Okay... here's the background:

Many years ago, the girlfriend recorded about 40 minutes x 20 tracks
of songwriting at a local studio onto ADATs. She got fed up with the
project at the time and just kinda left it. Now, she wants to come
back to it and mix it down and make a CD of it.

Now, the ADAT's hold 8 tracks, so the 20 tracks were recorded by
syncing 3 decks together. Now, we've borrowed a single ADAT deck (and
the BRC controller unit) from the studio guy, and we want to import
all of this into Sonar3.

On the PC with Sonar, we have a Tascam 1884 interface... which is
pretty spiffy. 8 analog in, 8 analog out, optical ADAT in/out, etc.

Now, we've managed to use the digital optical output from the ADAT
deck and send it right into the Tascam and we're able to record 8
tracks at a time into Sonar. Shweeeeeeet!

The problem is in syncing Sonar to the ADAT deck.

Now, the ADAT deck seems to have a few strange 1/4" and BNC
connections on the back which read "SMPTE Out" and whatnot, and the
Tascam has a few other connectors like that, none of them are the
same... so I'm not sure that the formats would match.

So, I'm trying to manage the sync either with the optical cable or
with MIDI.

I tried MIDI first. I tried getting the ADAT to be the master and
Sonar to be the slave (since Sonar can seek to a song position a lot
easier than the ADAT can). Now, the ADAT deck, itself, doesn't have
MIDI connections, but the BRC controller interface does, so I ran a
MIDI cable from the OUT of the BRC to one of the IN's on the Tascam. I
then told Sonar to use MTC/SMPTE sync, but then Sonar just sat there
telling me that it was waiting to see a sync signal. Same with the
MIDI Sync selection.

So, I tried having Sonar as the master and the ADAT as the slave. I
told Sonar to transmit MTC (on the appropriate MIDI output on the
Tascam) and tried to have the ADAT follow it. This just ended up
making the ADAT deck freak out (as in, rapidly switching between Stop
and Play... and the display reading "FULL").

Okay then... I tried a different approach. Since the Tascam interface
also operates as a control surface (which can control the sliders and
transport in Sonar) and since the Tascam can respond to external sync,
I figured that I'd tell the *Tascam* to use an external sync from the
optical ADAT input. This seemed promising, because the LED's were
indicating that the Tascam was seeing a meaningful sync signal from
the source I specified. However, the Tascam never caused Sonar to do
anything (no seeks, no starts, and no stops) even though the jog wheel
and the start/stop buttons on the Tascam work properly.

So, I'm kinda stuck at this point. Granted... I *can* just import the
tracks 8-at-a-time and then just gradually nudge each set of 8 tracks
around so that they're in-sync enough for nobody to notice... but this
is the most complicated format conversion I've ever done, so I'd like
to know how to make it work just to understand the hardware.

Reagrds,
- Joe

(Joe Emenaker)
On the PC with Sonar, we have a Tascam 1884 interface... which is pretty
spiffy. 8 analog in, 8 analog out, optical ADAT in/out, etc.

Now, we've managed to use the digital optical output from the ADAT deck and
send it right into the Tascam and we're able to record 8 tracks at a time into
Sonar. Shweeeeeeet!

The problem is in syncing Sonar to the ADAT deck.

Now, the ADAT deck seems to have a few strange 1/4" and BNC connections on the
back which read "SMPTE Out" and whatnot, and the Tascam has a few other
connectors like that, none of them are the same... so I'm not sure that the
formats would match.

So, I'm trying to manage the sync either with the optical cable or with MIDI.

You need both, midi for time location ( you want to dump 8 tracks at a
time in 3 passes) *and* optical for sync ( as in locking to the digital
wordclock.)

I tried MIDI first. I tried getting the ADAT to be the master and Sonar to be
the slave (since Sonar can seek to a song position a lot easier than the ADAT
can). Now, the ADAT deck, itself, doesn't have MIDI connections, but the BRC
controller interface does, so I ran a MIDI cable from the OUT of the BRC to one
of the IN's on the Tascam. I then told Sonar to use MTC/SMPTE sync, but then
Sonar just sat there telling me that it was waiting to see a sync signal. Same
with the
MIDI Sync selection.

