adat (toslink) to firewire or usb interface?

[tony moore]

anyone know of a simple interface to get 8 channels of audio via toslink (adat) thru firewire or usb? we've been using a yamaha 01v with an adat card for gigs and i'd love to be able to mult the mix to the 8 tracks of adat and record on my ibook. fwiw, i'd be using dp (or pt) on a mac.

thanks!

tony

[markpar]

Off the top of my head, the only thing that comes to mind is the MOTU 828. Probably a bit spendy for what you need, though.

-mark

[tony moore]

yeah, i was hoping for some little box, preferably usb powered as well. i did find a bok that does the opposite. iow, it outputs from usb to adat lightpipe. but it's only 16 bit and only goes one way. sounds strange...

[Professor]

I'm not aware of any device that will move eight channels in and out of USB as I've always understood the USB format to be too slow for that much date to pass through. There's lots of two channel in and two channel out, but no 8-channels. That said, there has been a lot of movement into firewire for that very reason. The catch will be compatibility with your software. If you are going to use Pro Tools or Digital Performer, you had better check to see what DigiDesign and MOTU have to offer as they do not typically play well with others. There is a piece from Metric Halo I think that will move lots of channels in and out and may be powered off of the computer, but you should double check. Oh, and FYI Toslink is a two-channel optical format that is similar to S/PDIF while ADAT's digital I/O is called ADAT Optical - I'd hate for you to get a 'toslink' interface only to find out that it won't work.

-Jeremy

[soundhack]

digidesign just came up with a new rack mount box (digi 002 rack). it has 8 toslink , 8 adc, 8 dac, 2 aes/ebu to firewire. its around $1200 i think.

i wish someone would make a box without adc/dac convertors, just adat<>firewire.