Focusrite ISA One A-D to MOTU Connection

[tarrenp]

Hi All,
I have just purchased a Focusrite ISA One mike preamp.
I would now like to upgrade it with the A/D card.
The card has Word clock In and Out (BNC connectors), Optical/TOSLink Digital Outputs (ADAT and S/PDIF), AES or S/PDIF 9-pin Digital Output with either 1-wire or 2-wire mode across the 9-pin Output to allow connection to older digital equipment.

What is the best way capture digital from the card given the above outputs.
What cables and connectors do I need to buy?

I have MOTU 2408 mkIII, PCI 424e card, 24I/O, and digital timepiece.
Recording to Cubase5 and Soundforge9.

Please take into account my controlroom and studio are about 20metres apart. So I need a long digital cable run..
thanks
Pete in Oz

[James Steele]

Hey Pete. I'll take a stab at it, although someone else may have better info. I'm on a Mac so not familiar with your software. Usually though when you bring something else into the system during recording digitally you're going to have a couple of choices.

First, you can clock your whole system to the incoming digital signal. Neither of your interfaces have AES so you'd have to use S/PDIF? I'm not sure what 9-pin SPDIF is though--I'm just used to the RCA style connectors for SPDIF not sure if your card for the ISA has those, but if so, you'd connect the output of it to the input on your 2408mkIII and then set your audio system to clock to that incoming S/PDIF signal while recording. It would have to be the master.

But what seems like a better option, although not the cheapest, but something that would be better long term is to get an external word clock unit. Then you could clock your MOTU system and your ISA off the same clock source and not have to worry about it. There's good deals out there. I got a Lucid GENx192 on a blowout deal a while back. Black Lion audio makes one. I don't know what stores/suppliers you have in Australia, or what you could spend, but if possible I think getting yourself an external word clock might be the best way to go.

Hope that helps and my apologies if I'm wrong about the first option above... but I think that's how you'd do it.