How to sync three adat tapes (24 tracks) into one audition multitrack?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
March 8, 2019
1 reply
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An audio friend of mine re-found svhs adat tapes with original recordings of his own shows in the nineties. They synchronized three adats machines to make a 24 track recording possible. I only have one adat machine and an eight-channel analog/digital (adat/spdif) interface and which brings these eight tracks separated in real-time to audition perfectly. So I could do this copy action in three parts in a row to get the 24 tracks into one multitrack session. My question is how do I get these three tapes 100% synchronized into one Adobe Audition Multitrack session? How is the copying/synchronizing of the timecode or any other sync code done? Where/how can I read (about) this?. Does anyone has some experience with this? Thanks for reading and answering. Regards, René

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Correct answer SteveG_AudioMasters_

I'm presuming that this was originally done with three machines and a BRC to lock them and provide sync points. Now personally, if I had to do this, I'd get hold of an old BRC, because you can feed sync into that, and assuming that your sound device has a word clock output, everything should stay in sync if you do it this way - meaning that all you'd have to do is line up the three groups. There have been all sorts of conversations about this on the web, but nobody seems to have come up with anything other than a sort-of 'suck it and see' methodology for when you can't get three machines and a BRC together.

Other things to note; Audition doesn't handle time-code, so you are absolutely relying on clock sources being locked, however you do this. But time-code locking was always a bit of a hit and miss affair at the best of times, and you'll probably get just as good a sync outcome just by eyeballing the tracks, quite frankly - which is what a lot of people seem to have done. But finding a way to lock the ADAT clock to your sound device is the key to this.

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Correct answer

Community Expert

I'm presuming that this was originally done with three machines and a BRC to lock them and provide sync points. Now personally, if I had to do this, I'd get hold of an old BRC, because you can feed sync into that, and assuming that your sound device has a word clock output, everything should stay in sync if you do it this way - meaning that all you'd have to do is line up the three groups. There have been all sorts of conversations about this on the web, but nobody seems to have come up with anything other than a sort-of 'suck it and see' methodology for when you can't get three machines and a BRC together.

Other things to note; Audition doesn't handle time-code, so you are absolutely relying on clock sources being locked, however you do this. But time-code locking was always a bit of a hit and miss affair at the best of times, and you'll probably get just as good a sync outcome just by eyeballing the tracks, quite frankly - which is what a lot of people seem to have done. But finding a way to lock the ADAT clock to your sound device is the key to this.

H

hdp_reneAuthor

Inspiring

Wow, quick answer Steve thank you! Yes I saw them too today, due to an answer about this on ADAT tape transfer question - Avid Pro Audio Community about the same problem. Transport costs to Europe are much more expensive than the brc itself. Will check your world clock question and if it does, I need to buy one. ;-) Thanks again René

ryclark

Participating Frequently

Hi Ry Thank you for your reaction. I hope you have some experiences with this. I own this very simple behringer umc 1820. However it has no word clock. But a cheep extention, the behringer ada8200 does have it. Together with the alesis brc would the synchronizing work you think? Thanks for answering René

I don't necessarily believe that a BRC would be much help in this instance without actually having three ADAT machines. However if you connect the ADAT optical out into the UMC ADAT input then I would think that you would have a pretty good chance of getting reasonable sync between the three tapes' audio after transfer into Audition since the ADAT machine is providing the wordclock to the system on all three passes of playback. The UMC, and therefore Audition, should be using that clock for sync at all times I suspect. Anyway it's worth trying and see how close the sync is. It may very well work out OK IMHO. it would have been different if you had to come out of the ADAT as analogue and then into Audition via A/D converters in an unsynced audio interface. But as you are always in the digital domain I think that it will work.

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