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Originally posted by Magnus Does anyone use the Apogee Big Ben? I was reading up on it and it sounds like it can make a significant improvement in your sound. Was wondering what you all thought of this or if anyone has had any experience in working with it.

They really are the industry standard for a clock source - we use them at work (4 of them) and they rock solid but not much point unless all other things are equal and you have a lot of gear that relies on various sync sources all talking to each other. We use them as we have a large digital desk in each room, several PTHD 3 systems all connected by a digital pacthing system.

Yes they will make a difference but probably not enough to warrant the purchase if your composing EDM in your spare room on a mac with even a decent prosumer soundcard. You'll notice more of a difference by spending that money ($1300) on better monitors or soundcard etc.

For instance if you're using an RME fireface interface, the clock is excellent on them so there really would not be much point at all in getting a bigben, unless you're having sync issues due to the sheer amount of kit you have that need a unified clock source.

WTF does it do? And how does one clock sound better than another?

[joke]Mine just tells time. [/joke]

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It makes the clocking in your soundcards and other digital gear more even. So the samples (as in sample rate samples) are taken at a regular interval.

Obviously if your samples aren't taken at a regular interval (theres too much jitter on the clock) you get strange distortion artifacts because the waveform gets distorted.

Its also important to have all your gear with digital outputs running in sync, otherwise you get distortion from the clocks sampling at different times. External clock can help that.

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Originally posted by kitphillips It makes the clocking in your soundcards and other digital gear more even. So the samples (as in sample rate samples) are taken at a regular interval. Obviously if your samples aren't taken at a regular interval (theres too much jitter on the clock) you get strange distortion artifacts because the waveform gets distorted. Its also important to have all your gear with digital outputs running in sync, otherwise you get distortion from the clocks sampling at different times. External clock can help that.

Very confusing, but I think I understand. From what I get, unless you have a bunch of non-midi external gear, it's not needed.

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Thanks all for the informative posts it helps makes sense of this thing.

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Originally posted by alanzo Very confusing, but I think I understand. From what I get, unless you have a bunch of non-midi external gear, it's not needed.

Not entirely true, midi time commands are a bit inaccurate as well. For small studio setups however, the benefits of having a clock are next to none. Just like you said .

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If less is more think about how much more more would be. -Frasier

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Originally posted by Storyteller Not entirely true, midi time commands are a bit inaccurate as well. For small studio setups however, the benefits of having a clock are next to none. Just like you said .

That's what everyone says, so I'll probably never get one. But damnit, I still don't understand. At what magic point does a studio go from not needing a clock, to needing one.

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its very easily understandeble with a graphic drawing of bits and bites out of sync and how summing of them will be. i cant find any examples now tho maybe someone else can?

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Originally posted by palm its very easily understandeble with a graphic drawing of bits and bites out of sync and how summing of them will be. i cant find any examples now tho maybe someone else can?

Well, I know what jitter is, if that helps the explanation.

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Originally posted by alanzo Well, I know what jitter is, if that helps the explanation.

To expand on what kit said, when your soundcard takes "snapshots" of the signal 44,100 times a second (for arguments sake) the soundcard uses a timing mechanism to tell itself exactly when to take those samples of the signal. Now even incredibly small variations in timing (nanoseconds) can make a difference in accuracy of the signal becuase the samples have to be taken so many times a second. So, if you think of one milisecond = 1,000th of a second = 441 samples, you can see how even tiny innacuracies in timing will affect the accuracy of your soundcard, and therefore the sonic quality.

In studio systems where you have several different units all synced, often with their own clock references, those tiny variations (jitter) all add up and become a real problem. If each one is off by a tiny amount, then effectively they could be all relating to the same signal at different time intervals, which can cuase all sorts of artifacts, phasing and colouration issues.

So you use a master clock reference to feed the various units that all have to deal with the same audio signal, so effectively they are all on the same page at the same time.

Jitter is also more of an issue when using various sample rates at the same time. i.e. in film, the score might all be recorded at 44.1k but when you're printing the mix that will go on to a rig that 48k film standard, so having the bigben which can operate and feed at different rates simultaneously is a huge benefit.

To elaborate: Have you ever wondered why, if you get a camcorder and record a TV or computer monitor, you get thse horizontal moving lines or can see the screen refreshing? it's a similar thing - the capture rate of the camcorder is at a different rate of refresh to the screen. But when you see screens on in the background on TV broacasts such as the news etc, they don't do that. That's becuase they use a house sync to make sure everything is in sync with each other.

With small systems, such has home recording studios, an external clock is little benefit, becuase there are few links in the chain ans not much converting done (i.e. just in and out once), so the built in clocks on most cards are decent enough that jitter is not so much of an issue. Also, the higher the samples rate the more need there is for stable clocking, but as EDM producers, we hardly even do it.

RME interfaces have some of the best internal clocks and apogee are good too. Motu are decent, but do benefit from the BLA upgrade mainly becuase of the improved clock. Protools actually have quite shitty clocks considering they so expensive interfaces and that you often are linking them together.

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Originally posted by DJ RANN To expand on what kit said, when your soundcard takes "snapshots" of the signal

signals going into the soundcard from a synth for example?

or the digital out signal being converted to analog by the soundcard?

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Originally posted by DJ RANN In studio systems where you have several different units all synced,

what kind of units?


thanks