Do you believe in fate? I don’t in general, but now and again something happens which makes me think there’s something going on.

I’m in the process of moving into and building a new studio and one of the features I’m including is the ability to run a “Snoop” (safety) recording of ADR and Voice Over sessions, on a separate standalone recorder, but timecode stamped to enable easier import of the safety recordings should they be needed. With incredible timing, Souce Elements have just come up with the perfect solution.

Old Hardware Technology Vs Software

My original plan to achieve this was to use my old MOTU Ultralite Hybrid interface, which comes with Midi TimeCode to SMPTE Linear TimeCode (LTC) software, to output LTC from a physical port of my MOTU interface, into the TimeCode input on my recorder. Sounds simple enough right? Well, wrong. Try as I might, I have not been able to get the system to work. I can generate “stripe” timecode and lock to incoming LTC, but for some reason between my DAW and the interface, there seems to be a TimeCode “airgap”.

Is It Fate?

So imagine my pleasant surprise when completely out of the blue I got an email from Source Elements telling me about their new Source-LTC software, which in the great tradition of Source Elements software, like Source Connect Now, requires no new hardware to achieve this.

Source-LTC

This is a great piece of software that seems to tick every box on my list, without requiring any extra hardware - something I’m very keen on. I’ve considered buying a specific Network MTC to LTC converter, but for the moment I don’t really want to be spending that kind of money. Source-LTC, however, utilises whatever audio IO hardware (or software) you already have to be able to generate or read LTC through your choice of audio IO.

Does It Work?

Yes, and brilliantly. With the minimum of setup, I quickly had LTC being output in sync to my DAW session, out of a spare output of my MOTU Ultralite Hybrid Mk3 interface. And for $95 it’s less than a quarter of the cost of a hardware interface.