Contents Welcome! .......................................................... 3 About the ADAT HD24...................................... 3 Important features of your ADAT HD24 .... 3 ADAT HD24 key features:.................................. 5 How to Use This Manual........................... 6 Important Safety Instructions...................................7 Instructions de Sécurité Importantes (French) ...... 8 Beim Benutzen dieses Produktes beachten Sie bitte die folgenden Sicherheitshinweise: (German) .......................................................... 9 CE Declaration of Conformity........................... 10 Instructions to the User (FCC Notice) ................ 10 Quick Start Guide.................................................. 11 If you can't wait to get started:.......................... 11 Front panel tour--left side................................ 14 Front panel tour--right side ............................. 15 Locate/auto buttons ............................... 15 Special features....................................... 15 About the Display............................................ 16 Rear panel tour................................................ 17 Making A Recording ........................................34 Time Counter..........................................34 Transport Buttons....................................35 Recording ........................................................35 Sample Rate Selection ..............................35 Track Selection and Setting Levels ............36 The meters .......................................................37 Peak hold modes .....................................37 Setting the Recording Level......................38 Input Select......................................................39 Digital Input ...........................................39 Clock Source settings when recording the Digital Input......................................39 Using All Input .......................................39 Input Monitor Controls.....................................40 Auto Input..............................................40 All Input.................................................40 Playback ..........................................................41 Scanning.................................................41 Scrubbing ...............................................41 Pitch Control....................................................42 Using Locate Points ...............................................43 Locating ..........................................................43 Special Locate Points ........................................43 Other Locate Commands ..................................45 Creating A Playback/Record Loop ....................45 Automated Recording ......................................47 Rehearsing..............................................48 Connections......................................................... 19 Unpacking and Inspection................................ 19 Mounting on a Shelf or Non-Rack Enclosure ............................................... 19 Installing in a Rack .......................................... 19 Thermal Considerations in Rack Mounting............................................... 19 Power ............................................................. 20 AC Power Hookup ................................. 20 AC Grounding ....................................... 20 Analog inputs and outputs............................... 21 From the console to the HD24's inputs:..... 22 About Audio Cables ............................... 23 Typical input jack hookups...................... 23 Sync In/Out .................................................... 24 ADAT Optical Digital Inputs and Outputs ........ 25 About 16-bit and 20-bit signal transfers .... 25 High sample rate operation ..................... 25 Footswitches ................................................... 29 The LRC Remote.............................................. 29 Working with Drives ..............................................49 Mounting and selecting a drive .........................49 How Drives Get Mounted........................50 Dismounting drives.................................50 Adding additional drives..................................51 Disk size and recording time ....................51 Backing up your work ......................................54 Editing ................................................................55 Editing Controls...............................................55 Using the Edit Start and Edit End Points ............56 Adjusting the Edit Start and Edit End Points ......57 Using the Cut and Copy Commands..................58 Using the Paste Command ................................60 Undo ...............................................................62 The Edit Buffer and Levels of Undo ..........62 Track Slip ........................................................63 More about editing...........................................64 Basic Recording and Playback ................................ 31 About the hard drives ...................................... 31 Songs.............................................................. 31 High resolution operation ...................................... 65 88.2/96 kHz sampling rates.............................. 65 The tradeoffs .......................................... 65 Ensuring sample-rate compatibility.......... 65 How ADAT Optical handles a 96 or 88.2k signal ............................................ 66 Using the HD24 with an external High Sample Rate-capable A/D or D/A converter................. 66 The optional 96k Analog I/O boards................. 66 Synchronization and MIDI ..................................... 67 Synchronization............................................... 67 MIDI Time Code..................................... 67 SMPTE Time Code.................................. 67 MIDI............................................................... 68 Using the HD24 with tape-based ADATs .......... 69 Synchronizing with ADAT ...................... 69 Using the ADAT HD24 with the BRC Master Remote Control ............................................... 70 Matching start times for synchronization.. 70 Compatibility issues ............................... 70 Using the HD24 with the M20........................... 