Changing optical output from ADAT to S/PDIF?

[Dinosorceror]

Hey there, everyone! One of the features mentioned in the Quickstart Guide (and in the specs listed everywhere under the sun) is that the optical output can be switched to either ADAT (8 channels) or S/PDIF (2 channel), like the coax output. The Quickstart Guide says you can do it, and to see the Reference Manual for how. Well...I've scanned the hard copy and PDF versions, and I don't see it. I'd really much rather do the optical rather than the coax for recording the output on my PC (just 'cause I'm anal), so has anyone figured this out yet? I just E-mailed Alesis about it ([e-mail]), and I did patch to 1.24 tonight as well...still no sign of an option.

[Failed Muso]

dinosorceror said:

Hey there, everyone! One of the features mentioned in the Quickstart Guide (and in the specs listed everywhere under the sun) is that the optical output can be switched to either ADAT (8 channels) or S/PDIF (2 channel), like the coax output. The Quickstart Guide says you can do it, and to see the Reference Manual for how. Well...I've scanned the hard copy and PDF versions, and I don't see it. I'd really much rather do the optical rather than the coax for recording the output on my PC (just 'cause I'm anal), so has anyone figured this out yet? I just E-mailed Alesis about it ([e-mail]), and I did patch to 1.24 tonight as well...still no sign of an option.

Firstly, welcome to the club

Regarding the optical output, contrary to the manuals instructions, the optical can only output ADAT. S/PDIF is handled by the co-axial outputs. Some people thought that it could be changed within the diagnostics menu, but it has been tested (by me !) and this is merely a test option and doesn't output S/PDIF to the optical output.

The only option is to use a convertor (M-Audio do a nice little one) that converts co-ax to optical and vice versa.

Hope that helps

[Dinosorceror]

Roberto,

Thanks for the info...sure is disappointing. Well, again, I'm just being anal and would rather use the coolest technology (vis a vis the fiber optic cable) rather than copper cabling, but it really is a minor thing. I actually sent an E-mail to [e-mail] as well yesterday, and got some prompt replies...here's the response from tech support, my counter response and their final response:


Hello,
The adat optical port and the SPDIF ports would be separate outputs. You would not be able to change the adat port over to the SPDIF type.

Thanks for the reply. So you're saying that the QuickStart Guide and your own web page (where it says "S/PDIF Output (Coax/Optical), ADAT Output (Optical)" in the specifications on the right hand side of the Fusion page) are wrong? Was this an ability that was later dropped from production models or something?

This must be a misprint on the website and the QS manual. We will get this changed.

Ah, well. Would be nice to have the option added instead of changing the manual. And thanks for the advice about getting a coax/optical converter, but that does kinda defeat the purpose of keeping it all optical. I'd be more interested if there was some optical mixer or something (short of buying an actual ADAT) to take the 8-channel optical output and convert it to S/PDIF optical, as my X-Fi takes. Don't think the X-Fi can be changed to handle the ADAT input unfortunately. Again, no big deal, I'll just use the coax cable.

[Failed Muso]

dinosorceror said:

Roberto,

Thanks for the info...sure is disappointing. Well, again, I'm just being anal and would rather use the coolest technology (vis a vis the fiber optic cable) rather than copper cabling, but it really is a minor thing. I actually sent an E-mail to [e-mail] as well yesterday, and got some prompt replies...here's the response from tech support, my counter response and their final response:


Hello,
The adat optical port and the SPDIF ports would be separate outputs. You would not be able to change the adat port over to the SPDIF type.

Thanks for the reply. So you're saying that the QuickStart Guide and your own web page (where it says "S/PDIF Output (Coax/Optical), ADAT Output (Optical)" in the specifications on the right hand side of the Fusion page) are wrong? Was this an ability that was later dropped from production models or something?

This must be a misprint on the website and the QS manual. We will get this changed.

