Comments on: Behringer ADA8000

By: John

John — Thu, 03 May 2012 02:53:59 +0000

O dear, I wish I had read your post before buying my new setup (to play back 24chn audio works). Motu 828Mklll, and 2x behrimger ADA8000′s. The unit fed by the Mtou’s opticalA works fine, but the one feeding off the opticalB output ‘goes to sleep’ just as you say. It is easy to miss at first, but becomes a real problem with short duration files, separated by silence.

By: Brian from BEHRINGER

Brian from BEHRINGER — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:01:28 +0000

Thanks for the review Oliver! Much appreciated.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:59:25 +0000

Personally, I do this using an old motu 2408. A friend had one but no longer had the pci card. Turns out I can put it in stand alone mode and it will output all it’s ins to the lightpipe. Works great and the 2408s seem to be selling for near zero these days.

By: Oliver Chesler

Oliver Chesler — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:31:04 +0000

I found the same to be true with most consumer electronics. Out of the gate units/computer, etc… have issues but once you have a working unit it lives forever.

By: redvoid

redvoid — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:39:30 +0000

Think of your ADAT lightpipe inputs as giving you the ability to create a custom headless virtual mixing console with modular components of various type and manufacturer. We all likely have decent control surfaces for managing the software mix, so what’s really needed are high quality inputs, preamps and compression circuits. This is a smarter and more cost effective long term approach than buying a huge monolithic mixer no matter how good, like a Yamaha 02R series. My thought is grab some tube PREs & solid state PREs to give you 24 digital inputs of various creative flavors:

Behringer ada800 = 8 XLR clean PREs
ART TubeOpto 8 = 8 XLR warm, fuzzy, dirty, overdriven tube PREs
Focusrite OctoPre MkII Dynamic = 8 XLR Focusrite PREs w/ solid state compression

you get the picture. Using this modular digital headless console approach, you get to design your own megastudio, and keep it digital. With 24 channels of XLR digital inputs your MOTU 828 could become a dedicated Volta box that just aggregates the other inputs. Anyway, there is so much tech these days, that there are tons of underexploited uses for even existing gear is the main point.

By: matthewpw

matthewpw — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:36:39 +0000

I’ve had good luck pairing this with my RME Fireface 800 and its was an unbelievably easy way to substantially increase the value of my live rig. I passed on the Presonus Digimax because it’s AD only (right?). I’m using the Behringer primarily for DA but I’ve been happy with both the recording and playback I’ve done in live setups. Watch our for the sleep issue as lukem says — I lost a few hours troubleshooting a 16ch playback rig in the first week.

If I were going to spend big money, I’m more likely to spend it on a digital mixer with ADAT than to spend it on AD/DA alone. I’ve no doubt the ADI-8 ($1900) sounds better than the Behringer, but I would wonder how much better it sounds than I mixer I can get for 2-3k.

Shopping budget and nice for rack, I also looked at Aphex Systems 141 and 142 (http://www.aphex.com/141.htm) 1/2 rack units.

By: Mike K Smith

Mike K Smith — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:25:22 +0000

I have one of these – have used it to provide 8 channel XLR inputs to my M-Audio FW1814. Works fine. One little catch – the outputs on the back of the unit are not simply “pass through” of the front inputs. These are outputs from the ADAT Input signal. This is mentioned in the SoS review, but bears repeating. It would have been lovely to have this feature since it would have opened up monitoring possibilities while recording. Still, for the price it’s a good ‘un.

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:32:50 +0000

I’ve got an Alesis AI3 which I picked up for £80 second hand, and does the same thing as the ADA8000, with reputedly better convertors. works a treat

By: Philipp

Philipp — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:48:37 +0000

I don’t know the unit, but I have had some Behringer Stuff in the past.
I know, Behringer has sort of a bad name, when it comes to quality, infact, you’re always gonna find some a**h*le who never produced a track but thinks he needs to tell you, that the gear sucks.
But well, I used a Behringer mixer for live, cause I was scared for my Mackie. Aside of the bad name of Behringer my experience is, that the bad quality part is true in terms of things breaking. I had to return my first mixer a couple of times, till I finally got a new one which worked fine.
I think the risk with Behringer is, that your unit might suck. If you are lucky and catch a unit that is healthy, than you are gonna have a lot of fun for little money.

By: Wavedude

Wavedude — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:41:03 +0000

For those of us who don’t have ADAT channel plugs with our interfaces, the there an alternative like using S/PDIF?