optical cable

[satzclock]

Greetings!

I am using a digirack 2 which has an optical cable port. I have attached an optical cable from my DAT to the Digirack. I am using windows 8 but have it running as windows 7 since I am using pro tools 10.

I am using the input spdif but the track does not pick up a signal to record. Is there some special setting I need to use?

Thank you!

Steve

[Top Jimmy]

In the hardware setup, optical format needs to be set to S/PDIF and the clock source needs to be set to optical.

[JFreak]

Clock source is also important. If the recording gear is the clock master, the source gear needs to read the wordclock somehow. Otherwise the source gear needs to be clock master.

[satzclock]

Thank you very much for your helpful information. I got a signal but two problems remained. 1. When I went to change the clock setting no matter what I did, it defaulted to internal. And even more annoying, their was a constant clicking whether the tape was moving or not. In fact, (this may be unrelated) the out going jack (I use two mono adapters to change it to a quarter inch jack at the digi box) produces noise and drop out. Oddly, using a stereo jack that splits into 2 mono jacks produces a good signal though it is analog.

Thanks again!

[JFreak]

Constant clicking means wordclock problem. There can only be one clock master. If one box is always clocking internally, all other boxes must be able to lock to its clock

[satzclock]

So if pro tools only allows for an internal clock there is no way for me to make the setting external?

[Top Jimmy]

Is the is a pro DAT deck or a consumer grade deck? A pro deck should send digital silence when not playing. I've noticed that some consumer grade digital gear stops sending everything when stopped. If this is the case with your DAT deck, you may not be able to lock the clock to optical until the DAT is actually playing.

Other than that, there's a history of posts here on the DUC about some Digi interfaces not playing nice with certain DAT machines. I know I once couldn't get signal from a Panasonic DAT into an 002 that worked fine with other gear digitally.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

Is the is a pro DAT deck or a consumer grade deck? A pro deck should send digital silence when not playing. I've noticed that some consumer grade digital gear stops sending everything when stopped. If this is the case with your DAT deck, you may not be able to lock the clock to optical until the DAT is actually playing.

Other than that, there's a history of posts here on the DUC about some Digi interfaces not playing nice with certain DAT machines. I know I once couldn't get signal from a Panasonic DAT into an 002 that worked fine with other gear digitally.

FWIW, I never had an issue getting audio from a Tascam DA20 into my 003 via RCA SPDIF. To use the optical connection, you do need to set Optical=SPDIF(002 defaults to Optical=ADAT) and set the clock source to optical, then match the sample rate of the session to the DAT machine sample rate

[satzclock]

It is a Sony DTC 700 DAT which I assume is a professional model since it doesn't take a proprietary tape.

It does surprise me that the drop down menu gives three options for the clock, Internal, Spdif and adac but if you select anything other than internal it doesn't matter, it reverts to internal!!