Cranborne Audio 500ADAT

A full studio in a lunchbox rack. That's how Cranborne Audio describes the 500ADAT, and I have to agree with them.

Of course, many an audio engineer is familiar with the use of external pre-amps compressors or EQs and what the great advantages of real analog gear are. Cranborne Audio's 500ADAT makes it child's play to seamlessly incorporate this kind of fat gear into your digital working environment. The 8 500 series slots can of course accommodate Cranborne Audio's own pre-amps and EQs, but also simply support 500 series from other manufacturers.
Use the 500ADAT with pre-amps as inputs to your audio interface, or go back and forth via ADAT to use the EQ as an insert, for example. Should you want to use an insert in addition to the 500 slot, even that is possible via the insert input directly on the back. Insert to insert, it doesn't have to get any crazier.

[[READMORE]]

The best of analog

Taking advantage of the vast and ever-growing 500-series market, you can configure your 500ADAT to your taste of analog. By installing your favorite 500-series modules in the 8 available 500-series slots, you create your ultimate analog front-end/preamp stage that you can multi-track directly into your DAW.

Fill the 500ADAT with vintage preamps for recording drums. Fill the 500ADAT with clean and pristine preamps for recording strings. Fill the 500ADAT with preamp, EQ and compressor modules to create your own analog channel strips. The possibilities are endless, and each 500ADAT is unique to your sound.

Integrating 500 Series modules into your workflow doesn't stop after recording. With dedicated module source switches for each 500-series slot, you can send ADAT outputs from your audio interface to the 500ADAT, through the 8 installed 500-series modules and back to your audio interface for recording (with that analog "mojo" applied). Think of 500ADAT as a bank of 8 external analog plug-ins.

For a more practical, all-analog approach to mixing, 500ADAT also features an 8-into-2 analog summing mixer with plenty of headroom and dedicated level and pan controls that allow you to create your own analog mix with more than enough headroom before recording into your DAW via the dedicated 1/4" mix outputs on the rear panel.

The best of digital

To capture every subtle nuance of your analog signal, the 500ADAT features reference-class A/D-D/A conversion with a dynamic range of 121 dB (A-wtd) and a THD+N of <0.00032% (@ -4dBFS, 1kHz, A-wtd). All this is controlled by the 500ADAT's internal clock of master reference quality with <0.5 picoseconds of jitter. You can also synchronize your audio interface's clock with the 500ADAT's internal clock to take advantage of the 500ADAT's low jitter design.

The combination of a highly accurate low-jitter clock and high-quality digital conversion ensures that every analog character is captured down to the smallest detail - free of unwanted digital artifacts from the conversion process and with a wide dynamic range thanks to the 500ADAT's high headroom analog design and low noise floor.

8-in/8-out ADAT interface

ADAT is tried, tested and still one of the most widely available interfacing protocols in the audio industry, but it often remains unused and underutilized by many audio engineers and producers. Almost all major audio interfaces on the market have a pair of ADAT optical ports. Simply connect the 500ADAT to those ports and you can enhance and expand your studio's capabilities.
Because the 500ADAT includes its own converters and uses ADAT to carry audio to and from the 500 series, there is no more spaghetti of analog cabling between your rack and interface, and you no longer have to worry about mismatched analog operating levels between the interface inputs and the outputs of the 500 series modules. 500ADAT is compatible with any session running from 44.1kHz to 192kHz and can achieve 8 channels of I/O expansion at 44.1kHz to 96kHz or 4 channels of I/O expansion at 176.4/192kHz.

Summing mixer

Analog summing can give your mix the last bit of analog character needed to achieve professional and polished sound results. What makes the 500ADAT's 8-in-2 channel summing mixer so special is that it is placed after the 500 series' 8 slots. This allows you to insert saturation or subtle "bus compression" modules and create a stereo mix using the 500ADAT's dedicated analog level and pan controls under each module. The 500ADAT's summing mixer also has a dedicated line output that lets you send your stereo mix to your audio interface for recording.

Zero latency mixer for artists

The 500ADAT says goodbye to clunky "virtual" software mixers and puts your hands back in the mix. Using 500ADAT's high-headroom analog summing mixer, you can create zero-latency, all-analog mixes from live sources that you can mix with the Aux Input and send directly to performing musicians via C.A.S.T. or local headphone outputs.

CAST Equipped

C.A.S.T. stands for Cat 5 Analogue Snake Transport and enables cost-effective and organized cable management in your studio. C.A.S.T. reuses shielded Cat 5e, Cat 6 and Cat 7 network cables to transport 4 channels of balanced analog audio over one cable.

500ADAT has 4 C.A.S.T. IN ports that allow you to connect C.A.S.T. devices (such as the Cranborne Audio N22 and N22H) and move I/O where it is needed in the studio.

Connect microphone/line sources to the C.A.S.T. breakout box, and that signal goes via Cat 5 cable directly to the modules installed in the 500ADAT. At the same time, the analog mix created on the 500ADAT is sent through the same cable to the connected breakout box. This allows a seamless analog audio connection between the control room, live room, vocal booth or the bedroom next door!

C.A.S.T. is 100% analog and requires no installation to operate. It can easily operate at distances up to 100 m when Cat 6 or Cat 7 cable is used, and the entire studio cabling infrastructure costs a fraction of what an analog multicore would cost. No installation. No latency. No hassle. And it sounds great.

Designed and built in the UK

To ensure that each product that bears the Cranborne Audio name is worthy studio environments large or small, each 500ADAT is carefully assembled by a skilled staff with tremendous attention to detail and each product is thoroughly tested by an experienced engineer before shipping to destinations around the world.

Specifications:

• 500 series rack with ADAT
  
• 8 slots
  
• summing mixer
  
  analog connections:
• 8 x XLR (microphone/line)
  
• 8 x XLR direct out
  
• 8 x insert
  
• 2 stereo sets of monitor outputs
  
• 2 headphone outputs
  
  digital connections:
  
• 2 x ADAT in
  
• 2 x ADAT out
  
• wordclock in
  
• wordclock out
  
• 4 x C.A.S.T. (1 C.A.S.T. connection is good for 2 x in and 2 x out over a CAT5 cable)
  

Read more Read less