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Author Topic: Session 8 and ADAT Interface  (Read 1775 times)

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Offline reviver

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Session 8 and ADAT Interface
« on: June 18, 2022, 03:07:12 PM »
This is an awesome site!  Glad to be here, as a new member.  I'm enhancing my current Session 8 setup with an ADAT Interface (not ADAT Bridge) that I just purchased.  However, it doesn't seem to work properly.  It appears I've got clocking issues.  Does anyone have this unit running?: http://archive.digidesign.com/support/propix/adatInterface.html  Or, does anyone have a working unit they can part with?  How about the user's manual?
About my studio:  Win 98se, homebrew industrial motherbord PC with Session 8 cards, v2.51 Session 8 SW, 882 Studio I/F, ADAT Digital Interface, SCSI2SD v5.2 external HD emulator, Panasonic SV3700 DAT, Denon portable DAT.  PreSonus Studio One DAW v5,  Homebrew fanless i5 PC, Win 10, Focusrite 18i20 I/F (w/ ADAT optical).  It's been a challenge keeping all the old stuff running, but it still is!
Project:  Transferring Session 8 sessions from '90s DAT tapes to Studio One via S/PDIF (2 tracks at a time).  Now trying to speed it up by transferring 8 tracks simultaneously using ADAT I/F.  That's my last hurdle.  I need help.

Offline P5r

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Re: Session 8 and ADAT Interface
« Reply #1 on: June 18, 2022, 07:06:47 PM »
Hope you get past your hurdle...

And nice to have you around...Don't be a stranger!...

Offline _keeper_

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Re: Session 8 and ADAT Interface
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2022, 02:56:24 PM »
If you have PCI cards in your custom i5 rig, you might look up PCI compatibility in MBO chipsets: (many problems on some setups)
https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/811773-legacy-pci-support-new-mobos-doubt.html

There is a post listing the true PCI chip/chipset vs PCI emulation chipsets(bridging type). Some newer chipsets do not act well under some situations and people do expirience this, many who are using older reliable setups who are moving up for stronger CPU-s tested what works.

Also, other people might not do this but i do take time to be sure i can work is...trying the same setup on Windows 2000 with the NT3.0 patch or Xp. Many things with w98 are ruled out by doing this.




Why, if you have IRQ troubles or not good enough drivers you might wanna look up slightly slower setup with the Intel P35

Offline reviver

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Re: Session 8 and ADAT Interface
« Reply #3 on: June 21, 2022, 04:34:42 PM »
Thanks for the responses.  My problem is with new system item and only this item: Digidesign ADAT Digital Interface.  Otherwise, my 1996 Session 8 DAW works fine, running on my Win98 PC, which is also solid.  The issue is not with my i5 PC because I'm not using that for Session 8.  That's for my current Studio One 5 DAW, which is working perfectly.  The clocking issue I mentioned before is a 256x audio (slave) clocking issue that manifests itself in 2 (independent ?) ways:  1) The ADAT interface won't lock to an external 256x master clock.  It is stuck on it's internal rate, which is ~500 ppm high in freq.  Regardless, all downstream devices (882 Session 8 I/F and the Focusrite 18i20 I/F) lock to this drifted clock fine.  2) The optical channels received on the 18i20 are in the wrong locations.  Hence, my comment earlier about clocking issues.  During playback, Session 8 audio tracks #1, 3, 5 and 7 all end up on optical 1 and 2 simultaneously.  Similarly, all Session 8 tracks #2, 4, 6 and 8 all end up on optical 5 and 6 simultaneously.  Optical 3, 4, 7 and 8 have no activity.  One more thing.  In Session 8's Configuration window, there are 3 choices of clock source: ADAT, Analog and External SMPTE.  The ADAT check box is dead, not available.  This concerns me.  The ADAT interface manual says NOT to ever select Analog when using the ADAT I/F.  It suggests either ADAT or Ext. SMPTE.  So naturally I picked SMPTE.  Anyway, thanks for listening.  I'm still debugging.

Offline reviver

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Re: Session 8 and ADAT Interface
« Reply #4 on: July 03, 2022, 01:43:39 PM »
I finally got the ADAT Interface working nicely with Session 8.  For completeness and closure, here's what I did.  The internal 5v0 power supply had 200mVpp ripple on it, so I added an 820uF polymer electrolytic cap on the PCB header pins.  This dropped the 35 kHz spurs observed on the 256x clock output from -35 dBc to -60 dBc, which reduced the timing jitter significantly.  Then I reverse-engineered the clock tree by tracing the PCB lines and looking at data sheets of the components.  I found the 256x (11.2896 MHz) oscillator L-C tank circuit, but couldn't get it to lock on the external input.  So I injection locked it to the external clock by soldering a jumper wire from a buffered input trace over to the L-C tank.  Of course, I needed an external clock source so I used my Siglent ARB generator.  The best settings are: 11.2896 MHz square wave (for 44.1 kHz sessions) with 3v0pp amplitude and 1v0 positive offset, with 40% duty cycle.  For 48 kHz sessions, that clock would be 12.288 Mhz.  With the jumper wire in place, the unit won't work using the internal clock as the source, but I don't care because it didn't work well in that state anyway.  The ADAT I/F rear panel switch must be in 8-ch position and the external clock must be attached via BNC cable.  Another cable is needed from the clock output (not "word clock") to the Session 8 I/O box input (in my case an 882 I/O).  Regarding the Session 8 software settings:  In the I/O window, the Sync Mode must be set to Internal.  In the ADAT Interface config, the clock source is set to SMPTE.  In the "Window" pull-down menu, mix mode must be set to External Mix mode.  After all that, it works great.  I can finally restore my old Session 8 sessions from DAT and transfer them digitally over to Studio One using 8 simultaneous optical tracks, instead of only 2 using S/PDIF.  One other item:  The Session 8 tracks don't line up directly in the optical output.  The mapping of tracks 1~8 is actually 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7, 4, 8.  This is easy to re-map in my Studio One DAW, which receives the Session 8 ADAT optical output on my Focusrite 18i20.  Life is good again.

Offline P5r

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Re: Session 8 and ADAT Interface
« Reply #5 on: July 03, 2022, 04:00:06 PM »
Life BETTER be good again after all that...Just reading it was draining (pun)...

Good thing it's a go now...Thanks for the update....