ADAT Connections

[ChrisWParticipant]

Posted this in the Gear forum last week but didn't get a response so thought i'd throw it up here.

Does anyone have experience with using ADAT expansion on their interface? I borrowed a friends FR 18i20 to get more inputs on my Presonus 1818 VSL for a session on Sunday and I’m having a hard time getting it set up. Presonus discontinued their control app for the 1818VSL so I’ve been using the Audio Midi Setup in my Mac to adjust the clock, and the focusrite control app doesn’t seem to be recognizing the inputs. I’m not really sure what to do next. I seem to have gotten them synced with the audio midi setup but my DAW won’t recognize the signal from the ADAT inputs. I’ve tried both interfaces as master and slave.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated,

Chris

Update: I rented a 3rd Gen 18i20 and got it to lock / sync with my friends 2nd gen 18i20, but I'm not getting any signal from the ADAT inputs in my DAW (Logic) right now. My recording sessions coming up Sunday so I'm starting to get worried about getting this to work in time.

• This topic was modified 4 years ago by ChrisW.

[JJ WrightParticipant]

I don't have any experience with Focusrite or Presonus but I use the adat connections on my MOTU without any problems; generally speaking, the expansion unit doesn't connect to your computer, it only connects to the main unit by the adat cables. So then you have to set everything up using the control app for your main unit so that it receives the adat channels and sends them through to the computer. Then in your DAW they just look like additional channels from the main unit. So if you can't run the main app for your Presonus then it might not be possible to set up. Not sure what the issue would be with using two Focusrites though. I will say that the exception to not connecting the 2nd unit to the computer is sometimes you may have to do that to use it's control app to tell it to route out the adat ports.

[JJ WrightParticipant]

If you can't get it working over adat though -- since you're on a Mac you might be able to skip the adat and just connect both interfaces at once. Set them up as an Aggregate Device the mac audio settings and then point Logic to that device instead of to your usual primary interface.

[ChrisWParticipant]

Thanks for the pointers JJ! I spent sometime talking to Focusrite Support on a live chat and they helped me sort it out. In the future, I'm guessing I can run the Presonus in the system but it'd have to be as the Host machine, cause I could still setup the expansion using it's control app but I'll have to wait and see after this recording session.

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