Correct, an XL1 tape may play perfect from tape but not from a NLE sytem... and
       here's my lecture...

       Audio drift always has to do with how video is stored on a computer. On tape it
       comes out in sequence because it must - it's linear and gets pulled off the tape
       at the same time all the time. On computer the audio is stored as multiple data
       streams, and unless the data streams are always predictable, or the coders
       actually added special logic to keep the streams in sync, there can be drift.
       Basically, the engineers must replace the physical aspect of tape being linear
       with a logic and data solution that will force the two streams to be in sync. If
       all of the data streams possible met a certain specification they would natuarally
       and simply sync themselves up, but as the world is less than perfect...

       What Martin is mentioning is that most DV solutions on the market only looked at
       the basic DV spec and did not take into account that some MFRs might stray a bit
       from the original standards. The engineers simply thought that the concept
       mentioned by Andy would be good enough - that in the end the streams would average
       out and sync up. If the MFRs stuck to a single spec that would be true. Then along
       comes some equipment like the XL1 which strays from the specs a tiny bit and it
       causes noticable drift in the audio of long segments. (We won't even mention those
       analog systems that can't even sync up streams using their own encoding specs.)

       The logical solution for the NLE engineers is to implement a method of timecode
       sync or data rate analysis and encoding that will keep the audio signals properly
       in sync when transferred from tape to the computer. Remember that DVCAM and DVPRO
       are their own standards. They alter the DV spec to some degree also. 

       DVCAM was designed to have a more accurate ability to sync sound to a specific
       frame of video, but if the data streams do not sync up this is a moot point as the
       sound will be perfectly synced to the wrong video frame. So, I think the problem
       is that you can't actually ask a simple question like "will DVCAM sync audio
       better than DV." It can be a different answer for every NLE hardware solution and
       every encoding chipset (in the camcorders). It will depend on which specs are
       implemented and/or what methodology was implemented for the NLE system. The
       question will need to be changed to something closer to "have people had a better
       experience with syncing DVx audio using xyz NLE systems from an abc camera." This
       question should probably be posted to a specific NLE users group instead of to
       this generic users group. Thanks to the equipment MFSs this is not the generic
       question it should be... actually we shouldn't even need to be asking it should
       we! One day they will get it right...

       That's the end of my lecture... I hope it was helpful and accurate without being
       overly annoying. ;-)