Are all ADAT ports created equal?

[Premo]

If I'm trying to get sound out my Mac Pro, and have the option of using the built in optical port for ADAT, or the FW1814 optical adat. Is there any differences? I figure it's all digital audio and shouldn't matter if I don't hear any difference but are there other meaningful aspects to consider or things to watch out for?

This might be one of those moments where I'm over thinking something.

[hummerZ]

the optical digital audio ports on your mac are optical s/pdif (2 ch) , not ADAT (8 ch).

at least, IIRC.

as far as quality, bits are bits. if you're a big nerd, you can clock the mac externally.

[Premo]

I would need another optical cable before I qualify for the big nerd award apparently. Thanks for the info!

[John_Toolbox]

They also support 5.1 surround out, for consumer grade stuff that uses that format. But definitely not 8 channel ADAT.

Unless they changed it on the mac pro's, every digital audio i/o built into a mac shares the same socket that would use 1/8 stereo analog i/o.

To use that port with anything that supports s/pdif optical, you need a special lightpipe cable, it has an 1/8" mini shaped optical connector on one end and your standard ADAT connector on the other.

And you can't get nerdy without having a real audio interface. Core audio won't let you select external word clock with the built in digital I/O, or at least not from any of my attempts.

But, if you're using a core audio app(not pro tools), you can create an aggregate device, adding the built in I/O to your core audio interface. I did this with my TC electronic Studio konnekt 48 and it works great, just put your audio interface in first and all other interfaces that are part of the aggregate device slave to it.. Now if it only did 8 channels of ADAT...