[Chip Borton]

Hi All,

I have two Alesis HD24's that I need to sync up together to record
48 tracks simultaneously. I have hooked the sync cable from
the master to the slave, no midi cables connected.

My problem is that I am getting erratic results going into
record mode. Sometimes the slave will not start recording
even though the master starts recording. Other times the
slave will start recording but slightly delayed from the master.
The result is that I end up with different file sizes/lengths from
the two units. This is a major pain trying to line up the tracks
correctly in Cubase or Pro Tools later.

I have tried different sync cables, I have updated firmware and
OS versions on both machines. Both are at:
Boot version 1.0
OS version 1.20

One more curious thing is that when I fire up the second HD24
the master HD24 reports that it has three slaves.

I just signed up to the Yahoo HD24 user group but I have a
big gig coming up this week and time is of the essence so I am
duplicating the post here too.

Thanks Much,
Chip Borton

[Jim Gilliland]

Chip Borton wrote:

I just signed up to the Yahoo HD24 user group but I have a
big gig coming up this week and time is of the essence so I am
duplicating the post here too.

I do suggest that you ask your question there. In the interest of helping you
get a quicker answer, I've removed the "moderated" status (that new members
automatically get) from your ID.

I've never linked my HD24 with another, so I don't have a direct answer for you.
I think that the ADAT sync treats the HD24 as if it were three regular
8-channel ADAT machines, which would explain why your slave machine looks like
three decks to the master.

Here's a note from the HD24 manual: "The HD24 requires that its song be at
least 10 seconds long for it to sync as a slave. Therefore, you must press NEW
SONG and record some blank time before attempting to synchronize."

[Chip Borton]

Thanks,
Pre-rolling does seem to help, I'll give it a workout in the coming days
and report to the group. I finally reached tech support and they echoed your
statement about the ADAT sync seeing the HD24 as three ADATS.
They suggested pre-rolling as well.