ADAT Tape Project Update!

I've been thinking all week about how to get digital input into ProTools for my tape digitization project, and I finally figured it out today. I ended up getting half of the first set of tapes digitized.

The process for this is way less complicated than I thought it would be. To start, I take a Lightpipe cable out of the back of the Alesis XT20. This is the digital output of the tape player. I then need to take the Lightpipe cable into the optical in port of one of our HDX interfaces in studio A.

Once all of the cables are figured out, its time to fix the hardware settings in ProTools for it to recieve signal from the tape player. In the settings tab, under hardware, I need to change the analog inputs over to digital on the HDX.

All of that got signal into ProTools, but there were still problems once I had that done. When I was listening to the audio coming out of the speakers and I noticed a lot of noise that shouldn't have been there, like a bunch of tics and pops. This was due to a mismatch in clock speed and bit depth between the HDX and the XT20. To fix this, it was back into the hardware menu. You can change the clock speed leader in this menu which I changed to the XT20. This solved the problem immediately and I was ready to start recording.

My goal next is to make my workflow with this more effiecient. The most time consuming thing right now is lining the tracks up since they are split between three tapes. I plan to get back into the studio next weekend and get all of these tapes digitized!