This was great advice, thank you! I've gotten farther, but still not
quite there yet. On the Panasonic, I pressed counter mode and reset
and pause at the same time and got the menu you spoke of. There were
three options: AES, IEC-O and IEC-C. When I use either of the IEC
modes, the mac gets the audio! I can also record - I've tried with
both Audacity and Amadeus II (thanks for the suggestion Matt). I am
just recording some people speaking at a seminar, so there is no need
for super high quality. The problem now is that the sound I record is
very digitized. It sounds like someone is talking to an X-Wing
fighter on approach to the Death Star :-)

Both Audacity and Amadeus II are set to 48 Khz, mono (even though the
recording is in stereo, the mac won't see it unless I set it to mono).
The waveforms show audio, it's just garbled. I'm still messing with
settings, but any suggestions you have would be helpful.

Thanks so much for your help to a newbie audio person.

Dave

(G. Louie) wrote in message ...
IIRC, you do have to select the I/O you want active in the back, AES/EBU;
SPDIF, or optical. There's a "secret" key combination, but my 3800 is at
work right now and I'm not. It's something like hold down the counter mode
and reset buttons, then hit the pause button. The count display turns into
a menu, which you cycle through with the mode button and change the items
with the FF and REW buttons. The first menu to show is the I/O, something
like AES, IEC or OPTical might display. Change I/O with the FF or REW
buttons, exit by pressing the reset button. If you miss the right menu
item (some are very cryptic), just keep hitting the mode button until you
get back to square one. I think.


In article ,
Dave wrote:
Appreciate any help on this topic.

I have a few DAT tapes I want to record onto my computer. I recently
purchased an Edirol UA-1D and an optical cable. I'm borrowing a
Panasonic SV-3800 DAT player from a friend. I hooked up the optical
cable to the DAT player and the Edirol and plugged the Edirol into my
Mac (I've tried on both my iBook and my G4 desktop) using USB. I
opened system preferences, set the audio input to Edirol and see
nothing on the meter with I play a tape. I know the Panasonic works
because I can plug in headphones and hear the audio.

I have also tried a used Sony DAT player I bought on ebay and I can
see audio input in the System Preferences :: Audio panel when I use
that machine, but the deck is unreliable and skips portions of the
audio. I have tried recording using Audacity
(http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), but it won't work with the
Panasonic. I do not want to use the Sony anymore because I don't
trust it and the tapes I'm using are very important.

I am reasonably sure the optical cable works and the Edirol works
because I can see the Audio on the mac. I cannot, however, manage to
get the audio to play on the mac speakers, nor can I record.
Actually, I may have been able to record using the Sony and my iBook,
but I can't remember and it's not really relevant because the Sony is
essentially unusable.

So, I have questions:

1) Am I missing a setting on the Panasonic that will cause it to
output to the digital output port? Is there anything on the Panasonic
unit I am doing or not doing that will get it to work?

2) If the problem is not the Panasonic, am I missing something in the
audio settings of the Mac that is causing it not to get the digital
input through the Edirol?

3) Has anybody tried to do what I'm doing and can you offer some
assistance or suggest tools/programs/hardware/whatever? I want to try
and not spend any more money (although I will if I have to) and use
the existing equipment to transfer this audio onto my computer.

Feel free to post or respond to me personally.

Thanks!

Dave
dataudio (at) cicomputing.com