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View Full Version : Cheap professional DAC: Alesis ADAT



Juha
05-12-2014, 12:44
Bought one Alesis ADAT LX20 at a junk shop for 10 pounds.

This is a digital 8 channel recorder that records on VHS tape (really!!).
Cost about 2000 in the nineties. Mine is from 1998 and it has been used only for 25 hours.

The ADAT has 8 high quality DA and AD converters. It works on the optical ADAT "lightpipe" connection.

So to use it on HiFi you need something with the ADAT connector. Fortunately my RME soundcard has it.
Set up the card settings, plug the optical cable (same as SPDIF), set the Alesis on external clock and it works.
We are talking about sample accurate stuff here. The Alesis slaves to the computer at 44.1 khz. ADAT works up to 48khz and 24-bit.

The sound is very good. This is difficult but the RME card has a more clinical/neutral sound. Alesis ADAT has more bass and a meaty sound.

Recommended for fun. And I am going to get a VHS tape and see how this one records.

http://hoone.com/alesis.jpg

synsei
05-12-2014, 13:22
What a cool looking and fun bit of kit, I like it :)

Juha
05-12-2014, 14:01
Should be easy enough to find one. More than 100.000 were sold.

Most semi-pro / pro sound cards have Adat available.
With old second hand computer sound cards there are Windows / Mac OSX driver issues.
I have never seen a "consumer" sound card with Adat.