Recording from CD player by external clock sync via S/PDIF

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hello to everyone.

I’m new to audacity and I would try replacing the old recording software I’ve been using with this great piece of software.

The matter is, due to a measure project I’m involved in, I’m bounded to record audio signals, typically coming from the analog output of a CD player, using as the recording master clock the one which is available from the S/PDIF digital output of the above CD player.

To do this I take advantage of two different external audio cards: Creative EMU 0404 USB and, as an alternative, Digidesign MBox2.

Indeed the EMU driver on Windows XP (which I’m going to try on Windows 7) is able to “lock” the audio card to the external S/PDIF clock, and then I can record the cd player analog analog output with Cubase LE (in bundle with the audio card).

Similarly, the MBox2 comes with Protools 7 LE, which integrates drivers and has similar functions.

The issue is, these pieces of SW and drivers are intended for Windows XP, while I would try to have the same behaviour on Windows 7 and later. Furthermore, I would try to avoid using proprietary SW like Cubase and Protools for just recording audio.

All in all I was wondering if Audacity could record analog output (from a CD player) by locking the sampling clock to the external P/PDIF available to the external sound card via CD player S/PDIF output, allowing me to use and propose a much more easier to get audio software like audacity to record synchronized signals from CD players.

Thanks in advance to everyone,

Best regards, Daniele

2

Audacity does not communicate directly with the sound card drivers. It connects to the sound card via the computer’s sound system. You would therefore need to lock the computer sound system to the S/PDIF clock. On Windows I think that you can only do that if you are recording the audio data from the S/PDIF input.