• ESE
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Topic: Fireface 800 wordclock Master or Slave?

Hi I have been using my Fireface 800 for over 5 years without any problems and really like the sound quality. I have been exclusively using the analogue inputs until now. I have recently purchased a Audient Mico preamp that I plan to hook up via Spdif and possibly use a wordclock cable. Which is the best way to hook up these two devices? Will there be any compromise to the audio quality of the Fireface Analogue to Digital conversion by setting the Audient as Master? Likewise is there likely to be any performance degradation of the Mico preamp by that being set as slave? Any help would be much appreciated.

  • ESE
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Re: Fireface 800 wordclock Master or Slave?

Audient have just informed me that converters generally speaking work best from their internal clock and confirmed that this was definitely the case with the Mico. I am hoping with SteadyClock the RME converters will work the same in slave mode. Would I be better hooking up the Mico via the analogue connections to the Fireface?

  • vinark
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Re: Fireface 800 wordclock Master or Slave?

Maybe a flexible solution would be best. When using the preamp use it as a master. When not (turn it off) and set the fireface as master. Unless you do this several times a day it is not to much trouble. If you just like the sound of the audient, you could indeed also hook it up analogue. In reality it all won´t make to much of a difference, you need really really good mics amps and speakers to hear difference in clocking. The whole clocking issue surfaced when some old digi (protools) converters improved when clocked externaly, but that was decades ago and that interface had a nasty clock.

Vincent, Amsterdam
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  • ESE
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Re: Fireface 800 wordclock Master or Slave?

Thanks for the help. I have done a lot of testing and each unit works best from it's own clock. I have spare analogue inputs available so I'm hooking the Mico up to use the Fireface converters which sound better in my opinion. If I need more inputs I will hook up the Mico via spdif and clock it from the Fireface as Master.