72 Apple Macintosh configuration instructions.......77 Connection .............................................77 Setting up the AppleTalk, TCP/IP and Remote Access control panels...................77 Windows 95/98/ME PC configuration instructions......................................................80 Verifying a PC's connection to the HD24......................................................83 Transferring files with Explorer.........................84 Tips and tricks about Explorer..................85 About using FTP download software........85 To upload files from the computer to the HD24...............................................................86 More about IP addresses...................................86 About the subnet mask .....................................87 About the gateway address...............................87 Connecting the HD24 directly to a cable or DSL modem.....................................................87 To quit FTP server mode...................................88 An Example Network .......................................89 Troubleshooting....................................................91 Troubleshooting Index......................................91 Avoiding ground loop noise ....................93 Line Conditioners and Protectors .............93 Care and Maintenance ......................................94 Cleaning .................................................94 Refer All Servicing to Alesis .....................94 Obtaining Repair Service .........................95 Using Ethernet ..................................................... 73 When you'd use Ethernet and the HD24............ 73 What you can do..................................... 73 Limitations............................................. 73 Materials you will need.................................... 74 Cables.................................................... 74 Hub ....................................................... 74 Interface card ......................................... 74 Software................................................. 74 Setting the IP parameters of the ADAT HD24 .... 75 About setting up your computer....................... 76 A word of caution................................... 76 Specifications.......................................................97 Dimensional drawing .......................................98 Index ..................................................................99 Alesis Limited Warranty .......................................101 2 ADAT HD24 Reference Manual Introduction/Safety Instructions Welcome! Thank you for making the Alesis ADAT HD24TM a part of your studio. Since 1984, we've been designing and building creative tools for the audio community. We believe in our products, because we've heard the results that creative people like you have achieved with them. One of Alesis' goals is to make high-quality studio equipment available to everyone, and this Reference Manual is an important part of that. After all, there's no point in making equipment with all kinds of capabilities if no one explains how to use them. So, we try to write our manuals as carefully as we build our products. The goal of this manual is to get you the information you need as quickly as possible, with a minimum of hassle. We hope we've achieved that. If not, please drop us an email and give us your suggestions on how we could improve future editions of this manual. We hope your investment will bring you many years of creative enjoyment and help you achieve your goals. Sincerely, The people of Alesis Studio Electronics About the ADAT HD24 Alesis, the company that revolutionized multitrack recording with the introduction of the ADAT, now offers the ADAT HD24 hard disk recorder. The HD24 writes to hard disk in a special way to provide 24 tracks of 24-bit audio on low-cost IDE hard drives, and offers drop-in compatibility with over 150,000 ADAT systems world wide. The ADAT HD24 shatters the cost-per-track price barrier for professional quality audio recording. Important features of your ADAT HD24 Uses affordable, hot-swappable hard drives as removable media: To allow the use of affordable IDE hard drives as removable recording media, on a cost and performance par with tape, Alesis had to overcome limitations such as data fragmentation that occurs in traditional hard disk recording formats. In order to achieve this, Alesis engineered a new method of writing on hard drives called ADAT FSTTM, specifically designed for music recording. Unlike the writing schemes employed by computer-based systems, this new method keeps tracks of a given song in adjacent sectors of the hard disk, reducing the required "seek time" for the drive, providing a much greater level of stability in recording and playing back data. Using ADAT FST, seek-toplay functions are virtually instantaneous, and the data fragmentation that can cause hard disk crashes is greatly diminished. As a result, very low-cost, widely available, low-RPM IDE hard drives can be used with exceptional results. For the first time, at about $4 per gigabyte, the cost of the hard disk storage medium is less than that of ADAT tape. Entire 24-track projects can be stored on a single removable drive. Alesis engineered custom drive caddies and protective storage cases to establish today's affordable IDE drives as the new exchange medium for music recording. The HD24 ships with two drive caddies, one loaded with a 10-gigabyte hard drive which will yield approximately 45 minutes of 24-track recording time at 24-bit/48 kHz, and the other ready for you to install your own drive in. ADAT HD24 Reference Manual 3 Introduction/Safety Instructions Everything you need is built-in: The HD24 comes complete with 24 channels of analog and digital inputs and outputs--there are no cards or extras to buy to get audio in or out of the recorder. Superb sonic performance was a base-line objective for Alesis. The HD24 provides 24 tracks of high-resolution 24-bit uncompressed linear recording at standard sample rates of 44.1kHz or 48 kHz. It supports 12 tracks at sample rates of 88.2kHz and 96kHz when slaved to external digital products such as A/D, D/A converters, and a forthcoming 96 kHz option will allow high-sample rate analog I/O right from the back panel. An external BNC word clock input is provided for slaving to external clock sources. The HD24 also provides powerful editing capabilities with CUT, COPY, PASTE and multiple UNDO functions across any or all tracks simultaneously. Connects easily to over 150,000 ADAT system ...