Optical I/O

Anyone using the optical I/O on the card? I'm looking at getting a Tascam DM24. If I patch the optical out of the DM24 to the optical in of the PT card does that give me 8 I/O's or do I need the ADAT optical I/O? Thanks

The optical ports on the 001's PCI card "ARE" ADAT ports and act and behave like those on Alesis machines, so 8 I/O in ADAT format. L.G.

Tks gerax, I've never used ADAT or the ADAT interface. Do you need the interface or can you go straight out of the ADAT into the Card and get 8 digital lines?

Along those lines . . . I just plugged in my QS7 via the optical pipe. How should I configure PTLE and the QS7 to get everything working the way it should? When I play the QS now I get a lot of clicks and pops.

Plugs, i am not an expert on this issue, but since you havent gotten an answer i will tell you as best as i understand, and perhaps somebody will see my ignorance, correct me, and in turn help you out . I dont own an adat, but i do use an adat bridge to allow 8 more inputs in my 001 through the optical input. So you dont have to own an alesis adat, and you dont have to have an alesis product, but alesis defined and standardized the optical light pipe format, and in being their creation they usually get their name thrown in the mix when it comes to optical i/o. As far as i understand, most products adhere to the alesis format, and so any product that has optical i/o usually mentions it can interface with adats, or works with alesis optical i/o standard. I own a fostex adat bridge that works great with the 001 for expanding i/o. I know that there are some hard disk recorders that use more then 8 tracks, and i dont know if the i/o has been altered to allow 16 track transfers, or if you can only do 8 at a time. I guess in a nutshell, make sure that its complient with alesis' optical i/o interface and you should be okay. Now somebody come in and correct me on this issue . Christian

Jay, Again i am not an expert on this thing, but i will try again to help. If i am not mistaken usually the first reason why pops and clicks happen when using digital inputs on the 001 is because you are using different clocks, or different timings. Make sure that you use the same clocking as your session, and make sure that your interface supports that clock. So if you have a pt session running at 44.1k you would want to run your interface at the 44.1k clock. You also have to make sure that you clock both using the same clock. So either tell your interface to use an external clock (from your the clock your device has if it has one), or tell digi to use the external clock of your device. Again not an expert but at least i tried. Christian

The way it works for me....i have an old adat-machine..... use 2 optical cables. And make sure you switch on the adat AFTER you started ptle. This will put the adat in slave-mode (id 2 message showing on the display, and press the digital in button) If you only have one cable, you need to make the adat-device the master and slave ptle to it (in the setup-session window change the sync to adat-optical)

Thanks Christian. I got rid of the pops and clicks but when monitoring the synth with the track rec. en. the volume control on the synth doesn't change the meter levels on the track. I know the volume control on the synth works because it effects the headphones connected to the synth. Also the monitor volume on the front of the digi001 doesn't change monitoring levels either. There's gotta be something I'm not doing here . I just want to free up two analog inputs by using the optical for my Alesis synth.

CRS, Thanks man, it sounds like I'll be in good shape as long as both ends of the optical cable are using the ADAT Optical format, which they do. The Tascam DM24 doesn't have analog Bus outs, only digital, so I was a little concerned. B. Ray, thanks. That's what I was worried about, a buddy 'o' mine has a Korg 16 trk with Optical out, but it's only 2 trks? I didn't realize optical COULD be S/PDIF. I find it rather stupid, but hey, what do I know. Thanks again guys!!!