I had it with the ADAT!!

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twonky

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Thats it !! I can no longer use ADATs, they are unreliable and crappy! There, I said it. I have two ADAT XTs, one of which I have had for 3 1/2 years. That machine has eaten 6 tapes and been to the repair shop 4 times!
I have been working on a recording for 2 months now, and had finally gotten down to mixing when all of the sudden...you guessed it, it ate the overdub tape! No biggie, I had the tracks backed up on my PC (I also have the ADAT/Connect program, which is another Alesis product I am not very pleased with). I ended up mixing a couple of songs in Samplitude, for the first time and they came out pretty well. So, my question is this, can I use the ADATs as A/D converters, i.e. simply use their 8 track capability to track into a PC based multitrack program via the ADATs lightpipe connection to the ADAT connect PCI card? If so how would I go about doing that? I plan on using Samplitude to track if this is posible. Thanks for any help and please excuse the run-on sentences.
 
twonky said:
Thats it !! I can no longer use ADATs, they are unreliable and crappy!
Click to expand...
Nonsense... they are quite reliable if you keep the maintenance up. As well, anytime there is a chance of tape failure -- you should be backing your stuff for precisely that reason.

Considering what they cost compared to sound quality - they are amazing. But for more robustness, you'd have to go to the M20 - which is designed for full-time, professional use.

Bruce
 
BAH!! I'm sick of them. And really, how much maintaining do they need ? I am not running a commercial studio here! they dont even get used all that much. I just checked my records to, in the 3.5 years I have owned this XT I have had it repaired 6 times! Not 4! So thats like a cleaning, a tape path check, and a new idler wheel twice a year! How reliable is that? And when I wrote Alesis (even B4 the chapter 11) I got zero response, no help at all. So I called and called no help! So I am done w/ this thing! So any ideas on how I can use them to record into a PC?
 
twonky said:
So thats like a cleaning, a tape path check, and a new idler wheel twice a year!
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That is EXACTLY a normal maintenance timeframe for those units.... the idler wheel IS a maintenance item and needs replacing generally once or twice a year, which is as often has head/tape path cleaning is generally required...

So what you're complaining about is nothing... it is normal maintenance for these units - a commercial facility would have to do this exact maintenance once a month...

You may not like maintaining the gear, but it is operating within it's spec from everything you've said... if you give it up - don't be blaming the machine -- it's your expectations that need adjustment.

Bruce
 
Ok, so how 'bout this

My other one works like a charm, same amount of use, gets cleaned once a year. Mr. Bear, I understand what you are saying, and my logical side is really hearing you. But, now the problem is, I have to wait like 2-3 weeks to get it fixed, I live in Richmond, VA and have to ship it to the next state and w/ the "re-org' who knows how long it will take to gets parts if thats what the job requires?
I have been, looking through old post to see if anyone had tried to use their ADATs like I want to: a straight path into the pc.
Still no answers.
 
Blue Bear

What I meant to ask is, do you use the Adat Connect PC card?
 
No - I don't do any PC-based recording... (otherwise I would have also provided some sort of solution for ya in addition to my other comments!)

Mine's an all-ADAT shop (mind you, I'm using XT20s which have a tad more reliability...)

Bruce
 
thanks anyway

I appreciate your comments, but I am a man scorned by the ADAT and I have passed the point of no return. Nothing you say is goint to convince that machines are not disposible crap, just like Albini said.
 
twonky said:
So, my question is this, can I use the ADATs as A/D converters, i.e. simply use their 8 track capability to track into a PC based multitrack program via the ADATs lightpipe connection to the ADAT connect PCI card? If so how would I go about doing that? I plan on using Samplitude to track if this is posible.
Click to expand...

I have two ADATs in my studio that I use as A/D converters. To do this I am using a MOTU 2408 to connect them to my PC. to my knowledge, the ADAT Edit Card by Alesis will not interface with other software programs. Another issue to consider is that you can only use one input format at a time per ADAT. In other words, while you are playing your recorded music back through the digital in, you CANNOT record anything through the analog in at the same time. What you have to do is set up one ADAT's input format to digital, so you can listen to the previous recorded track. The second ADAT's input format needs to be analog for recording.

