I've never worried much about timing in my digital audio equipment because I just make composer demos. If I need pro quality recordings, I go into a studio. However:

Recently I took a track (.WAV file) I made from BIAB into the studio, to use along with live recording. The BIAB tempo on that track was 122 bpm. Yet when the recording engineer loaded it into ProTools, we couldn't get the BIAB track to line up fully with a click track at 122 bpm. He then measured my track at 121.896. He used the Elastic Audio function of ProTools to align my track so we could proceed. So:

Why does this happen?

I've had other difficulties of tracks wandering slightly off time at the ends of songs, but never considered it to be caused by my equipment (see my signature). I just use 44.1 and either 16 or 24-bit recording, nothing so exotic like 98 or 192 where I might expect to run into problems.

If I used a word clock accessory, like this: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SyncGen
would that prevent the problem?

Thanks for any advice!

ps Word clocks seem to come in all prices, with the basic one above priced at $100 but you can pay THOUSANDS! If you think I do need one and have recommendations, I'm listening.

BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors