| Discussion: Y56K adat pipe? |
John N
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Posts: 19
|       | 6:25 am on April 24, 2010 |
| Anyone use the adat lightpipe IN on their Y56K? Never occurred to me but now I'm researching it. Any tips? thanks
JN
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funkman
Captain
Posts: 353
| | 4:17 pm on April 24, 2010 |
| as we've discovered in various threads it works fine except it can't derive a wordclock from the audio (as Buck explained to me). I have tested this myself and it is true. This means that as long as the source has a separate word clock connector all is well. If not the AW has to be wordclock master. This might be ok but you can't properly sync up an Adat machine (see my thread:). Also it is always best to let an AD converter use it's own clock for less jitter etc. So if you had a high quality 8 channel pre-amp connected with the lightpipe you might lose a bit of quality using the AW4416 as word clock master. It will work though, and it might be fine - just technically not the best. The Adat card doesn't have this weekness.
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John N
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Posts: 20
| | 10:22 pm on April 26, 2010 |
This is all new to me, so I'm trying to wrap my head around the clocking issues involved. If I were to buy a multi-channel mic pre and AD converter box w/ adat Out into the Y56K adat In AND use the Black Lion Audio Sparrow ADC going in to the spdif I would have a total of 10 channels of inputs.
BUT which would be the clock? Right now with just the 2 channel Sparrow I set the AW to external clock and let the Sparrow be the clock.
Can this be done with another 8 ch pre/ADC using the ADAT pipe on the Y56K?
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John N
Full Share
Posts: 21
| | 10:22 pm on April 26, 2010 |
This is all new to me, so I'm trying to wrap my head around the clocking issues involved. If I were to buy a multi-channel mic pre and AD converter box w/ adat Out into the Y56K adat In AND use the Black Lion Audio Sparrow ADC going in to the spdif I would have a total of 10 channels of inputs.
BUT which would be the clock? Right now with just the 2 channel Sparrow I set the AW to external clock and let the Sparrow be the clock.
Can this be done with another 8 ch pre/ADC using the ADAT pipe on the Y56K?
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funkman
Captain
Posts: 354
| | 10:36 am on April 27, 2010 |
| To use both at once it would require a compromise anyway. As I said best practice is to let the AD converter be its own wordclock master, but as your using two units at once you would have to have one slave anyway, which means the AW4416 would have to be wordclock master. In this case the waves board is ok. However as you wouldn't always be using 10 digital inputs at once (I assume), you would be well advised to get an 8 channel preamp that has a separate wordclock connector (BNC) as well as the adat lightpipe connector. This is so you can use it as wordclock master when tracking with the Y56K board.
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funkman
Captain
Posts: 355
| | 10:40 am on April 27, 2010 |
sorry in reply to your final question - in case I haven't made it clear - the answer is no, you can't use the Y56K this way. The AW4416 has to be master. With the optional Adat board the AW4416 can be the slave, but not with the Y56K.
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John N
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Posts: 22
| | 3:48 pm on April 27, 2010 |
OK, I think I understand. With 2 different ADCs coming into the AW (Sparrow via spdif and XYZ via 56K adat the AW would have to be master clock unless I could clock one ADC to the other...???
Sounds like the least complicated but more expensive option would be another expansion card with adat I/O and run XYZ pre/converter into that - but still doesn't one converter have to be master?
Like I said I'm trying to wrap my head around these issues.
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John N
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Posts: 23
| | 4:35 pm on April 27, 2010 |
Funkman - I really appreciate your help on this! I forgot to ask the most obvious question about the whole master clock thing: what is the downside of using the AW as the master clock for normal audio stuff (no midi)? What could go wrong?
I have forgotten to switch the AW to EXT clock when using the Sparrow in thru the spdif IN and I have not had a problem that I could discern. Wouldn't it still be better using better mic pres and more up to date converters than the AW's?
Thanks again!
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funkman
Captain
Posts: 356
| | 6:35 pm on April 27, 2010 |
| to the first question, yes that's right, if you wanted to use two digital sources at the same time the aw4416 would have to be master. If you could slave the external units to one or the other and still have an available word connection to the aw4416 then yes, you could do it that way. However there can only be one word clock master whichever way you do it. You have to have a word clock master or you will get digital clicks and noises - not non-stop noise, but every now and then. Yes it is better to use the best pre-amps and converters you can afford, and of course you can get better ones than the AW4416's inbuilt ones. This is not the issue. The problem is you must have a wordclock master. To get the best results from your expensive AD converter it is best to let it be the word clock master. The Y56K can't allow this through the lightpipe, and so you would lose a bit of quality (in theory) by having the AW4416 as master. This is not because the AW4416's clock isn't "good enough" - simply that all converters like to be their own word master. It will work, but is not best practice. I think your best option is to get a nice 8 channel strip with a BNC word connector. When recording set the AW4416 to slave to the word connector and pass the audio through the Y56K lightpipe. When you want to record from your other unit, slave the AW4416 word clock to the SPDIF connector.
When you want to record both the adat lightpipe and the SPDIF at the same time, let the AW4416 be the wordclock master - it wont be a problem, just not ideal. Getting the Adat MY8 board gives you other options, but only if you fail to get a BNC word connector with your AD/Pre-amp unit. Also you can't fit it at the same time as the Y56K board, as it will damage the AW4416 to do so - too much power drawn by the combined cards.
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John N
Full Share
Posts: 24
| | 6:38 pm on April 27, 2010 |
I emailed Black Lion about the issues and they said that the Sparrow won't clock externally but I can continue to use the Sparrow to clock both the AW and the extra pre/converter. The Sparrow will clock the AW via spdif as well as the other pre/converter through adat I/O. Now maybe they are not aware of some details regarding the Y56K card? Will this work? They said I would need the extra pre/conv to have adat In and Out and just set the AW to EXT clock and the Sparrow will take care of the rest. Looks like the M Audio Octane has the I/O I would need.
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