Axe-FX as a master word clock?

[TimmyM]

Just wondering if you could use the Axe-FX as a master word clock like Apogee's Big Ben?

TimmyM

 

[guittarzzan]

IF you're recording using digital out on the Axefx, you need to have it be the master or you get some little artifacts, at least I do. If you have multiple pieces of digital gear, then I don't see how you'd use it like a Big ben as it's digital outs are very limited and it has no bnc connectors.

Personally, I think unless a person is running a bunch of low end digital gear in their set up, the master clock thing is more hype than anything. Some guys swear by them and some say they're a waste of money so you make up your own mind.

 

[shasha]

I konw that by using SPDIF out into my soundcard and setting the soundcard as slave I got very noticeable jitter. It's basically unusable. I'm not real sure about the AES/EBU output, but without having a word clock input I am not going to invest in a AES/EBU interface.

But the fact that Cliff even recommends against using the digital output was enough to kill my dreams of staying digital throughout my signal path.

 

[octatonic]

[quote="guittarzzan"
Personally, I think unless a person is running a bunch of low end digital gear in their set up, the master clock thing is more hype than anything. Some guys swear by them and some say they're a waste of money so you make up your own mind.[/quote]

FWIW, I've done a fair bit of testing with high-end converters (Digi 192, Apogee, Prism, Larvy) & the Big Ben when I was deciding what DAW to change to (from PT HD).
The results were varied with some unusual surprises.

I have a Rosetta 800 and the Big Ben definitely improved the stereo imaging when I used it.
It also helped with the Digi 192.
Didn't really help with the Larvy and Prisms.

A lack of wordclock on the Axe means for my setup I essentially won't use the digital out, ever.
The analog converters sound great though so really (both figuratively and actually) no loss.

 

[porieux]

I konw that by using SPDIF out into my soundcard and setting the soundcard as slave I got very noticeable jitter. It's basically unusable. I'm not real sure about the AES/EBU output, but without having a word clock input I am not going to invest in a AES/EBU interface.

But the fact that Cliff even recommends against using the digital output was enough to kill my dreams of staying digital throughout my signal path.

Are you sure you aren't running into a problem of 44.1khz vs. the native 48khz of the Axe-FX?
My Apogee Ensemble has a real time Sample Rate Conversion (SRC) function and I don't get any clicks on the SPDIF out even though the Axe is not the Master.
This is only for output though, haven't tried digital in to the Axe.

 

[shasha]

I konw that by using SPDIF out into my soundcard and setting the soundcard as slave I got very noticeable jitter. It's basically unusable. I'm not real sure about the AES/EBU output, but without having a word clock input I am not going to invest in a AES/EBU interface.

But the fact that Cliff even recommends against using the digital output was enough to kill my dreams of staying digital throughout my signal path.

Are you sure you aren't running into a problem of 44.1khz vs. the native 48khz of the Axe-FX?
My Apogee Ensemble has a real time Sample Rate Conversion (SRC) function and I don't get any clicks on the SPDIF out even though the Axe is not the Master.
This is only for output though, haven't tried digital in to the Axe.

I set the clock on my soundcard to external and it shows up as 48kHz as soon as the Axe-FX is turned on so it's changing it. I don't know about what happens in terms of processing on the chip itself although it's supposedly capable of 192kHz so it shouldn't be struggling to keep up with 48kHz and it's supposed to be 24-bit so that shouldn't be an issue.

Of course the stupid card doesn't allow direct monitoring for SPDIF in so I have to use an editor and enable an audio track set to monitor to even hear it. But that would be the way that I would record anyway and it gets some high end jitter in there with occasional pops.

I would have upgraded my soundcard to try to get around this, but I've read on more than a few threads in here that without a master word clock it's likely to happen anyway and since the Axe-FX doesn't have a word clock input it sounds like a waste of effort and probably money.

I've got a nice Digigram 882HR at work that I have to put into a box anyway. I may just see if I can use the AES/EBU output of the Axe-FX successfully with that. But from what I understand even the Digigram needs to have everything in the system locked to a master word clock to be 100% stable. It's just the nature of digital. You've got multiple devices with all of these clock pulses floating around and anything that's just a fraction off is going to potentially cause and issue.