“I’ve heard it both ways. I have an analog multitrack, a digital multitrack and a DAW I want to sync together. Some people say I should slave the analog machines to the digital machine and others say I should slave the digital machines to the analog machine. Which is it?”
In general, it is best to slave an analog machine to your digital equipment. The main reason is that the digital stuff will have more speed stability so you may as well reference everything to the most stable source (probably the clock of the DAW). There are, however, exceptions and perfectly good reasons to do it the other way.
One of the main reasons why many people do it the other way is the cost of the hardware. A synchronizer that will control your analog machine (assuming it can be controlled externally) as a slave is probably much more expensive than a device that will sync your digital equipment to it. Due to this and other factors it is actually quite common (and often considered acceptable) to make the analog multitrack the master and have the digital equipment sync to it. The more digital equipment you have in your studio (digital mixers, processors, etc.) the more trouble you are likely to have with this type of setup. The problem comes from all of this equipment having to continuously change its clock rate to stay synchronized together. Sure your DAW may (or may not) be able to follow the speed inconsistencies of your analog machine just fine. But when you try using this varying clock to drive six other devices things often get a little wacky. This is why many pro studios that have many different types of machines around use a master clock source (known as house sync) and then the machines can get their location points from any one machine, be it analog or digital.
If this is all too confusing, don’t worry. We pulled those hairs out years ago so just give us a call and we’ll help you figure out the best way to tackle these issues in your system.