Understanding wordclocking

- I'd like to take a second to talk about wordclock.…if this isn't something that you're familiar with,…let me take a second to talk about what it is…and how important proper wordclock can be.…If you have multiple simultaneous…digital connections in your studio,…like S/PDIF, Lightpipe, etc,…you have to have a single clock source.…If multiple devices are trying to be the master clock,…you'll experience pops,…clicks or sometimes chirps in your audio.…The solution is usually to make sure…that you only have one master clock,…and that all slave units…are getting a clean clocking signal.…Ever seen movies from the early 1900s?…Back in the days of hand-cranked cameras,…it was impossible to get the shutter speed…to be perfectly even.…

The result was a moving image that when…played back at a constant shutter speed, seemed jittery.…The motion was often jerky and unnatural,…and this was due to imperfections…in the original film speed.…The same thing happens in digital audio.…The more jitter that's present in clocksource,…the less accurate the resulting conversion will be.…