Thank you Richard and Matthew. We are currently in the very early stages
but we are hitting the ground running. In fact, we have just got our room
painted so we can actually start setting up the racks and equipment we
already have tomorrow. It's actually really exciting.
Matthew, we might look into DDS drives when we ramp up our production
later. Most digitization will be done by trained students, so anything
that makes this process easier is very useful. Richard, I have done
transfers in parallel at other facilities and we might implement it later
into our workflow as we increase our facility but right now we do not plan
on doing much in parallel. (I'm just curious but would it be theoretically
possible to do parallel DAT transfers over S/PDIF if they were slaved to a
master word clock?).
Right now we are planning on transferring a single item of audio in real
time so that the person transferring can monitor for quality assurance and
produce notes that can be used for our metadata.
S-MUX is interesting to me personally as a hobbyist recording musician who
spends too much of my own money on audio equipment but I do not see much
use in it for our collections at the university. We do not have any
digital recordings that exceed standard DAT and ADAT 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz.
I'm just wondering if I used the Alesis ADAT AI-1 that we have laying
around to convert the S/PDIF from a single DAT to 2 channels of ADAT
Lightpipe, would I be losing something or introducing aliasing during the
conversion. I have used AES/EBU and S/PDIF quite a bit but I personally
own nothing with ADAT Lightpipe on it nor have I worked with it anywhere,
so I cannot speak from first hand experience.
Henry
--
Henry Borchers
Broadcast Media Digitization and Curation Librarian
University of Maryland
B0221D McKeldin Library
College Park, MD 20742
(301) 405-0725
On 9/11/12 11:26 AM, "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Hello, Henry,
>
>For $304 more (based on the Sweetwater pricing, try Kelly's Music and
>Computers as well) you can get the RME FireFace UCX.
>
>I have the UFX and think it is fantastic. I have not used the Apogee and
>cannot comment on it.
>
>Here is the RME page for the UCX. I suspect it is between the RME
>Multiface II and the Fireface UFX in quality, tending more towards the
>UFX. It uses the same digital core and the same wonderful mixer app. I
>have successfully used Multifaces, Multiface IIs, and now the UFX in my
>audio digitization business where, among other things, I do master tapes
>of albums for critical users.
>
>http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_fireface_ucx.php
>
>It has 8 analog inputs, coax SPDIF, and LightPipe, all of which can be
>used simultaneously--18 input channels. Using multi-track software,
>parallel interfaces allow you to ingest a cassette and a reel in
>parallel. In addition, the additional inputs, even if you don't use that
>mode, allow sofware selection among say a reel machine, a cassette
>machine, and a DAT machine (using the SPDIF for that).
>
>Additionally, the Light Pipe connector can be converted to be the
>optical SPDIF input (but you do NOT get two SPDIF inputs at that point,
>I don't think, but I'm not certain. The block diagram implies that you
>might, but I don't think so.).
>
>Light Pipe is an Alesis standard that was developed for the ADAT and has
>been widely adopted. It allows for 8 channels at 44.1/48 or 4 channels
>at 96/24 (using S-Mux, built into the RMEs). It is not the same as SPDIF
>which is stereo (and I think can run up to at least 96/24 though none of
>the devices that I have other than the RMEs work at those speeds).
>
>The downside is analog inputs 1-4 are on the front panel, with 1/2 being
>mic/line inputs and 3/4 being instrument inputs. However, the instrument
>inputs are great if you can mount it near a Nakamichi Dragon for
>cassettes. There are only four balanced pro line inputs.
>
>I would caution copying anything in parallel with DATs however, because
>with a DAT you are clocking from the DAT, not the ultra-stable internal
>reference, and any perturbation in the DAT clock might impact the other
>analog inputs. The good news, however, is that unlike some other brands,
>if you lose the SPDIF reference, the RME products fail over to the
>internal clock in a pretty seamless manner. That way, you don't have to
>change clock source as you switch the DAT on and off.
>
>The block diagram is on page 97 of the manual available here
>http://www.rme-audio.de/download/fface_ucx_e.pdf
>
>Cheers,
>
>Richard
>
>
>
>On 2012-09-11 10:26 AM, Henry Borchers wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> Thank you for all your help as it has been very useful to me. As I have
>>explained in earlier posts, I am working on an audio digitization
>>workstation for the university here and I am looking at options for
>>equipment. I have been given the go ahead to upgrade the universityıs
>>original plans of using a Behringer interface for something more
>>archival worthy.
>>
>> For the last week I have been searching through various interfaces to
>>find the one best to serve for our needs. I came across the newly
>>released Apogee Quartet which seems like it should satisfy our analog to
>>digital needs, however the only digital input is ADAT Lightpipe and no
>>S/PDIF. I did find that the university has an unused Alesis AI-1 that I
>>can use which converts between S/PDIF and ADAT Lightpipe. I have never
>>used a digital converter before nor do I have a way of testing it so I
>>cannot say if the translation is flawless or if it should be avoided for
>>archival transfers. Our collection has a considerable amount of DAT
>>tapes which I hope to connect via S/PDIF but we also have a handful of
>>ADATs which Iıd like to transfer over ADAT Lightpipe. As the Apogee
>>Quartet is half the cost of the Apogee Symphony, it would be nice to get
>>away with simply using this. Not to mention, the Apogee Quartet comes
>>with some beautiful level monitors.
>>
>> Does anybody have any experience and advice about converting S/PDIF and
>>AES/EBU to ADAT Lightpipe?
>>
>> Thank you for all your helpful advice!
>>
>> Best,
>> Henry
>> --
>> Henry Borchers
>> Broadcast Media Digitization and Curation Librarian
>> University of Maryland
>> B0221D McKeldin Library
>> College Park, MD 20742
>> (301) 405-0725
>>
>
>--
>Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
>Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
>http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
>Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
|