PC ==> MOTU 2408 ==> ADAT 1 (DIGITAL in) ==> Mixer
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mixer ==> ADAT 2 (ANALOG in) ==> MOTU 2408 ==> PC

Once you have all the tracks recorded, you can set both ADATs for digital in so that you can have more mixdown tracks.
 
Fishmed is right on there. The one-way thing is a pain when you get to, like, track 12 in a 2-adat set up, you have to start sending ten or whatever tracks to eight D/As, (assuming you even want to go back for an analog mix.)
But ya, it works great. One other trade off is lots of file house keeping- not quite as simple as grabbing a roll of tape.
But I'm in your boat. It's not like I wanted to keep dumping $200 bills into repairs/maintenance with the amount of money I get back in this. Now at least when I push record, I don't even care about it.
Rull #1, make one thing the clock master: time card sees the light pipe as master when recording. If play-back from the p/c and recording from the other adat, p/c sees the A/D for clock, and the 2nd adat sees the p/c (clock=external, digi-in. Unhook the sync cable, or the slave adat won't set to external.) Thats one way to do it. (I have a little post-it note that says: Use the sync cable when using both adats as A/D-(for 16 track tracking.)
I'll help more if you like, I have to be carefull and not give poor info as I bit the bullet a while back and got two RME ADIs, so this is from memory:)
But I'm psyched, cause Cake as a multi-tracker and going back out to mix analog- I'm in near heaven.
(OK, I want total recall!)

See ya.
 
Hey! Check out the big brains on Fishmed and Mixit!
Thanks for your info guys! I took a good long stare at my set up last night and decided that.....well I didn't decide anything really. I like mixing w/ the PC, I have hundreds of plug-ins and cool effects, but I am going to have a lot of trouble giving up the tactile mixer experience. Mixit, you saying that you track into Cake and the mix analog sounds good to me, I am not familiar w/ RME ADI's, do they allow you to do that?

twonk
 
The adats work fine as A/Ds. The RME ADI8's are eight ch. 24 bit A/D-D/A converters which I got as an up grade to the adats. There slightly higher quality, don't have the one-way-at-a-time issue, and give me more options, ect.
 
All I can add is...................

.......ADAT's RUUUUUUUUUUUULE!!!!!!
 
mixsit said:
The adats work fine as A/Ds. The RME ADI8's are eight ch. 24 bit A/D-D/A converters which I got as an up grade to the adats. There slightly higher quality, don't have the one-way-at-a-time issue, and give me more options, ect.
Click to expand...

Where can you find the RME ADI8?
 
Brain...Hurt!

Mixit please excuse my ceaseless inquiries...is your RME taking audio directly from your PC to your mixer? As individual tracks for mixing? If so what do you mix down to? Am I getting stupider?
 
Yes. I mainly use Cake as a multi track recorder, then I send the tracks back out and mix analog. The mix still goes to dat at this point, via a Waves L2.
I'm finding all the little mixing moves, now get done much better in Cake with the volume envelopes and edits, so it's gotten both better and easier to mix like this. I'll no doubt keep gravitating to more going on the the computer. Someday soon hopefully, I'll upgrade to a hot p/c and check out digi-mouse land.:)
The reason for this ass-backwards method (by todays 'standards'), is that this is what I have built on over the years.
 
You CAN record using the ADAT converters

I have a friend who records through his ADAT converters into Cakewalk or Soundforge using the ADAT-Edit card. Your Multitracking software should see the card as 4 stereo devices (1-2, 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8). Arm the appropriate tracks in your software. You must have a tape in the adat (it doesn't have to be rolling, though) and you must push the button to arm the tracks you want to record through. That's all there is to it. Go with the RME though, if you want more than 16 bit recordings.

Mark Armand
 
adats do suck from what ive seen, i merely work in a music store that sells them, we have 5 defectives sitting in shipping and recieving.. they were displays they werent really used at all. more than one person i know with large studios have dumped their adats as it takes 5 or 6 of them to have a continous 24 track studio up and running, as 2 or 3 are in for repair at a time.. at least with a p.c. its rather easy to fix and no other party is required if you dont mind learning a little something..
 
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