Community member Steve Klingaman has asked for help and advice on the best way to transfer some material from ADAT tapes into a Pro Tools session….

In my case I’m new to Pro Tools and have been transferring ADAT tapes synced to a JL Cooper DataSync2 to ProTools via a Universal Audio Apollo as the front end via lightpipe to PT 10.  I thought I used the ADAT as the master clock in SMPTE for the transfer but the ADAT tapes were never striped for SMPTE, they were synced to the sequencer via MIDI Clock and Song Position Pointer via the Learn function on the JL Cooper2.  (Once the ADAT “learned” the song it became the master clock and controlled the sequencer via the JL Cooper2). And though for this transfer the ADAT is hooked up to the JL Cooper, and the JL Cooper is set to SMPTE, as far as I can tell it isn’t generating SMPTE to the UA Apollo through the ADAT.  I actually don’t know what’s going on.

The ADAT-transferred audio arrives slightly out of sync to bars and bars, which is a problem since I still want to sync to the  midi file in Pro Tools. I dragged the start point of the click track to 1/1/000, aligning with the midi sequence that I imported from the old sequencer.  But, in a song that is 118 bpm, 3-minutes in, by bar 96, for example, the audio track is out of alignment with the midi sequence by 84 (84/960) clock ticks.  I was thinking of getting a BRC, running the ADAT to that, and using the BRC’s capacity to transmit Word Clock to the UA Apollo in.  Would that work?

If you have any experience of transferring ADAT Tapes into Pro Tools? Is so, can you advise Steve on the best way to do this? Thanks.