Did you actually roll the ADATs from the BRC? Sonar is I think asking
for a word clock sync source, it could get that from the adat's optical signal
if you set up the software right. Make sure that Sonar and the BRC are set to
the same MTC/SMPTE frame rate first, then you need to set your digital clock
source to external so that Sonar locks to the incoming digital signal from the
ADAT digital in.

Also if the ADAT tapes were recorded at 48k you could also try sending word
clock from the Tascam 1884's word clock out into the BRC's word clock input.
That was the Tascam locks to timecode from the BRC and the BRC locks to the
wordclock from the Tascam. The BRC only wants to see 48K on that input though,
and I don't think it has a wordclock OUT as I recall, so if your session tapes
are at 44.1k that scenario doesn't work.

So, I tried having Sonar as the master and the ADAT as the slave. I
told Sonar to transmit MTC (on the appropriate MIDI output on the
Tascam) and tried to have the ADAT follow it. This just ended up
making the ADAT deck freak out (as in, rapidly switching between Stop
and Play... and the display reading "FULL").

From the BRC manual

"Since SMPTE provides both a locate reference and a clock
source, the SMPTE option exists for both types of external sync on the BRC.
When synchronizing to SMPTE, it is recommended to set both the locate reference
and the clock source to the SMPTE option. This provides a direct SMPTE lock."

So try that, maybe that will work with MTC or maybe you can use a box as a
converter MTC to SMPTE like a JL Cooper PPS.



Will Miho
NY Music & TV Audio Guy
Off the Morning Show! & sleepin' In... / Fox News
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away..." Tom Waits

In article writes:

Many years ago, the girlfriend recorded about 40 minutes x 20 tracks
of songwriting at a local studio onto ADATs.

Now, we've borrowed a single ADAT deck (and
the BRC controller unit) from the studio guy, and we want to import
all of this into Sonar3.

Now, we've managed to use the digital optical output from the ADAT
deck and send it right into the Tascam and we're able to record 8
tracks at a time into Sonar. Shweeeeeeet!

The problem is in syncing Sonar to the ADAT deck.

Now, the ADAT deck seems to have a few strange 1/4" and BNC
connections on the back which read "SMPTE Out" and whatnot, and the
Tascam has a few other connectors like that, none of them are the
same... so I'm not sure that the formats would match.

There are ways that you can do it, but you're making your life much
too complicated. Record 8 tracks (one ADAT tape) to your computer.
Then put in the second ADAT tape and record the next 8 tracks. Don't
worry that they're not in perfect alignment with the first 8 tracks.
Then put in the third tape and record the last bunch of tracks.

Now just drag the groups of tracks into alignment. You can get pretty
close visually, and then just use your ears to make the final tweaks.
It will take you less time than futzing around with the
synchronization stuff that you'll probably forget once you've got it
right and do this transfer.

So, I'm kinda stuck at this point. Granted... I *can* just import the
tracks 8-at-a-time and then just gradually nudge each set of 8 tracks
around so that they're in-sync enough for nobody to notice... but this
is the most complicated format conversion I've ever done, so I'd like
to know how to make it work just to understand the hardware.

There are two things you need to do in order to make it work right.
You need to synchronize the word clock between the ADAT and the
computer and you also need to synchronize the position (time code).
The BRC is capable of doing all of that. I'd suggest using the BRC as
the master since it's word clock output is synchronized with the ADAT
time code.

Does that give you enough of a hint?



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Joe Emenaker wrote:

I tried MIDI first. I tried getting the ADAT to be the master and
Sonar to be the slave (since Sonar can seek to a song position a lot
easier than the ADAT can). Now, the ADAT deck, itself, doesn't have
MIDI connections, but the BRC controller interface does, so I ran a
MIDI cable from the OUT of the BRC to one of the IN's on the Tascam. I
then told Sonar to use MTC/SMPTE sync, but then Sonar just sat there
telling me that it was waiting to see a sync signal. Same with the
MIDI Sync selection.

It's been a while since I've dealt with this, and I'm going from memory.
It seems to me you haven't told the BRC to actually OUTPUT MTC. I
believe there is a setting in a menu somewhere to do this. In your
situation, you will the BRC to be the CLOCK master and the timecode
master. I really don't believe it to be too difficult. Get yourself a
copy of the BRC manual. That should give you a step by step. I'm sure
your can download from Alesis.

--
Eric

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