Ah, well. Would be nice to have the option added instead of changing the manual. And thanks for the advice about getting a coax/optical converter, but that does kinda defeat the purpose of keeping it all optical. I'd be more interested if there was some optical mixer or something (short of buying an actual ADAT) to take the 8-channel optical output and convert it to S/PDIF optical, as my X-Fi takes. Don't think the X-Fi can be changed to handle the ADAT input unfortunately. Again, no big deal, I'll just use the coax cable.

If truth be known, the co-axial connectors are actually superior when it come to carrying digital signals. There is less potential for signal degredation than on a fibre optic cable. Providing you buy top quality cable, co-ax is the best in terms of quality. The real benefit of optical is the amount of data that can be carried in one single cable.

All my home cinema gear is connected via co-axial digital outputs too, but I do use the optical on my Fusion for the purposes of ADAT.

Trust me, you will not be using an inferior connection by using the S/PDIF co-ax

[Dinosorceror]

You're kidding! But fiber optic signals are, for all intents and purposes (especially over 6 foot distances) totally lossless, whereas (as you mention) you can get signal degradation with copper wiring, and a cheap coax cable can result in poor sound. I am using a S/PDIF grade cable since I am concerned about that loss, but can you give me more details on why you think the optical is inferior? Is it a matter of bitrate or frequency?

[Failed Muso]

dinosorceror said:

You're kidding! But fiber optic signals are, for all intents and purposes (especially over 6 foot distances) totally lossless, whereas (as you mention) you can get signal degradation with copper wiring, and a cheap coax cable can result in poor sound. I am using a S/PDIF grade cable since I am concerned about that loss, but can you give me more details on why you think the optical is inferior? Is it a matter of bitrate or frequency?

Optical is best when making long cable runs and I mean 50ft or more. You can get "low grade" optical cable too, so not a lot of difference there. Optical is more fragile and also more expensive. It would be incorrect to assume that optical is totally lossless, it just loses less over longer distances than co-ax, but as i said, we're talking very long distances, hence the popularity of optical cables in telecommunications. They have greater capacity & integrity over very large distances.

Ultimately, a digital signal is just a stream of 1's and 0's, so long as you are using high quality cable, you will notice no difference unless you have very long cable runs. Co-ax is sturdier, cheaper and, in my experience, more accurate. You will only notice interference if you are using other poor quality cables around it and if you are using an inferior co-ax cable. Most audiophiles will hook up their home 5.1/6.1/7.1 systems using co-ax as it is also better when making lots of twists and turns. In my personal experience, I have suffered much fewer problems with sample clocks and bit rates when using co-ax. However, with the ADAT format, I have no choice and it performs very well.

My main point is that co-ax is no worse than optical. Period

[Hollow Sun]

Not only that, Rob, but co-axial sounds 'warmer' because the cable is more of an analogue technology

I actually saw that written in a review of some piece of hi-fi gear in a leading specialised and respected hi-fi magazine - it was said "Because the co-axial connector and cable borrows from an older technology, it sounds smoother and warmer which is clearly audible especially on certain types of material compared with the somewhat sterile sound of the optical connection." (or something like that!). Errrmmm... 0s and 1s!

Oh how the urban myths are spread!


Steve

[gwenhwyfaer]

Ah, you have to love audiophiles. Wasn't there once an article that definitively "proved" that a piece of wire worked better in one direction than the other...? And the insistence that cables can have any effect on the "sound" of a digital signal except by degrading it to the point where they'd be unusable anyway... *sigh*

On the other hand, I believe one respected synth-DIYer conducted a proper scientific analysis of speaker wires, and concluded that the best type to use is the wire they use for car jump leads.

The kindest one can say is that it's 'magical thinking' at its most evident...

[Dinosorceror]

Indeed, it's all a digital signal, so as long as the signal reaches the far end without error or degradation, there isn't any difference. I did preface my whole argument by saying it was just a vain, cosmetic reason, didn't I? It's just "cooler" to use an optical connection. Using a coaxial cable to carry a digital signal is 1930's technology...I just wanted to be more moh-dern. If I thought coax was so great, I'd still be running a ten megabit ThinNet network at my house and...maybe have a big 6" knife switch on the front of my computer to turn it on and off. Actually, there's a funny story there...but I digress.

