HD24 with other ADATs...

[Velvet Elvis]

Hey everyone...

I've got a chance to pick up an HD24 for a REAL bargain...

I've already got three black face ADATs and a BRC, so I've got a couple of questions.

1) I was told that the HD24 is linear, which means you HAVE to allocate X minutes to a song before you even start recording it... is this true? (The person telling me this was trying to sell my the Mackie units)

2) Since I know it can sync with an ADAT, how do the location points etc handle the change of tapes on the ADATs? IE Say I have a song at 01:00:00 on tape set 1.... but I also have a song at 01:00:00 on tape set 2. How does the HD24 know to use two different songs on its hard drive (since only one of them can occupy 01:00:00 in linear format?

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks for any insight you can give me.

Velvet Elvis

[mstudio1224@aol.com]

Not that I have one, but the scenerio applies just the same.

Now the HD24 will accomodate your (3) adats syncing them and locking them. But if you have previous recording on the adats
such as:

(ex. of 3 songs on 1 tape)
GOOD LOVE 00:00:00:00 ----- 00:05:25:00 (song 1) ADAT Tape
LOVE GOOD 00:05:30:00 ------ 00:11:22:00 (song 2) ADAT Tape
DAMN LOVE 00:11:25:00 ------ 00: 15:05:00 (song 3)ADAT Tape

now if you need to transfer them to the HD24, you will either have to offset the HD24 or the ADAT, meaning that (song 1) will start at 00:00:00:00 on the HD24, but (song 2) in it's own section
will not start at (00:00) but where you stopped for (song 1) which will have you begin at 00:05:25:00 for (song 2)

This will then open up the adat tape tracks, cause you will then have it on the HD24, and they will be in sync to record extra takes


I have a MDR24/96 and some of my clients have stuff on ADAT, so I keep 1 and I have to do that. I transfer their tracks to the MDR to open that space, still leaving me 24 tracks to record to, 16 & 8 on the ADAT, send them to a buss mix down then send to two tracks on the adat, but have the mix on the MDR24.

[Velvet Elvis]

Mstudio,

I did some more digging... apparently there is something you can change in the HD to set its "start point" to a different time. So for example, every song normally starts at 00:00:00, but you can change the start time to 04:00:00 if that's what it is on your ADATs (they say this is different than the standard deck offset too).

Any ideas about the linear recording? Someone was telling me that you have to tell the HD24 how long the song is when you create a new song. I haven't found any info regarding that. Is that true? Can it be changed? (if you don't use the time all up, or need more time added)?

Thanks,
Velvet Elvis

[sjjohnston]

About that supposed "linear" thing: that really doesn't sound right to me, but I don't have one so that's just a somewhat educated guess.

My suggestion: I believe Alesis has all their current manuals online. Download and take a look.

[Velvet Elvis]

sjjohnston,

I already did that... it really doesn't say anything to either case... it doesn't mention anything about having to set the time, but my vendor swears that it asks him when he does it.

So I thought I'd ask some others who own them.

Velvet Elvis