I run my ADAT tracks into my 8 bus board and mix to stereo. I run the stereo feed through the digital converters on my DAT into my optical sound card on the computer. I then use Sonic Foundry Sound Forge, Cool Edit and other programs to do the two track mastering.

You can also mix the ADAT tracks to analog stereo into your computer if you have a simple sound card and mixer. If you have the money, you can buy a sound card with ADAT lightpipe interface and run all eight tracks digitally into your computer. The cards start at around six hundred dollars.

I record all my tracks at 48hz on the ADAT and send the stereo feed to the computer through the DAT at 44.1. The tracks sound fine.

For three hundred dollars you can buy the Alesis ADAT/Edit card that syncs and transfers all eight tracks to the computer and includes Emagic software to edit them.

You can use the light pipe system in the Adat to send the tracks to your computer. You need a sound card that's light pipe capable. Check out the RME stuff, it's what I use and it's been very reliable for me and sounds good. The RME Hammerfall card will let you input data from 3 ADATs at the same time. You will require some toslink/light pipe/optical cables (I've heard them called all these names) to connect your adat to the card.You need one cable for the in and 1 for the out, which will let you send editted tracks back to the ADAT, should you wish to). You will be able to send all 8 trks at the same time. Most cards will have word clock capabilities that will let you handle sync issues if you are sending data from more than one machine. You then also have the option to add AD/DA break out boxes to these cable as well as your ADATs. Again RME makes an 8 in and out analog to digital box called an ADI pro 8 that I have found reliable and great sounding. There are many other brands as well, the Frontier Design Tango and Dakota (I think they are the names, is a similar setup.
Just make sure the card you choose supports the 48 sampling rate, (I'm sure most do and also alot of them will now support 96 hz as well. And make sure you have a slot available in your computer almost all of the cards will be PCI bus now.
Audio computers can be touchy to setup. It's a good idea to have a seperate computer for audio so your sound card is not competing with modems or game hardware.But with some trouble shooting you can get a system running well on the household computer. Lots of Ram and fast drives are also helpful. You will eventually want two drives one to hold the software and one exclusively for audio files. I use an all SCSI drive system as I think it has reliablity and speed advantages, but it's more expensive and lots of folks are using IDE drives.
There are many software choices, I happen to use a program called Nuendo and it has been great, has excellent editing facilities and I was recording editing and mixing the first day I installed, without cracking the manual. There are many muti tracking programs, some under $100 ( I think the "band in a box" folks have one called Power Tracks for $29) lots in the muti 1000s. Try to see as many programs, in use, as you can to pick one that is intuative for you to use.
Most companies have demos in local stores from time to time and some have downloadable demos that expire after so many days, that you can try at home. Do searchs for Sonic Foundry, Logic, Steinberg, etc and you'll find many programs to choose from. Take care Logan

Thanks for the advice. I think the ADI pro 8 sounds like the sound card I need. Thanks, Don

You need the RME Hammerfall or Hammerfall DSP PCI card, not the ADI-pro. The ADI is an AD/DA converter. You already have those in the ADAT which you speak of. Of course the RME's are a hell of a lot better than the crap Alesis puts in ADATs, but there is always room for improvemnt, right? And the RMEs are 24 bit vs the 16 bit ADA in your XT.

try2break is exactly right, sorry if my post wasn't clear enough. The ADI PRO 8 is a converter box but you need the Hammerfall sound card to plug it into(or some sound card).The Hammerfall is the sound card that goes in the computer and the ADI is the AD/DA converter box that lets you hook up the audio to the card, it hooks up to the card through light pipe cables. Incidently the Nuendo 8 is really an RME ADI pro 8 with a different face plate, so check the price on those as well. The ADIPRO also can convert Tascam D88 signal as well, which may come in handy if you have a client that has recorded to that format. The ADI also passes the analog signal to it's analog outs at the same time as it sends them to the computer so you can moniter without latency, if you have a mixer.
The Hammerfall will let you plug your ADATs in and also let you plug the ADI PRO in. Again Try2break is right that the RME converters will smoke the ADAT ones, in fact in tests done by some mags they smoke the Apogee converters as well. There is a new RME product called a multiface that I'm not really hip to, that includes midi as well, I believe, and is cheaper that a Hammerfall/ADI combination. Go to the RME site for details. Take care Logan

Thanks for all the knowledge you guys have shared with me. That's why these forums are so great.