So if the bitrate is indeed the same between the coax and the fiber (and I would suppose that it is anyway, since they're both given the same moniker of S/PDIF), there is squat in difference.

That's hilarious about the "warmer" sound from coax, though. See, I may be relatively unfamiliar with some of the more audiophillic qualities of sound and mixing, but I'm a network engineer for a living. If there's one thing I am an expert at, it's data transmission.

The whole desire to want to hook the keyboard up optically to my PC for recording really just stems from my usual desire to "pimp my ride", as it were...to hook up every cool gadget I possibly can to the keyboard. I'm already looking into getting the memory expansion for the Fusion (for absolutely no good reason) as well as hooking up both an external SATA hard drive and an external SATA CD/DVD burner...actually, given the experience with the manual's deception regarding the optical cable protocol issue, I'd be surprised if the Fusion even knew what to do with a CD burner if it was hooked up to it.

What's even more interesting is that these desires to pimp out the Fusion go in direct contradiction to my overall philosphy, not just about music composition but about work in general, and that's that it doesn't matter how expensive or trendy the gear you use is, it's the results you get with it. I actually built a small shoebox guitar using some cheap wood and masonry twine that I plan to finish up soon and put a cheap electronic pickup in. Why? Because try as I might, my fingers are just too friggin' phat and padded to play a real guitar, and I don't see any amount of callusing fixing it, so I wanted to make a string instrument I could actually play effectively. I plan to hook it up and process the sound regardless, anyway, so what does it matter if it only costs $20 to make? It was still fun to do.

Man, this sure turned into a ramble. It's what happens when you check forums from work and have time to kill before a holiday weekend. Hey, I didn't say I was a hard-working network engineer, did I? If I was, I wouldn't be a very good one.

[markone]

OK, the argument rages in telecoms circles as well as audio ones.

Nothing wrong with either technology for all intents and purposes, but you CAN (note CAN) end up with more jitter on the signal from optical cables because the way the IR LED turns on isn't instant, and the way the opto receiver detects the Infrared digital stream has some tolerance in the hysteresis between detecting a 1 and a 0.

So it all then depends on your clock regeneration circuits. Go back a few years, or down to lower budget interface circuits and the output jitter on the data stream can be significant (and will probably be absent from a coaxial connection simply by the fact that the signal is already electrical and didn't need converting).

Clock regeneration and clock stability are the foundation to good digital audio, and the less jitter you have to deal with to begin with, the better the final conversion to analogue.

But to be honest, I suspect you would be hard pressed to tell the difference if the design engineers have done their job right on the fusion.

And of course the ADAT connection gives you access to more outputs in your DAW.

[neomad]

I agree with people who thinks that co axial is warmer than optic. But I also agree with markone about outputs in ADAT, and that's the way I use it.

Take care ! bye

[Failed Muso]

neomad said:

I agree with people who thinks that co axial is warmer than optic.

You're joking, right ??

[neomad]

roberto said:

neomad said:

I agree with people who thinks that co axial is warmer than optic.

You're joking, right ??

No & Yes ;D I do not why, but everytime I test both conexions, I always found better co-ax than optic. I know that digital world, 1 & 0, etc. etc. I assume that my affirmation makes not totally sense, but nobody needs to believe me. I'm just happy with my nosense feelings time to time

Regards Rob. Nice to see you (truly).

[gwenhwyfaer]

You are, of course, free to continue believing it. You are also free to believe that God talks to you, or aliens come to abduct you once every three months, or that Santa Claus really does a reindeer-powered world tour of childrens' bedrooms every December 24th.

Just don't expect the rest of us to find such beliefs anything other than daft.

[Hollow Sun]

gwenhwyfaer said:

or that Santa Claus really does a reindeer-powered world tour of childrens' bedrooms every December 24th.

What?? No!! Surely not!!!

Are you saying that this isn't true? Please say it ain't so

No ... sorry, You are an unbeliever and you won't get any presents this year you naughty, naughty boy.

I suppose you're gonna tell me next that the tooth fairy doesn't exist


Steve