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Now the reason I ask this (please answer truthfully) is that I visited a music shop today. The shop in question sells quite a bit of pro equipment, among that Pro Tools HD systems. And the person I met had never seen a terminated word-clock. They did not have any T-couplings and no terminations in store. Maybe it was only that single person, but I'm in doubt.

Anyway, if you do not know what I mean. Wordclock should run on 75 Ohm coaxial cables, with BNC connectors. At the last receiver you should really put a 75 Ohm resistor, generally inside a special terminator plug. A few audio interfaces has a built-in switchable termination, very few though.

Anyway, do you terminate?

Gunnar

Comments

ghellquist Sat, 01/08/2005 - 15:13

Seems like a valid question to me (I did pose it did I not).

Just found a thread about word-clock a few forums up. The advice was to connect:

in on box -- through box -- out of box -- cable -- in on next box.

No terminations, no T-connectors. Going through a box that destroys the signal.

I mean, yes, this is the way to chain midi signals. Not so Word-clock.

(Sorry, getting late, sounding a bit ... well, not meant that way anyway. One of the few things I actually know anything about).

Gunnar.

AudioGaff Sat, 01/08/2005 - 18:46

Nobody said anything about it not being a vaild question? WC was always meant to be chained just as as MIDI, but just like MIDI, what has been learned is that using a house clock with multi outputs and distributing WC out to each device without chaining, or chaining no more than once, provides less latency and/or jitter resulting in a better quality sound with less artifacts.