Nic, just to be sure that I am being clear....bear with me....the example I'm using is trying to get two decks synced so that there are no drift issues with the clocks. But I still want the USBPre2 to accept a microphone input. What I am trying to accomplish is getting the unit to lock onto another clocking signal, while being used as a mic preamp. Not just to lock onto the digital input from another deck and output that. So for instance, I'll use the Edirol R-44 for the example. This is a four channel deckthat can accept spdif in on channel 3 & 4. And deck that is able to output a digital spdif signal. So deck 1 has two channels of analog input and two channels of digital spdif input from USBPre2-#1. Then deck 2 has two channels of analog input and two channels of digital Spdif signal from USBPre2-#2. Can I take the spdif input from R-44 #1 and input it into USBPre2-#2 as a clocking only signal while still using it as a standalone mic preamp?
Yes, you can do this. The input source LED's (that show what input source is selected currently) will work as normal, but when a SPDIF input signal is present, the SPDIF input source LED's will illuminate
in addition to the active input source. So if you have an active SPDIF signal coming in and you have both input sources set to mic, both mic input source LED's and both SPDIF input source LED's will be illuminated:
In this same setup, if you switch an input source to SPDIF, it will be indicated by SPDIF being the only input source LED illuminated for that input. Here I switched input 1's source to SPDIF:
This USBPre 2 was in stand-alone mode when I took these shots. The behavior would be identical if it were in interface mode (i.e. connected to a computer as a sound card). The only difference when in interface mode is that the sample rate in the control panel of the computer's OS would need to be set to the same sample rate as the digital signal coming into the USBPre.