Great Use for an ADAT

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 14 May 2010 9:28 am

Right here in my studio lobby...my statement on my feelings for the format...

Michael McGee · Post by **Michael McGee** » 14 May 2010 9:45 am

Made my day, John!

Mark van Allen · Post by **Mark van Allen** » 15 May 2010 9:13 am

Awesome. I bet you get a lot of great comments on that. If you have any more homeless plants, I have a few DA-38s I'd like to get rid of.

Hal Higgins · Post by **Hal Higgins** » 2 Jun 2010 10:47 am

Well....Alright John.....that's way-cool! Got a good chuckle out of this......

Bob Martin · Post by **Bob Martin** » 2 Jun 2010 10:02 pm

LOL very good!! Keep'em coming.....

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 8 Jun 2010 3:54 pm

Here is a Bach piece on the fretted dobro I recorded on my ADAT. http://www.mediafire.com/?momm0xmtm3m

I still use mine all the time. If you had not filled it up with cacti I would have made you an offer on it.

Great format and I make money with mine. Clean the head regularly and a $1 idler tire replacement is all I have ever done to them. Thousands of hours on mine. I find them on ebay for $50-75. I think I have about 8 of them.

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 8 Jun 2010 8:57 pm

You couldn't have paid me enough for that machine...

I have independent engineers break into applause in the lobby when they see it.... In the course of the format I guess we went through about 12-15 black face and an equal amount of XT20's. Used to buy idler wheels by the dozen...can still hear the sound of an ADAT tape being eaten vividly in my mind, not to mention the real time backups...

That said, we did make a lot of money with them, but I was never so happy to see a format go away...we keep a couple of XT20 for transfers when needed...

Here is noted engineer Lynn Fuston's take on it--called ADAT Hunting...

Bill Hatcher · Post by **Bill Hatcher** » 9 Jun 2010 5:15 am

Guess I will just have to have an ADAT graveyard around here. I am just still attached to them.

John Macy · Post by **John Macy** » 9 Jun 2010 2:31 pm

Ha...I'm still attached to a lot a analog machines myself...last count was 3 2" machines and an assortment of other 1/4" to 1" machines...guess that makes us old...

Scott Henderson · Post by **Scott Henderson** » 9 Jun 2010 7:52 pm

Excellent choice of foliage and the best use for one I've seen yet with maybe the exception of a good trap shoot...Never cared for the machines. Burned me at mixdown on a three day project

Hal Higgins · Post by **Hal Higgins** » 27 Jun 2010 4:51 pm

John....I know this is off topic, but....whatever happened to JLW and the SM Boys? Just curious.

Bob Martin · Post by **Bob Martin** » 11 Jul 2010 10:40 pm

I can still hear the sound of an ADAT tape being eaten vividly in my mind, not to mention the real time backups...

John, just be glad you didn't go with the Fostex d-80's talk about real time backup their backup scheme was 2 tracks at a time thru optical digital can you say 8 hours for a 2 hour session LOL!! Then there's the sound of your tape being mulched up think how sick I was on an all day session and while they went to eat lunch I stayed behind to back up the first parts and in the middle I got the "DskErr" message which rendered the 2 gb HD dead as a Mackerel how would you have liked to explain that to the client shewwwww!!!

He happened to be a friend and I gave him his cash back and quickly booked another studio for him and paid for his all day session plus a lot of groveling

As far as I know I was one of the 1st semi-pro studios in Nashville to go with HD modular recording and Jeff at Fostex talked me into it. I can't say enough about Jeff at Fostex and their loyalties to their good customers. At that time they had upgraded and released a newer unit named the D-160 which had 16 tracks and a scsi port for backing up much faster (just the time it took to write data to the back up disk) and much more reliable. I called Jeff and told him I was afraid to use the D-80's any more and was going back to analog and he asked me if I would stay with Fostex and be happy with 2 new D-160's with all of the bell's and whistles and much more stable firmware along with scsi and a few other things. Well reluctantly I said yes and he sent me 2 new D-160's which also gained me 16 extra tracks and I sent him the junk D-80's which I'm sure he used for flower pots as well LOL!!

The 160's were very nice and sounded nice and warm but guess what "dsk Err" 2 more times which Jeff walked me thru to fix and not lose all data. Once more I called and he said "I know you're going back to analog

this time he upgraded me up to the 24 track version contained all in one box all upgrades were for free other than my 1st 4k investment. It was the best of all 3 models but after 3 months with it I never could get the "dsk Err" out of my mind and almost never used it on a paid session so I called jeff and offered to send the 24 back and he told me after all of my problems and loyalty for me to just keep it and play around with it off the clock and help them find bugs in their firmware so I did become sort of a beta tester and helped find a few bugs and the 24 is still setting in a rack in my storage building

That's when I switched to Sonar on the PC it was version 2 I believe and have never looked back. Have I lost any data? "Heck Yes" but it was always backed up hehehe!! Good recording my friend!

Big Bob