Okay, to continue regarding chaining many WC clock devices together as opposed to using a distribution box...
I've got all my BNC t-bars, terminators, and short WC cables, and have found chaining WC devices to be very fiddly. In short, I haven't been able to get it to work "as it should" although I have been able to get it to work with some fudging.
When chaining through a number of units using the t-bars, some problems occur:
A) at some point the WC signal seems to get lost and all the rest of the devices on the chain don't lock.
B) when "A" happens, often the lock will be lost all along the chain, or a good part of it.
C) WC lock can be lost by the first unit in the chain (which will then revert to internal), but everything else later in the chain locks to it fine.
D) WC seems to be very sensitive as far as which devices it "likes" and "doesn't like". Even different version of the same basic model can cause problems.
E) Without fail, WC lock is lost when using an external terminator on the last device rather than its internal termination. Let's just say I've found the chain "hates" external termination.
The units being chained are two digital mixers, Tascam DM-24's, one Akai S6000 sampler and five Akai S5000 samplers. All these units allow WC termination to be turned off. My clock source is an Aardvark AardSync II, the best clock I have.
I have been able to work around these issues by doing the following:
The Tascam's have WC in and out. So I go into the WC in on the first Tascam, then use its WC out to feed the next Tascam. That Tascam WC in has a t-bar connector, and the five Akai S5000's are fed in a chain from there. The WC output of the second Tascam is used to feed the S6000. I did it this way because while the S5000's locked together happily, they didn't when the S6000 was involved. So I had to send it signal separately.
So it's not a pure chain using t-bars only, the WC signal goes through the Tascam's in order to feed units further down the line. I've found this works very reliably. However, I have a question: Do I lose the advantages of chaining the units when using the WC "thru" on the Tascams? In other words, is that basically the same as using a distribution box?
My next challenge is to figure out how to chain my second rack of Akai's.
Incidentally, I do think the Akai's sound better using the AardSync II clock rather than their own internal clocks. Even with my bastardized version of a wordclock chain, I've been able to lock these units to a better clock, something I wasn't able to do otherwise without spending a bundle on another distribution box.
I'll be interested in hearing any suggestions for further troubleshooting. Thanks again for this very informative thread!