In my free time, such as it is, I indulge my audio interests by recording singers, bands, orchestras and choirs. In years gone by I was happy to lug around a mammoth hard disk recorder fed by a multi-channel mixer, but as I’ve got older the hard physical labour aspect of the process has interested me less and less, and today I’m generally content with a laptop and a compact firewire audio interface. When I need more inputs, I have a separate 8-channel A-D converter that will happily hook up to one of the interface’s two digital inputs.

In the digital domain, synchronisation is everything, and in the audio world that’s provided by a master clock. My 8-channel A-D only provides only a master clock input, activated by a little grey button on the rear panel, but in this case it isn’t a problem. As long as I’m only using one of the two inputs on the interface, the two devices will happily work together. Only if I needed to connect a third piece of equipment would synchronisation become an issue.

That little grey button has always troubled me, though. If I needed a clock input, I’d connect a clock input. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t. The button is surely redundant. The same company also manufactured a cut down version of the same A-D, with fewer functions. But this LE version had two sockets at the back – one for an input and one for an output. No little grey button in sight. Curiouser and curiouser.

In the recording world, inputs are key; you can never have too many. So when I discovered a rather nice two-channel preamp from the same company, offering a host of high end features and functions, I wanted it. The only problem was that it, too, only provided a clock input. With three pieces of equipment in the rig, a master clock would be needed. (I should point out that when I was recounting this same story to the formidable Mrs Simms, who has an extraordinarily high tolerance for the mundane and whose exceptional patience has been honed through years of work with children, both as a mother and a teacher, it was at this point in the tale that her eyes began to glaze over and I distinctly noticed her stifling a yawn. But the devil is in the detail, so bear with me.)

I really didn’t want to have to buy a master clock device, because that’s serious money. In desperation, I fired an email across to technical support at the company asking for advice. Perhaps they had another hidden gem that would solve the problem at a lower price point. I was somewhat vexed when the reply came back to simply use the clock output on my existing A-D. Just to clarify, I responded detailing exactly which model I had, and explaining that it only had an input, activated by the little grey button. No, came the prompt reply, it’s only an input when the button is pressed; otherwise, it’s an output.

Extraordinary. This means either a) technical support are wrong, or b) all the product literature is wrong, as is every bit of info about the product on the company website, and every review of the product I’ve ever read. Certainly I hope option ‘b’ proves to be correct, because it means I can buy my new bit of kit out of the studio maintenance allowance, worry free. The alternative is significant capital expenditure that would require me to make an application through the highest levels of corporate budget control (yes, I’m talking about Mrs Simms again).

So finally we come to the moral of the tale. First, the value of good technical support is almost immeasurable. And second, the importance of correct product literature is paramount; how many sales opportunities must the company have missed because buyers assumed the product was missing a critical function? The devil is always in the detail.