it was hard for me to tell at first becuae i made so many upgrades so quickly, bu tlooking back at prevous mixes played with and without the ben there is even a differnce, def worht the money if you ask me, it is the heart of the studio to a certain degree. i took it over the synce by digi for my hd rig, i love it, i am synce 2 p2's to it right nwo and never have had any kind of probelm!!!!!!
if you are locking ore than multiple peices ie.adt to your 002 i highly recomned it. also check out the lynx aurora 8, it has a great clock and very good convertes for a little more than the ben

Like many things involving audio, it just depends. Often times it will help but there are many times when it won't and the internal clock of the digital device will be better. Not all digital gear is designed or capable to be better using an external clock source.

The single biggest advantage of the Big Ben (and other clock generators) is when it comes to using multiple digital devices.

I resist the belief in claims that a clock generator will make things sound better/cleaner.

If a product has a faulty clock, you will see it (err, hear it...) If it's steady, it will work. Jitter is a completely different thing. Certain products are jitter prone, but most current-day clocks in AD/DA converters are rather jitter free by their nature.

I submit that, if you require an external clock to make things sound better, something is wrong.

If you have multiple digital devices, a clock generator is a must-have!

J.

i have an 002r and a mackie 800r does that constitute as having multi digital devices?

yes it does constitute having 2 digital devices,t eh way you would have to sync the 002 is through the optical cable daisy chained from the mackie, which isnt the best way of doing things sncing wise. that is one of my biggest problem when i had the 002 lack of options

should you use an external clock to connect a digital mixer to a computer?

yamaha aw4416 mixer w/converters ---> adat lightpipe ----> RME hammerfall PCI soundcard ----> PC.

(the yamaha and the RME both have BNC word clock connectors by the way)

I use an Apogee ensemble and a Behringer ultragain pro 8 digital, my initial clock choice was the ensembles(however I've heard people advising to use the pro 8 and slave the ensemble?) I've connected these 2 units optically and set the pro 8 to ADAT, I've been told that this way of syncing 2 clocks is fine. When I connect them with the coax it doesn't seem to make any real diffrence, have I got the pro 8 on the wrong setting, have I connected something badly?? An external clock unit is defo outa the budget for a while, I was thinking that my ensemble would do the job, I right to be thinkin that people?

It's not easy chasing you round different forums with this clocking problem. What's the latest? Does using two lightpipes make everything work?

Cucco, post: 181030 wrote: I submit that, if you require an external clock to make things sound better, something is wrong.

I agree with this. The reasoning, according to people I trust, is that if a device has a clock so badly designed that an external one would be an improvement then the device probably also has a badly designed buffer for the external clock negating any improvement. So only in the unlikely case that the internal clock sucks but the external clocking buffer is good will an external clock offer an objective improvement. For practically all gear using an external clock can never be objectively better than the internal one.

But that leaves open the possibility that the signal degradation caused by external clocking could be perceived subjectively as sounding better.

The two light pipes have been connected for a while, however a couple of important pennies have dropped this week for me. I can now find the signal being produced by the pro8 in my maestro mixer, these signals are visabul but not pheasable, the DI signals produced in the Ensemble are noticebly better-louder and stronger.
so now in maestro (Apogee) my mixer table is all spoken for apart from input's 9 and 10, where the s/pdif signal is carried from. This connection is the one which I was referring to as a posibul clock connection between the 2 units, both have an input port for this connection, and both have some sort of switching option adjasent to these ports(Apogee has a small WC in on/off button set to off. And Behringer has a multi switch currently set to ADAT.)
Setting the in and output screens for the mixers is getting slowly easier, I'm, still possative that something's on the Control, settings screen isn't set correctly.
A reccuring problem seems to be getting a signal from I tunes, setting ch.1's input and out from mono to stereo tends to sort it

You can't use S/PDIF to clock the Pro-8 Digital as that device does not have S/PDIF I/O. The only way of making use of the Ensemble S/PDIF inputs is to get a 2-channel device that has S/PDIF outputs. An example of this would be an Audient Mico pre-amp.

If your clocking problem is solved by using an ADAT input clock to the Pro-8, you now have to focus on getting all 16 analog channels to perform in the way you want. If you can set up your DAW software to produce a 1KHz sinewave, you could take it out of a TRS jack on the Ensemble and try plugging it into each of the 16 available line inputs to see if you have any level anomalies. If it turns out that, for example, all of the Pro-8 channels are distorted, glitchy or low in amplitude in a way that cannot be brought up to level by adjustment of the gain control, then that points to a further fault.

so with regard's to my mixer, would you advise me to do nothing at all wi chanel's 9 and 10(spdif)?.
in the control settings options, the uv22hr option block is set to spdif coax out and this is the only setting which can not be changed to any of the other options given in the option block ( it's also the only setting option which refers to the spdif connection? Does this mark any significance?

With the equipment you have mentioned that you have, there is nothing you can do with the S/PDIF input other than loop it round to the S/PDIF output.

I believe the UV22HR setting is for truncating and dithering an S/PDIF output to 16-bits, but is only active for a MiniDAC on a Mini-FW card. If so, it must take the biscuit for the most unmemorable name.