The present invention relates to a multi-channel IM-DD optical transceiver comprising at least one transmitter and a receiver, and a method for equalizing input samples at an adjusted sampling phase using a quality parameter linearly proportional to a BER. The data transmission and reception use a single master channel and slave channels, which have a baud rate equal to or lower than the baud rateof the master channel. A reliable and identical clocking of all the channels is obtained through either the receiver clock of the master channel when they are received from a single transmitter or areference clock whose frequency is higher than the highest clock frequency amongst all the channels when they are received from a combination of transmitters. An enhanced timing recovery circuit is also provided to select optimized finite impulse response filters, calculate filter coefficients and generate the receiver clock of the master channel. Each channel of the receiver comprises a timing recovery circuit adapted to control a sampling phase of an interpolator.