ART Pro Audio TubeOpto 8 - Eight Ch. Mic Preamp with ADAT - Manual (Page 11)

APPLICATIONS
Typical applications
The Tubeopto 8™ makes an ideal addition to any ADAT compatible Digidesign interface running ProTools
software. Simply connect the ADAT Output from the Tubeopto 8™ to the Optical In of the Digi product and
connect a 75 Ohm BNC cable between the Digi Wordclock Out and the Wordclock In on the Tubeopto 8™. Set
the Tubeopto 8™ for Wordclock sync and you have just added 8 more high quality preamp channels to your
ProTools setup. If you want to also use the 8 D/A outputs on the Tubeopto 8™ to expand your systems output
monitoring capability, simply connect the Optical Out from the Digi system to the ADAT Input on the Tubeopto
8™.
If you are using a Digidesign interface that does not have Wordclock output then you can use the Tubeopto
8™ in ADAT sync mode and connect both ADAT Input and Output on the Tubeopto 8™ to Optical Out and In
on the Digi unit. Set the Digi unit to be the sync clock with Optical Out and In being set to ADAT. This would be
the preferred method. Alternatively, set the Tubeopto 8™ as master and set it’s sample rate to 44.1KHz or
48KHz and connect the ADAT Output on the Tubeopto 8™ to the Optical In on the Digi unit. In this case you
will need to set the ADAT Optical In to be the “clock” within Protools.
Other ADAT Lightpipe compatible hardware and DAW applications like Cubase, Sonar, Logic, etc. can benefit
in a similar manner to the above. Just make sure you know what unit is acting as the Master Clock and set the
other units and software appropriately.
Using Wordclock as your timing master in a system allows multiple Tubeopto 8’s to be used to build as many
input channels as needed as long as you have sufficient ADAT Lightpipe Inputs. In this application you would
connect the Wordclock master to each unit and connect the multiple ADAT Lightpipe Outputs to your multi-
ADAT input interface. Each Lightpipe cable would carry 8 channels of ADAT and they would all be synced via
Wordclock.
With the Tubeopto 8™ you can also connect it’s ADAT Output to it’s ADAT Input (using a single optical
cable), set an internal sample rate of 44.1KHz or 48KHz, and use it as a traditional 8 channel analog tube
preamp with analog outs. Adding an ADAT splitter in series with the ADAT Output and Input allows you to tap
off a digital feed while using the unit primarily as an analog preamp. In this application the signal goes through
both A/D and D/A sections so the short amount of latency through each section adds (32 samples through the
A/D and 22 samples through the D/A) up to 54 samples which is 1.125ms at 48KHz or 1.225ms at 44.1KHz.
This amount of latency is very short and should have little impact in most systems.
Digidesign and ProTools are trademarks of Avid™
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