SYNC da-88s to DAW. Why???

[Steenamaroo]

I'm probably gonna feel stupid when I get an answer to this, but I have two old da88s and they got me thinking.

I understand how they were synced and used as recording media; Maybe they played out through a desk with automation, down to tape....whatever...

but I remember people always used to sync them to ProTools and similar software.
Now, I understand that ProTools transport would then be chased by the da88s, but what was the point?

Is the audio output from the 88s fed through ProTools live or something? Are channel inserts used, fader automation, etc, or does it literally just serve as a big remote control for your da88s?

Was this something people did 'back in the day' when computers couldn't handle 24/32 tracks?
Did people just record to the tapes using PT as a transport control, then bounce the final tracks into PT for mixing?
I could see how it'd work in terms of avoiding latency. Was that the point?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Farview]

There were a few different reasons. The reason I did it was to be able to send tracks to someone else in a different studio. in the 90's a 5 gig hard drive was almost $700 and did travel well. The lack of giant hard drives also meant that it was hard to store an albums worth of high track count songs.
There was a time when the computer was just really used for editing certain tracks which could be transferred back to tape to be mixed.

DA-88's were used a lot in film and tv, where the track counts could be really huge.

 

[Steenamaroo]

oh, ok. So ProTools or whatever was your editing and transport station.

Record to dat, maybe import to protools for editing, effects, whatever, and export back to dat.

I suppose that makes sense.

I don't think I'll be setting them up though.

Thanks for the answer, Farview.

 

[Farview]

Its just unnecessary now. The last time I did it was to transfer tracks into the computer. I had more tracks to transfer than I had working machines to play them on ( or channels of conversion), so i synced them up and made several passes.

That was the other reason to do it, loading more tracks into the daw than you had inputs.

 

[Steenamaroo]

That was the other reason to do it, loading more tracks into the daw than you had inputs.

Ah yeah, that makes sense. That alone answers my question.

So say I have 8ch conversion+ mic preamps into PT, but i have some da88s and a mixer with 16 outs,

that means I can track 24 channels at once, but 16 of them go to tape and need to be bounced into PT later in two shifts.

Man, if they were 24 bit I'd actually look into that.
That's pretty appealing.

 

[Farview]

The DA-78 and DA-98's are 24 bit. But it's a pain in the ass, the transfers are real time, and it's much cheaper just to buy the interface that has enough inputs for you. These machines are heavy, big and need expensive maintenance. Getting one reheaded will cost more than the machine is worth, and about what it would cost to buy a 24 channel interface from motu.

 

[Steenamaroo]

Yeah, all points taken. I was sorta being half serious anyway.

These two machines were gifted to me. I thought I'd get a pound or two for them, but so far that hasn't been working out.
Ah well. They'll sit here till someone asks about them.