oddball ADAT import question

Not super common but not unheard of. Had to deal with that maybe twice and it was a lifetime ago. One of those projects ended up in my hands because once the artist left the studio where the initial recording was done? Nobody could play the tapes at the right pitch. Totally undocumented.

Is the math right? Maybe. Can you check the pitch intervals? Like when the bass or a B3 (or anything) is playing a note... is "A" actually A 440? That's how I'd verify. 

Sample rates..? Are you sure that adjusting sample rate to something non-standard is the best way to go here? Totally understand wanting to do a digital dump & bypass the alesis converters but... down the road what's the end game? Is a weird  sample rate going to screw up anyone else? Bad pitch... bad clock w/ticks? 

Personally I'd get the machines pitched right and then dump analog at 44.1 or 48kHz... or hell, go crazy 96kHz! Mostly because of whoever's next in line & making their life easy. Who's mixing? Who's mastering? IME any sort of non-standard sample rate is basically asking for problems. 

Actually I’ve transferred a lot of 18-28 year old tapes in the last few years, and they don’t shed. Many I’ve had to transfer twice because of a transfer system hiccup. Error rates are great. The machines are the problem.

I had a client recently go back and record a batch of songs they'd never documented.  An abandoned 2004 ADAT session yielded one song no one could remember other than the title, and it was complete, going on a new release!  

jmoose - it wouldn’t stay at the odd rate, it’d be converted to a standard.

Pitch change is sample rate change, so you’d have to transfer to a system that can record at the same non-standard sample rate. Or fix it in post as I propose.

For transfers I'm firing up a G5 to use a MOTU 2408mkIII PCIe system, which allows word clock sync between ADATs and DAW.  Then I can transfer multiple related tapes at different times with correct sync alignment.  

If you used a BRC you had to format tapes at 48k and pitch down to -147 for maximum compatibility. If you didn’t use a BRC you could format at 44k1 and be ok. 44k1 recordings made on a BRC driven system formatted at 48k will be misleading in a transfer context, there must be good notes and references. I’ve never seen my transfer system work properly with a pitched BRC connected. 1st rule of transfers seems to be forget using the BRC. Even if you preset a transfer system for 44k1, the moment you insert a 48k formatted tape the ADATs will change to 48 so you have to then change the clock again once the tape is threaded. If you don’t, the ADAT will run at 48k and the receiving system will record at 44k1! If it’s a word clock synced system it will still be in sync chase mode and the data headers will be wrong, there won’t be sonic errors. Then you can edit the headers, unless the feeling of doubt is too great and you’d rather redo the transfer. Been there!

Set the ADAT displays to show error rate, and check it occasionally during transfers.  This is the first indication of dirty heads.  

An oddity I repeatedly encounter: first 30 seconds of a transfer having sonic errors, then stabilizing. I’ve taken to rolling the first minute, then starting over with a take 2 on the transfer.  You won't hear the errors while transferring, only on playback.   I don't have any explanation for this behavior. 

Another: Be sure all tracks are coming out. If you have any blank tracks, be skeptical. Initializing the machines before you start seems to prevent this problem.

No, it does it with 1 machine, it's some other sync thing.  Can't think of any explanation.  

The regular ADAT 3 machine sync time I was always able to keep in the 5 second range most times, being militant about cleaning/belts/brake cal and occasionally sending them in for full alignments.  There was always the stray moments when one just didn't lock though.  I kinda remember lock was worse at the beginning and end of tapes, like much better skipping the first and last several minutes.  

One of the very last jobs I did with ADATs was a pretty simple 1 machine tour with a singer/songwriter, maybe 10 shows.  The hell part I couldn't talk them out of was assembly editing a live record running order with the masters, before mix!  Only 100x the time required with a DAW......

Wow. I have to applaud you, Doug, for going with what you believe sounds best, because I certainly agree with Jay that going analog out of the ADATs instead of digital would be easier.

It's kind of amazing what we used to put up with because we just had to. I do remember that the 3 XT20s we had locked together better and faster than the blackface 16-bit originals. The blackfaces could hunt and peck, going back and forward for quite a few seconds before locking in. 

Not a bad idea, but I don’t honestly know if an external DA is gonna clock to 40,041kHz from a lightpipe input.

That’s been on the tip of my tongue as a possibility. I have avoided exercising tapes before transfer, though in theory it’s textbook wise to do so. I should try shuttling the first 5 minutes and back.

I’ve found the most common way to get dirty heads is to let a tape run all the way to the very end. Something about the jolt of tape running out, or crossing the leader tape splice is to risk needing a head cleaning.

Makes sense about heads accumulating dirt with mechanical shock/disturbance. Again, practical tip, thanks for sharing.
I can't remember where I read it, but a tech was commenting that ADAT heads were often damaged not from overuse but due to improper / overzealous cleaning. Makes me wonder whether people are that bad in fixing what isn't broken or if the heads are that finicky. Maybe both. 

Man, this brings back so many memories.

While we’re mostly (and understandably) focused here on the difficulties and workarounds, it’s also reminding me that ADATs were the final days of “a simpler time” in recording. There were loads of things that we just couldn’t do until literally 5 yrs later, at which point DAWs could do what seemed like *anything*.

I miss the simpler days of, “oh, you sang that out of tune? Guess you’ll just have to sing it again and again until you’re happy enough with it.” And the crazy thing is that I really think we were less precious about performances back then, because there was no ability to endlessly tweak stuff. Either your drummer could play in time, or he couldn’t. If he couldn’t, you either had a record with an out-of-time drummer, or you hired a “studio” drummer to play for the record.

Don’t get me wrong, I make use of Flex Time or AutoTune as much as I need to. I just miss the simplicity of those days, and I miss how sometimes a band just needed to go home and practice to get better before they came back in to record again. As painful as that conversation could sometimes be, it was part of the growth process we in the small-to-mid-market music scenes were lucky enough to witness.