Discuss the new Studio 192 and Studio 192 Mobile here
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I have never used ADAT and never figured I would. But I am looking at a need to set up a mobile recording rig. I have been doing this with S1 and an AR12 USB. That is OK, but gives me only 8 preamps. I'd like to do 16. I understand it is difficult or impossible to use 2 audio interfaces on Windows. I realize I could use a Studiolive mixer that has 16 or 32 preamps, but I am thinking about a much more portable mini-rack.
I believe you can add preamps to either the Studio 192 or the Studio1824 by chaining another interface using ADAT. I'm looking at a DP88 for example. (I know it is discontinued, but they are available used.)
Here is my confusion. The Studio 192 has two in and two out ADAT ports and the graphics say "11-14" and "15-18" The Studio 1812 has only one in and one out ADAT and the graphics say "11-18"
The DP88 is similar to the Studio 192, having 2 ins and 2 outs, with graphics saying "1-4" and 5-8"

I understand connecting the DP88 to the Studio 192. I'd need 2 ADAT cables from DP88 to 192, each carrying 4 channels. That makes sense, as these products were introduced together. But what if I were to connect DP88 to the Studio 1812? Does that mean I could only use 4 of the channels?

Home studio:
Windows 10 Home 10.0.143393 64-bit
Intel Core I7 4 core 3.6 GHz 16 GB RAM
Studio One 5.0 Professional (and other DAWs)
Audiobox 1818VSL audio interface
Mobile studio:
Studio One 5.0 Professional
HP Pavillion 15-cs3079nr laptop Intel Core I5-1035G1 8GB, 1.29 GHz, 4 core
Presonus StudioLive AR12 USB as interface (Looking to upgrade)
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by craigparmerlee on Sun Jun 13, 2021 10:40 pm
I see from the DP88 documentation that if you have the sample rate set to 44.1 or 48, then each ADAT port carries 8 channels. At higher rates, each ADAT port carries 4 channels. I think this means that with the Studio 192 running at 48, you could actually connect two DP88s for a total of 24 addressable preamps. And if you run the Studio 192 at 96 kHz, you could only get a total of 16 preamps, but you could access all 8 of the DP88 preamp (i.e. a Studio 192 plus a single DP88.

Likewise, on the Studio 1824, you can connect a single DP88 using a total of 16 preamps at 44.1 or 48. But if you want to use 96 kHz, you can only access 12 preamps (8 from the Studio1824 and 4 from the DP88.

Home studio:
Windows 10 Home 10.0.143393 64-bit
Intel Core I7 4 core 3.6 GHz 16 GB RAM
Studio One 5.0 Professional (and other DAWs)
Audiobox 1818VSL audio interface
Mobile studio:
Studio One 5.0 Professional
HP Pavillion 15-cs3079nr laptop Intel Core I5-1035G1 8GB, 1.29 GHz, 4 core
Presonus StudioLive AR12 USB as interface (Looking to upgrade)
User avatar
by mycbeats on Mon Jun 14, 2021 5:18 am
ADAT has enough bandwidth to carry 8 channels of 44.1kHz / 48kHz, or 4 channels of 88.2kHz / 96kHz.

With the 192, you can use both ports to get additional 8 channels of higher sample rates, or 16 additional channels of the lower sample rates. The 1824 can only do 4 or 8 respectively.

An alternative to the DP88 is the Behringer ADA8200 for about half the price, the preamps are not as good, but if you're recording line in or say drums they're good enough.

Lastly, its always best to use a BNC word clock to sync the two or more units.

Toronto, Canada
Project engineer by day, sound connoisseur by night.

Main Rig: Windows 11 (21H2) 64-bit, Ryzen 3900x, 32GB RAM, RTX 2060, dual 4K Monitors
Presonus 192, Faderport v2, Atom SQ, Akai Advance 49, Keystation 61 mk3, 2x Behringer X-Touch Mini + way too many synths.

Mobile Rig: MBP M1/16GB, Atom SQ, IOstation
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by craigparmerlee on Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:04 am
mycbeats wroteWith the 192, ...

Thank you. It is making more sense now. It seems ADAT almost went extinct, except for this weirdness that you can't easily have more than one audio interface on Windows systems. So we are left with cobbling together mostly discontinued products. The good news is that there are a few of them out there, and some of them should work great. Thanks for the tip about the Behringer. That one can't go above 48K. In reality I doubt I would ever record higher than 48K anyway. I think I'll look for used DP88s and Studio 192s first. Those products should have another good 10 years in them.

I would have thought that in today's environment, somebody would have produced a scalable audio interface system that could combine 1-4 interfaces using gigabit Ethernet or something to give us an interface up to 32 channels.

Home studio:
Windows 10 Home 10.0.143393 64-bit
Intel Core I7 4 core 3.6 GHz 16 GB RAM
Studio One 5.0 Professional (and other DAWs)
Audiobox 1818VSL audio interface
Mobile studio:
Studio One 5.0 Professional
HP Pavillion 15-cs3079nr laptop Intel Core I5-1035G1 8GB, 1.29 GHz, 4 core
Presonus StudioLive AR12 USB as interface (Looking to upgrade)
User avatar
by mycbeats on Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:05 am
craigparmerlee wrote
mycbeats wroteWith the 192, ...

Thank you. It is making more sense now. It seems ADAT almost went extinct, except for this weirdness that you can't easily have more than one audio interface on Windows systems. So we are left with cobbling together mostly discontinued products. The good news is that there are a few of them out there, and some of them should work great. Thanks for the tip about the Behringer. That one can't go above 48K. In reality I doubt I would ever record higher than 48K anyway. I think I'll look for used DP88s and Studio 192s first. Those products should have another good 10 years in them.

I would have thought that in today's environment, somebody would have produced a scalable audio interface system that could combine 1-4 interfaces using gigabit Ethernet or something to give us an interface up to 32 channels.


Well there's Dante and AVB protocols for ethernet they're fairly expensive (Last time I did a estimation about 32 channel in and out was the point at which it would break even).

On MacOS you can aggregate audio devices reliably which allows you combine multiple interfaces.

ADAT is antiquated but it being optical is still fairly efficient considering its replacing up to 8 cables each with 3 wires. It also doesn't suffer from electrical interference like copper would.
Ethernet would be similar except for a little bit of added latency (<1ms) due to having to packet-ize the data stream.

Toronto, Canada
Project engineer by day, sound connoisseur by night.

Main Rig: Windows 11 (21H2) 64-bit, Ryzen 3900x, 32GB RAM, RTX 2060, dual 4K Monitors
Presonus 192, Faderport v2, Atom SQ, Akai Advance 49, Keystation 61 mk3, 2x Behringer X-Touch Mini + way too many synths.

Mobile Rig: MBP M1/16GB, Atom SQ, IOstation

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