The clock shows the current place in the file, as indicated by the transport. In Figure 6.5, “The Qtractor clock”, you can see that the transport is at the beginning of the session, so the clock indicates 0. This clock is configured to show time in minutes and seconds, so it is a time clock. Other possible settings for clocks are to show BBT (bars, beats, and ticks — a MIDI clock), samples (a sample clock), or an SMPTE timecode (used for high-precision synchronization, usually with video — a timecode clock). Some DAWs allow the use of multiple clocks simultaneously.

Note that this particular time clock in Qtractor also offers information about the MIDI tempo and metre (120.0 beats per minute, and 4/4 metre), along with a quantization setting for MIDI recording.