im still at a loss for the practical use of TC for multitrack audio purposes.
please correct me if im wrong, but from what i understand after a lot of reading and a little bit of use, timecode does absolutely nothing to lock two audio signals together at the sample clock level
basically it allows start-time metadata ( from a resettable and sync-able internal clock) to be stamped into the file for use later.
practical use is synching a large number of audio and video files at the frame level.
since most TC signals use something around 30 fps, were talking about 33ms when off by one frame. apparently multichannel audio will start to have audible effects in the 10-20ms range
hardwired TC solutions seem more solid than "jamming" which is basically sybching two clocks and then letting them free-run after that
none of the sonic foundry audio software i was using would even read TC, i just started playing with adobe audition which apparently does, but i havent messed with that yet.
for our typical use (long files of similar length), synching the beginnings up visually in a multitrack wave editor, and stretching/shrinking as needed to make the end match
which is a compromise relative to either running multiple ADs from the same word clock, or using a multitrack recorder with single clock.