newbie basic ADAT to PC Q

[ChorazaiM]

Hey everyone - to start, my current PC is an Athlon TBird 1.13G w/512 DDR ram, 40 Gig HD running WinXP & Sonar v1.3.

I'm looking to pick up a new soundcard - it has to have 2 in/2 out (for recording individual tracks) as well as the capability of transfering from ADAT to PC. Also, any recommendations on sites that detail exactly how one would go about transfering tracks recorded on an ADAT to a PC for multitrack editing? I know nothing of the process, and I'm under the impression what I need is a "lightpipe" interface/connection - but how does it all work? If I was to transfering from 2 synched ADATs, would I need a card capable of being able to transfer 16 tracks at once, or could you simply import/transfer 8 tracks in 2 batches? Does any of this sound remotely correct, or am I competely lost on the subject?

 

[Kendog]

You're well on your way. Check out www.frontierdesign.com for several cards that will work well for you. I ran two ADATs with a PC for years with their quite inexpensive Wavecenter. Works perfectly.

You can do two passes in one of two ways: Align them afterward by dragging until they're dead on (inexact), or sync the two systems perfectly with something like JLCooper's Datasync 2 (I have one that I'm selling cheap if you're interested).

If you don't want to deal with those issues, then you'll need one of their higher end cards that offer on-board sync and transfer of 16 or more tracks simultaneously.

Ken Rutkowski
Outer Limit Recording Studio

 

[ChorazaiM]

Thanks Kendog. Something like the Dakota seems ideal (16 track xfer), except for the fact that it doesn't seem to have any regular analog in or out - something I need (and I really don't want to deal with the headaches of having two different cards installed).

So is "ADAT lightpipe" the same as "ADAT Optical", or can they be different things? What terminology should I be looking for when comparing soundcards?

Also, as far as the actual transfering goes - does something like this work on the principle of data dumping where it just pulls / imports the tracks, or does it transfer via a record method (ie: real time)?

Thanks for any info/help...

 

[Track Rat]

ADAT optical is Lightpipe. ADAT sync is something else altogether.
I use a MOTU 2408mkII to move ADATs in and out of the computer. It'll handle three ADATs or three Tascam multitracks (TDIF) and has eight analog ins and outs plus S/PDIF in and out. I think the prices are coming down on these items too. I know I love mine.

 

[ChorazaiM]

Thanks Trackrat. Now with the ADAT optical/lightpipe question out of the way - what do I have to look for as far as "sync" goes (if anything besidxes the fact that it proclaims it a feature)?

The 208mkII looks very nice - more analog I/O than I need though - there must be something more...errr..."economical" with the same features and less analog in/out...