Issues with ADAT (A&H Zed R16 / Audient ID44)

[Ben SParticipant]

TL;DR – My Allen & Heath Zed R16 desk is connected to my Audient ID44 interface with 4 optical cables (Amazon basics) for 16 channels in/out at 48kHz. Audio crackles and pops really loudly. I’ve tried cleaning the cables and ports with alcohol swabs and compressed air, clocked to both the first and second ADAT inputs, tried running at 44.1kHz, tried changing the buffer size (up to 1024)… nothing works.

**Background:**
I’ve been mixing in the box for 6 years now and recently got some money to invest in some better gear. I did my research, and the R16 seemed like exactly what I was looking for (16 channels of decent 4 band parametric EQ with inserts over ADAT for bringing tracks out of the box). It worked mainly fine for a few days, but there was still the odd crackle, but after coming back from a 2 week holiday it’s just unusable.

I’ve never used ADAT for expansion before but read up about problems, usually about dirt getting in the ports or cables, or incorrect clocking. I’ve pretty much obsessively cleaned everything now, both with compressed air and alcohol swabs.

Is the desk screwed? Or the interface? Or am I just missing something really obvious?

(I’m using Ableton on a Windows PC if that’s useful in the slightest)

[KeithJ A&HModerator]

Hi @ben S

You mention trying clocking to the ZEDR16, have you tried the iD44 clocked to internal and setting to 48kHz, then setting the R16 to clock to ADAT and 48kHz?
The main thing with clocking is to ensure you have one clock source and then sync everything else to that. The R16 clocks to either ADAT or firewire, so it makes sense to clock this to ADAT and use the iD44 as the single source.

As you have dual ADAT connections on both units, another test would be to connect them back to themselves – i.e. connect 1-8 out to 9-16 in.

If you’re still having issues, you can always contact us using support.allen-heath.com to open a ticket, or to get the hardware checked, contact your local distributor to arrange a service (https://www.allen-heath.com/where-to-buy/).

Cheers,
Keith.

[Ben SParticipant]

Hey @keithjah

Thanks for the reply! Makes perfect sense in theory, I can’t work out how to set the R16 to be an ADAT slave? I get no signal if I just set the ID44 to internal.

I saw one post on Gearspace where it mentioned you had to use the Windows driver with a firewire cable, but I don’t actually have a PC with a firewire input. I bought the R16 just for the ADAT as it looks like it’ll be around much longer than firewire has been.

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