ADAT question.

[JohnFitzgerald]

Oooh, there's a blast from the past, ADAT.

Since ditching my ancient Tascam 3340, I've always recorded on hard disk but have experience of ADAT in astudio environment some years ago..

Now, however, I find myself in a position where I have a good excuse to embrace the obsolete technology which is ADAT.

I'll explain.

We've just been given (free and for no money) an original blackface ADAT machine.
We also got a Studiomaster P7 16-8-2, but that can gather dust.

Anyway, it's occured to me that I would like to rack up the ADAT with our live mixer (Mackie CFX12) and use it for live recording. This would involve direct outs from each channel strip right into the channels of the ADAT machine.

What I would then like to do after capturing to ADAT is connect it via the lightpipe ADAT connection directly into a PC to fly all the tracks into Sonar for all the tweaking and fixing that we seem to do these days.

So.

Suggestions please for a bit of kit which would do the job detailed above.

Had this machine not been given to us, I wouldn't be looking to do this, but right now we find ourselves in a position to do multitrack live recording for zero outlay. I just need a means of taking it tothe next level and into the PC.

Cheers

JF

[JohnFitzgerald]

Adding to my own question.

An interface that also give mic or instrument pre inputs woudln't be unwelcome.
All my desktop stuff gets down via na old Soundblaster livedrive, so hardly the most up to date solution.

[mike257]

I've got an EMU 1212M PCI card in my PC - it's got a pretty decent set of A/D converters on the stereo analogue I/O, and also has S/PDIF, ADAT and other bells and whistles. I've used the whole lot at once before now, with seperate pre-amps feeding the analogue and S/PDIF and an Octopre feeding the ADAT when recording my old band, and it's done the job just fine.

These days I have a guitar pre and a mic pre permanently hooked up to the stereo ins, and the stereo outs running to a small mixer for monitoring, it's a great little set up for knocking up home demos.

There's also a version with a breakout box (1820M I think) that I think has a preamp and an instrument level input, but not 100% sure on the specs of it.

There's probably better stuff available now as I've had that for a good few years but it's always done the job for me. Definitely a massive improvement over a Soundblaster though!

EDIT: And ADAT? Awesome blast from the past. I used to run a Tascam DA88 with a pair of DA38s synced up to it, memories!

Edited February 2, 2012 by mike257

[JohnFitzgerald]

Cheers Mike

I had kinda arrived at that concluion myself.
The 1212M, having an ADAT connection seems like a good call.
The fact that it's pretty low cost kinda helps too.

If there's a little extra cash, I might actually bin it all and get a Zoom R16.
16 track, but able to record on 8 at a time via combo xlr / jack inputs.
Also works as an audio interface to the PC via USB 2.0 and again gives 8 discreet ins to the laptop.

That would cost £275, so not a fortune.

Thanks again.

JF

[charic]

I've got some stuff on ADAT tape that I've never been able to recover as it was a uni project and my Computer died lol

[crez5150]

Have a look on ebay for some used MOTU 828Mk2 or 3.... ideal for what you want

[rmorris]

[quote name='JohnFitzgerald' timestamp='1328438492' post='1526797']
Cheers Mike

I had kinda arrived at that concluion myself.
The 1212M, having an ADAT connection seems like a good call.
The fact that it's pretty low cost kinda helps too.

If there's a little extra cash, I might actually bin it all and get a Zoom R16.
16 track, but able to record on 8 at a time via combo xlr / jack inputs.
Also works as an audio interface to the PC via USB 2.0 and again gives 8 discreet ins to the laptop.

That would cost £275, so not a fortune.

Thanks again.

JF
[/quote]

But I think you can only send a couple of tracks down the USB 2.0 to the PC at a time ?
Easy enough to line them up just more time consuming and 'fiddly'
Or am I getting that wrong ?

from SOS review:

Enter The PC
The reason I don’t feel too inclined to dwell on the R16’s shortcomings as a mixer is that it is so clearly designed to be integrated with a computer recording system. Once you’ve installed its ASIO driver, you can hook up a USB cable from R16 to PC (assuming you have a USB2 port on your computer, which almost everyone does nowadays). The R16 will happily take its power from the USB connection where it’s available, and when it detects such a connection, gives you the option of starting up in Card Reader or Interface modes. Assuming you actually want to work on material recorded to the R16, you’ll need to use the Card Reader mode first, so that you can transfer the necessary files over to your computer’s hard drive. For some reason, all R16 projects appear to the computer as ‘PROJ001’ and so on, regardless of any name you’ve given them within the R16, but confusion is unlikely unless you’ve got lots of them on a single card. You can’t import Projects themselves into a DAW, but it’s easy enough to line up the audio files — helpfully, even takes that were started halfway through a Project are automatically extended to the Project start.

Edited February 9, 2012 by rmorris

[JohnFitzgerald]

Well

It's now resolved, I think.

I had made my mind up on an Alesis IO26, which give two ADAT 8 channel inputs, 8 mic line ins plus a couple of phono ins,

I make that 24 genuinely useful inputs. That was going to cost £285.

Whilst having a wee look see on ebay earlier, I had a bit of a find.
An RME DIGI9636/52.

It doesn't have the expansion board, so it's two adat optical ins giving 16 channels of digital input with the option to go up to 3 ins totally 24 channels.

It was on for £75 + £20 P&P

After an exchange of emails, I got it for £70 all up inc. P&P.

So, that's us pretty much good to go.

As an asides, we've also snagged another ADAT machine too, so live 16 channel recording is very much a reality for us now, with the option to take it him and do as required in the computer.

Chuffed :-)

[mike257]

Great stuff! I've had no hands on with the RME stuff but I've heard nothing but good things about it.

[JohnFitzgerald]

I've no experience of it myself Mike, but it does seem to be pretty much a de facto standard, so I hop I won't go wrong.
As I understand it, they card takes the burden of processing all the audio and the CPU takes little to do with it.

We'll see.

We had a little run through last night with an ADAT and our Mackie CFX12 using the inserts as direct outs and it worked exactly as planned. Running the channel gain as hot as you would realistically want, the ADAT was quite happy with the same level.
So, it's all flightcased up with a loom plugged in, ready to be sat next to the mixer, plugged in, then hit record at the relevant moment.
Should be good :-)

I'm very excited by it all !