Word Clock becomes even more important when connecting two or more digital audio devices that are sending signals to each other. Irregularities in the Clock signal will result in less high frequency definition, poor stereo imaging, and ‘dullness’.
#Word clock free#
It’s vital that this Clock be as steady and free of variations, referred to as jitter, as possible. The digital audio device locks onto it and takes each maximum and minimum value of the wave as the ‘ticking’ of the Clock, marking where each slice of audio starts and ends. Word Clock signals are usually generated by crystal oscillators, which use quartz that resonates at a precise frequency. Word Clock is a continuous square wave pulse running at the sampling frequency. It needs to know what the time is at a granular level. So it’s vitally important the device knows how long 1/96,000 th of a second is when it’s running at 96Khz, and when each fraction of that second starts and stops. So when a digital audio device is converting from analogue to digital, or back again, it is doing so with a certain amount of information (bits) per second, a certain amount of times a second (sample rate). Those two things together are our digital ‘Word’. 16 bit gives us 65,536 possible values, for example, and 24 bit 16,777,216. The amount of times per second it measures the frequency data gives us the sample rate 44.1kHz (44,100 times per second), 48kHz (48,000 time per second), 96kHz (96,000 times per second), and the bit depth (16, 24, 32) gives us the amount of detail it can measure and render amplitude. But what is it exactly?ĭigital audio works by measuring and recording the frequency and amplitude values of analogue audio signals a certain amount of times per second at a set bit rate. Most have Word Clock generators built-in, some have to take their clock signal from another device. Every digital audio device needs a Word Clock.
Poke around in the settings of your digital audio device, and you’ll find Word Clock options.
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