Does anyone know how to set the Motif XF to listen for and sync to an external master digital word clock, e.g. an Apogee Big Ben?

I read in the XF Reference Manual that the XF can sync to Midi Time Code, but what about a digital word clock?

The only documentation I found pertaining to word clock synchronization for the XF refers to connecting the XF to a computer via Firewire (FW16E), then using the Yamaha Steinberg FW (YSFW) driver, you can select a master clock source, but your choices are limited to devices that are daisy-chained to the XF and are compatible with the YSFW driver.

In my setup, I’m trying to play the XF through the S/PDIF coaxial digital out connected to an audio interface device, which is connected to my Windows 7 computer and DAW software. My audio interface supports multiple S/PDIF digital inputs. I also have other digital keyboards which I am connecting through the other available S/PDIF inputs. My goal was to slave/syncrhonize all of these digital keyboards and my audio interface to a master word clock. However, I can’t figure out how to get the Mofif XF to slave to the external clock.

In another scenario, I was thinking of connecting my XF to my DAW using the FW16E, but here again, I wanted to also have my other digital keyboards via my audio interface simultaneously connected into my DAW, and all of this synced to a master word clock. However, there does not seem to be a way to accomplish this.

I’m just trying to keep all of my signals in the digital domain and all syncrhonized. Any insight in how to get this done would be appreciated. If these scenarios are crazy and can’t be done, I’ll learn to work around it.

To make matters worse, one of my digital keyboards has a different sample rate (48kHZ) from the XF, so I was possibly looking at running either the XF or the other keyboard through a sample rate converter. Just another thing to worry about. (sigh)

You cannot synch the SPDIF output to a master word clock, period. There is no clocking input available.

Interfaces with multiple SPDIF inputs have to resynchronize the clocks internally anyway.