I'm routinely driving LAW from an external SMPTE source, specifically: SMPTE striped on a Tascam 238 8-track into a Philip Rees TS1 tape sync. unit and on into the PC midi interface. I've been using this setup for three or four years with great success and reliability. Recently I've had a failure with two songs, both recorded on the same tape, whereby one day, they both failed to sync. properly. They locked up OK, but with the analog audio on tape slightly retarded. I verified that the SMPTE offset for song position 1 1 1 1 hadn't moved, and all the obvious things connection wise. After many frutsrating and abortive investigations, I've finally established that if I move the SMPTE offset in the Logic songs forward by two frames, e.g. from 00:00:05:00.00 to 00:00:05:02.00, then it regains the proper sync. What totally baffles me is what could possibly have caused this. As I understand it, the stripe on the tape provides an absolute time reference, so even if there was a minor drop-out, the song as a whole would be fine. And why both songs on this tape, but no others? One possible clue: these two songs both have continuously varying tempi, whereas other songs which still seem OK have a constant tempo. In a sense, now I've found the appropriate offset to patch things up, my immediate problem has gone away; but without understanding what caused it, I have no guarantee it might not drift again (most likely the day I come to master the songs!). I'd be *very* interested to hear from anyone who's had a similar experience, or who can offer any thoughts. Extra clue: more or less coincident with the above, the main drive motor on my 238 went down (ouch! expensive replacement), though I can't see how this could possibly be relevant. Both of these events occurred not very long after a session where I had temporarily disconnected the 238<->TS1 connection in order to master some old non-MIDI recordings with audio on track 8. I confess I re-patched the TS1 to the track 8 output 'hot' (i.e. without powering everything down), and I have a nagging and paranoid doubt that maybe this is all my fault. However, if there *was* an electrical spike, whilst I could see how it might have compromised the motor controller board, I can't see how it could have moved the tape stripe by two frames!!! Robin Bailey Cambridge UK