synch an ART preamp w/ a MOTU 8Pre

[The549]

I'm looking at possibly purchasing a setup including these pieces - they both have ADAT inputs and outputs, but would i be able to synch the clocks on them? The ART has a wordclock connector, but the motu doesn't, from what I can tell.

Thanks!

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/MOTU-8-Pre-Audio-Interface-?sku=240408

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/ART-DMPA-Pro-2-Channel-Mic-Pre-with-Digital-Outs?sku=180629

 

[TimOBrien]

The ADAT does the syncing by designating one device as the 'master' and the other device as the 'slave'. It's built into the protocol.

You do not need a separate word clock, its just that a dedicated expensive high-end clock box can be a skosh more accurate with numerous devices.

 

[SonicAlbert]

They both have optical I/O. The MOTU is definitely the ADAT format, but you need to check with the manufacturer on the ART. The reason being that the ART is a two channel unit. That means it could using the two channel toslink format, which is basically SPDIF. You could also see if the MOTU unit can be switched to accept TOSlink on it's optical input.

Since the MOTU does not have Word Clock I/O, it would sync to whatever device was connected to it's optical input. You might have to set that up in software, but that's how it would work.

 

[dgatwood]

They both have optical I/O. The MOTU is definitely the ADAT format, but you need to check with the manufacturer on the ART. The reason being that the ART is a two channel unit. That means it could using the two channel toslink format, which is basically SPDIF. You could also see if the MOTU unit can be switched to accept TOSlink on it's optical input.

I don't believe so, or at least I've never seen any settings to do so. That's a pretty odd omission, too, since any hardware that can decode an ADAT bitstream should have no trouble with the data rate of S/PDIF.

In fact, if I'm looking at this correctly, the NRZI decoding for ADAT should be able (assuming you can get the clocking right) to generate a signal that can adequately be post-process decoded using S/PDIF's biphase mark code---so long as you can get the bit clock rate set to twice the S/PDIF bit rate. Throw out the sample that matches with the S/PDIF clock, then look at the samples in-between, and you magically get the S/PDIF data, I believe....

In other words, this seems like the sort of thing that MOTU should have been able to support with the existing hardware and a firmware change, assuming that the hardware dividing the master clock for the ADAT hardware is sufficiently configurable (and I'd be surprised if silicon existed that weren't). Very puzzling. Anybody want to call and ask them why they didn't do this?