ADAT Transfer Day

ADAT's were popular back in the 90's. Now-a-days they almost seem as neglected as the Beta home video format.

Last month when I was at Overdub Lane doing some tape transfers, one of the studio managers needed to clear out some storage space. I had a number of projects on the shelf, all of which were in ADAT format. These things are basically digital VHS tapes that allow for multi-track digital recording. Now that everything is either ANALOG TAPE or HARDDISK, this format is mostly extinct. That being the case, if there's something you have on ADAT format, there's no time like the present to transfer it on to a drive.

The one project I really cared about was, of course, my mid-90's album The Lessons of Autumn. So, today, I rented an ADAT machine and transferred the tracks from digital tape to a hard drive, driven by Pro Tools. When you do a transfer like this, it's usually best to listen to everything as it goes in. This was a 24 track album and I only had 8 inputs. So, in a way, I listened to the album three times today...but only 8 tracks at a time. It was pretty neat.

I also happened to have an ADAT with the final mixes of Athenaeum's Overdub Sessions. The only track that has been released from this session is "Paragraph," which appeared on Hourglass, the rarities CD from 2002. The other songs were all re-recorded for other albums. These demos those are quite impeccable. There are moments that rival the big-dollar versions. Anyway, I finally have a copy of these tracks in a digital format. My cassette tape wore out years ago.