How are they related between them?

3) Do we need any such machine to achieve perfect playback? Doesn't the pc work in a way that eliminates jitter?

4) This one interests me the most: Regarding clocks and master/slaves how do things happen while recording with the Audigy?

My card is an Audigy 2 ZS, currently being adapted to my old Audigy drive. Just to let you know

**dj_stick** · Sep 16, 2005, 01:33 AM

1.wordclock is the synchronisation network for professional aduio/video hardware. Consumer cards like the CL series don't have this capability, but the new E-MU cards do

2. CL cards are clock locked at 48khz, and cannot be synchronised easily for multicard usage, howecer i did read somewhere that the audigy cards can be synced via spdif, but i'm not sure how this works
3. This "perfect" playback is referrign to pro-audio, the kind that gets pressed to CD/Vinyl whaterver and sent out to the masses
4. All soundcards have some sort of clock, but not many can be synced to an external source - read qu 2 regarding the audigy series

mensan · Sep 16, 2005, 03:32 AM

Is this where you read about it?

http://alive.singnet.com.sg/musician/aps-rewiring/

It says we can sync the card to an ADC's master clock. At least with a 10k1 on Analog IN 3&4. Is this what i was asking before?

mensan · Sep 16, 2005, 03:34 AM

It may not be external but it still is a high quality input isn't it? Especially if the card syncs to it.

Sep 16, 2005, 03:32 AM	Thread Starter #3
mensan DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 28 Rep Power: 0	Is this where you read about it? http://alive.singnet.com.sg/musician/aps-rewiring/ It says we can sync the card to an ADC's master clock. At least with a 10k1 on Analog IN 3&4. Is this what i was asking before?

Sep 16, 2005, 03:34 AM	Thread Starter #4
mensan DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 28 Rep Power: 0	It may not be external but it still is a high quality input isn't it? Especially if the card syncs to it.