Clocking Profile to incoming MADI

[edgoguen]

Hi all-

I teach at a school that has a very extensive Live Sound program and we are on the verge of our final fibre optic transition campus wide. Our HD production truck will in the future no longer be parked right outside whatever venue we are working at on campus. It will stay parked in the same spot for all campus broadcasts.

This means that on shows with multiple consoles and mix positions we will be running fibre optic MADI everywhere. Our current problem is that we have no interest in running Word Clock from one side of campus to the other, which wouldn't be an issue if the Profile would just Clock to incoming MADI.

We can send AES Silent (Dars) to the venue into a BigBen and spit out W/C that way but I'd rather not do that, and I'm not sure even the implications of sending AES Silent that far.

Is that the only way? Is there really no way to get the Profile to Clock to incoming MADI?

[Brent Lind]

Although Madi streams can carry an embedded clock signal, according to Avid documentation, the Venue Madi card will require a dedicated word clock connection. Unfortunate, but compared to running optical across campus, running coaxial clock lines is extremely affordable.

Only alternative I can think if is having a Madi router at the desk that takes in the incoming madi signal and spits out madi as well as a dedicated clock signal. RME makes a device that would likely work, but putting one in every facility still sounds more expensive than running BNC all over campus.

Another consideration obviously would be coaxial word clock signal cable length limitations, which you would want to research.

[Brent Lind]

One last thought, it strikes me that Dante might be a protocol worth considering for all this distrobution, as it would use Ethernet instead of optical or coaxial. A KT network bridge could convert Dante to Madi at the console. Lots of ifs and buts in that scenario, but it might be worth looking into.

[Sheldon Radford]

Hi,

If Profile is receiving MADI only, then a word clock connection is required. An alternate approach that mitigates the need for a word clock connection is to synch the sending device to a MADI stream output from Profile - this then provides a common clock.

Sheldon