6.12 Other Useful Products

6.12 Other Useful Products

6.12.1 Interface Format Convertors

When operating in a mixed interface format environment, such as when wishing to copy a recording between a consumer and a professional system or when interfacing equipment of different formats, it may be necessary to employ a suitable format convertor. There are a number of such devices on the market, accepting inputs in one of a selection of standard formats (e.g. ADAT, TDIF, SPDIF, AES/EBU) and converting them to one of a selection of output formats. Some more expensive systems also offer synchronization and sample rate conversion so that the system can transfer signals to systems of different sample rates, as well as different formats.

Often interface processors will take care of more subtle but extremely useful functions such as adding correct CRCC information to channel status and checking for correct implementation of the standard. They may also allow the user to alter some or all of the channel status bits manually. With the advent of recording CD machines (CD-R) there have also arisen a number of systems capable of extracting the track start ID information from the user bits of the consumer digital interface, using this information to increment the track ID information of the destination format correctly, such as when a DAT tape is copied to a CD or vice versa. There is also the possibility that the processor may remove SCMS copy protection (see section 4.8.7) to allow professional users the flexibility that was lost with the introduction of the copy management system. Clearly such a device should be used with due regard to copyright laws.

6.12.2 Digital Headphones

Once signals are interfaced digitally in a studio centre it becomes more difficult to monitor the signal audibly. In analog systems a pair of high impedance headphones can simply be plugged into a jackfield to determine the presence or lack of a signal, but clearly this would not work in a digital system. There exist a small number of digital headphone products that contain an AES/EBU decoder and a built-in D/A convertor, allowing the user to treat digital signals in a similar way to analog signals.



Digital Interface Handbook
Digital Interface Handbook, Third Edition
ISBN: 0240519094
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 120

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