What's the difference between S/PDIF digital I/O and Adat?

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 7:04 pm

What's the difference?

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 7:39 pm

spdif is a protocal developed by sony and philips.... and is limited to 2 channels... the adat protocol was developed specificly for interfacing to the alesis machines and transfered all 8 channels at once... since the adat is effectively dead the protocal has been used in a bunch of interfaces and even has gone beyond it's 8 ch 48kz standard to incopmpass up to 96kz although at the expense of being limited to 4 channels...

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 8:16 pm

In addition to that above, Syncing via Adat digital data is not as reliable.

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:09 pm

Quote:

Syncing via Adat digital data is not as reliable.

My experience and education have proven to me anyway that this false. Any sync problem realted to using the clock embedded in the ADAT protocol has more to do with the design of the circuit using the ADAT protocol. The ADAT protocol as it is used these days is as much of studio standard as AES or S/PDIF. I constantly find that digital audio clocking along with dynamic compression are the most often misunderstood concepts of current audio production.

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:06 pm

Then that proves the point. For the protocol to work, it must have a properly designed and implemented circuit. You can't use one without the other. But in all fairness, I have not had issues with Yamaha digital consoles and Alesis HD24s, bit in the old days of ADAT tape based machines, there were issues.

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:32 pm

So let's say i have a firewire 410 and want to hook up a preamp through the adat out it into the optical cable of the firewire 410 how many channels will i be able to record?

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:46 pm

depends on the pre and the samplerate...up to 8 channels at 44k

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:04 pm

Quote:

Then that proves the point

What? That proves nothing. There can be poor circuit design and/or implementation with any digital audio clock, AES, S/PDIF or ADAT.

In the old days, there was plenty wrong with just about ALL digital products. Like all technologies, they improve and mature with age until they are obsoleted for something newer. And then the cycle repeats.

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 11:52 pm

dementedchord wrote:

depends on the pre and the samplerate...up to 8 channels at 44k

can you plug adat out into the spdif in? and if so i would think you'd only get 2 channels. otherwise im goin' shoppin'!

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:06 am

nope... spdif comes in 2 varieties if you will one uses the optical port that adat uses and also a rca jack... in any case they're incompatable... but dont do anything rash.... check to see if they're switchable in the driver software... in my tascam fw1884 for instance the opticle port does both...

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