Problems with ADAT card…

I’m responding to myself here, with kind of a question. I’m thinking that this must be a clocking problem, because by them selves both interfaces worked fine, no clicks. I’m confused on ADAT clocking. I understand that there has to be a master clock and the rest are slaves, when I use the BNC in’s and outs, but what about the ADAT. How should I set the clocks on the interfaces when I’m using them with ADAT out into the ADAT card of the Utrack. If I’m setting the software on the Utrack to clock from ADAT1, then wouldn’t the interface, in this case the Audient, wouldn’t it need to be set to Master? Boy am I mixed up on this one. Sorry to be so tedious here. Marc.

This is just an update to the ADAT problem post above. I was getting clear audio out of the Utrack using the 3 interfaces plugged into the RME and then out to the Adat card, but I kept getting this bad clicking sound again. After pulling my hair out for a few days, I actually prayed again, and honest to God, I kept seeing a clock setup using daisy chain BNC cables running through all the units. Well, I started by running BNC word clock out of the 18i20, into my Clarette, out of the clarette, into my Audient and terminating the Audient with a 75 ohm termination plug or actually using a built in button to do that on the Audient. Well…………., thank God it worked, but before that I tried splitting the signal just before the Audient and running the other tap up to the Utrack. At that point the Audient wouldn’t lock, so I cut out the t-bar just before the Audient and just ended the chain with the Audient, leaving the Utrack 24 out of the loop. At that point everything locked sync and worked, but……………………., but,….. [i]and now here’s the rest of the story[/i]!! It all worked, but I had so much trouble with the routing software that came with the RME ADAT distribution box, I just pulled the RME box out of the setup and ran Adat out of each interface into the ADAT card on the Utrack. At that point I used the 18i20 as the master clock, and set it that way, then set the other two interfaces to wordclock or “slave” if you will. I set the Utrack to ADAT I/O I believe and used one of the other interfaces for my source ADT. It all works now, and I’m able to send each channel to it’s respective Utrack input, with a clear signal.

If any one has any questions, especially with the Utrack setup, I’ll try and be prudent about answering them. For some reason, using the BNC clock setup was the only way I could stop the insane clicking sound. If anyone has an easier or different way to do it, let me know, so we could all see how to do it. Thank you for your time everyone. I hope this long post can help someone. Marc.

Thank you again, as always, Laszlo. You’re very prompt on these responses. I know that means a lot to all of us who are trying to get things right with our equipment. I totally understand where there only can be one master clock, and everything else has to be a slave to it whether it is in a daisy chain or some other configuration or combination of that, but somehow, it still get’s hazy to me when it comes to the ADAT part of it. Right now I’m clocking my three 8 channel interfaces together with word clock using the Focusrite 18i20 as my master. For some reason I wasn’t able to carry the word clock signal thru to the Utrack 24 without losing sync on my last interface in the daisy chain which would be my Audient. I’m still able though to record and use all 3 interfaces clearly and they seem to be in sync with the Utrack. I do however have the ADAT card on the Utrack which I’m running all 3 interfaces into that with toslink. I also have the I/O on the Utrack set to digital I/O. and I’m syncing to the 3rd interface on my Utrack with the ADAT part of the Utrack. I’m probably not saying that too well but what I’m getting at is even though I think I set everything right using only the ADAT card and setting things to sync from ADAT 3, I still had to hook up the word clock daisy chain in order not to have noise on my recordings, like a bad clicking sound. Marc.