I could have also called this 'Have a good laugh at Bob's expense'.
Urgent job came in that involves ingesting 12 hours of audio off DAT. Don't have a player but decide it's time to buy one excpet Sony have pulled the plug on most of the line so decide I'll probably order one from OS but need one now. So I hire a rather top line bit of gear.
Hook it up to the M-Audio Firewire 410 via SPDIF and lightpipe EXCEPT the 410 will not come to the party. SPDIF LED keeps blinking and the manual says its found a SPDIF signal but on the wrong input and no amount of fiddling around, resetting the system or rebooting will make in otherwise. In desperation even try co-ax SPDIF but same result. So I mutter rude words about M-Audio and curse myself for loading the latest drivers, that must be the problem.
Anyway job has to get done NOW, so I decide to go analogue into the 410 except the DAT only has balanced audio outs, so run out and borrow DiPort to do conversion and pray 410 will not clip when I feed +4dB into its -10dB inputs.
So get about 30 minutes into recording but I'm not happy, really don't like going from digital to analogue to digital even though it sounds fine. Anyways I think hmmm, maybe I should read the manual for the deck.
And there buried at the back is how to configure the optical ports, they were set for 'Commercial' optical outs, whatever the heck that means. So after navigating a very obscure menu that involved several four finger salutes I switch the outputs to 'Domestic', hook the 410 back up and the LED lights up and Vegas records perfect audio.
I should have tweaked, the optical connectors were not labelled SPDIF, just Optical Playback and Optical Record whereas the ones on the 410 are unambiguosly SPDIF.
We live and learn and then we get old and forget.
Urgent job came in that involves ingesting 12 hours of audio off DAT. Don't have a player but decide it's time to buy one excpet Sony have pulled the plug on most of the line so decide I'll probably order one from OS but need one now. So I hire a rather top line bit of gear.
Hook it up to the M-Audio Firewire 410 via SPDIF and lightpipe EXCEPT the 410 will not come to the party. SPDIF LED keeps blinking and the manual says its found a SPDIF signal but on the wrong input and no amount of fiddling around, resetting the system or rebooting will make in otherwise. In desperation even try co-ax SPDIF but same result. So I mutter rude words about M-Audio and curse myself for loading the latest drivers, that must be the problem.
Anyway job has to get done NOW, so I decide to go analogue into the 410 except the DAT only has balanced audio outs, so run out and borrow DiPort to do conversion and pray 410 will not clip when I feed +4dB into its -10dB inputs.
So get about 30 minutes into recording but I'm not happy, really don't like going from digital to analogue to digital even though it sounds fine. Anyways I think hmmm, maybe I should read the manual for the deck.
And there buried at the back is how to configure the optical ports, they were set for 'Commercial' optical outs, whatever the heck that means. So after navigating a very obscure menu that involved several four finger salutes I switch the outputs to 'Domestic', hook the 410 back up and the LED lights up and Vegas records perfect audio.
I should have tweaked, the optical connectors were not labelled SPDIF, just Optical Playback and Optical Record whereas the ones on the 410 are unambiguosly SPDIF.
We live and learn and then we get old and forget.