Making an ADAT the master when syncing with a computer sequencer

And our synchronization question for this week is:(This is highly paraphrased from the original question to make it more understandable) I am using a JL Cooper Datasync2 to drive a hardware sequencer from my ADAT. I am about to switch over to a software-based sequencer, but I want my ADAT to continue to be the master (even though this is uncommon). I know I need to buy a MIDI interface for the computer, but I’m wondering what’s best given I want the ADAT to always be the master. Some manufacturers say MTC isn’t a very stable time base. Do I really need to keep the Datasync2 box? All of this depends on what you really mean and understand about being a master in a setup like this. A common scenario is to issue locate commands from the software via MMC and let the ADAT drive the sequencer through MTC. It may appear that the computer is the master, but this is only true for location information. The actual synchronization is done by slaving the computer to the ADAT. For that scenario you don’t need to keep the Datasync2 because it’s easy to buy a MIDI interface that includes ADAT sync for this. Those MIDI interfaces also like to be the time base master, which basically means they are driving the ADAT. This is all relatively transparent to the user though. It works as if the sequencer is slaved to the ADAT, even though they are both technically slaved to the MIDI interface. If you really want to issue the commands from the ADAT itself and have it truly drive the sequencer then you’ll need to keep the Datasync2 because the MIDI interfaces aren’t designed with this in mind. In this case the type of interface you buy really doesn’t matter much as they will all (with a few USB exceptions) pass the MIDI clock or MTC information from the Datasync through to the computer.

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