The bottom line:
You need a capture card (or A/D, D/A converter) that has the ability to 
sync its internal clock to the SPDIF stream of the source. Same goes for 
an AES source. The alternative, which Ellis no doubt used, is to sync 
the player, the converter and your ingest computer to an external clock 
(House sync or clock) running at the sample rate of the source. 
Otherwise, you will get clock errors because everyone is not marching to 
the same drummer (or: clock source). The end result is dropped frames by 
your capture device which manifests itself as random ticks or pops.

Hope this helps,

Corey
Corey Bailey Audio Engineering
www.baileyzone.net

On 5/2/2017 2:49 PM, Eli Bildirici wrote:
> OK great, there is hope! I will try to play back via a CM6206 capture card (spec sheet (http://www.bramcam.nl/NA/8663-XS/CM6206.pdf) indicates 32kHz input support - see page 15) or our PowerMac
> G5 and hopefully report back. Thanks a lot for this insight!
>
> Eli
>
> May 2 2017 5:39 PM, "John Chester"  wrote:
>   On 5/2/17 5:15 PM, Eli Bildirici wrote:
>   'Sending encoded 12 bit values to a linear DAC will surely give horribly distorted audio.'
> Aha. If that is the case, then can we presume that when output via S/PDIF, a 12/32 DAT has already
> had its bits mapped to 16-bit linear values? That would be good news for my purposes, I think...
>
> In order to produce analog output from a 12 bit recording, presumably the DAT machine converts to
> 16 bit linear, which it then sends to its internal 16 bit DAC. Thus, the sensible choice would be
> to send the converted 16 bit values to the S/PDIF output -- but I have no idea if that's what
> actually happens. If you listen to the 32 kHz S/PDIF output, and you hear undistorted audio that
> sounds similar to the DAT machine's analog output, then I think you can assume that is what's
> happening.
>
> -- John Chester
> Eli Bildirici
> (347) 837-8337
>
>