Alesis ALESIS M20 owner manual Tutorial 2 Making Digital Backups, 15-5

Chapter 15, Tutorials and Applications

TUTORIAL 2: MAKING DIGITAL BACKUPS

You can create safety copies of M20 tapes by copying all eight tracks to another M20 (or ADAT-compatible machine) via the digital bus.

Alesis recommends creating a backup whenever you have irreplaceable material on tape.

Synchronizing two machines together via the 9-pin sync bus allows for making sample- accurate copies, referred to the internal time code. This is preferred. Without sync, you can simply start recording on the slave and play back from the master. This faithfully copies the audio information, but in all likelihood there will be a timing offset between the two tapes.

Here’s the procedure for creating a backup tape.

Action	You do...	You see...
Synchronize the master and	Connect a male/male, 9-pin D	The master becomes ID 1 and the
slave	connector cable between the	slave ID 2 on power-up
	master Sync Out and the slave
	Sync In
Establish digital audio	Connect a fiber optic cable	No visible change on machine
connection	between the master ADAT
	Optical Out and the slave
	ADAT Optical In
Load machines with tapes	Insert the tape to be backed up	Eject lights go off
	into the master, and a blank or
	formatted tape into the slave

∙ To make a 20-bit backup, both machines must be Type II with tapes formatted in 20-bit mode.

∙ If the tape is unformatted, put the slave into Format mode (see Chapter 4). If the tape is partially formatted, the slave tape needs to have its format extended (see section 4.5).

∙ For safety’s sake, write-protect the tape to be copied by breaking off (or sliding open) the tape’s write protect tab.

Return both machines to a	Press the Locate 0 button	Both Time counters read 0:00:00.00
common start point
Enable optical inputs	Select ADAT Optical Digital	Digital Source block shows ADAT
	Source on both the master and	Optical
	slave M20
Select digital as the Input	Press Input Select then press	A “D” will be displayed beneath
Select source on both machines	All Input	all 8 channel meters
Enable all slave tracks for	Press all slave Record Enable	The Record indicators for all slave
recording	buttons	tracks will flash
Be sure that the Record Enable buttons are switched off for tracks 1—8 of the master M20!
Initiate tape cloning	Press both Play and Record on	Both machines start, Record
	the master	Enable indicators on slave
		machine light solid
End backup	Press Stop on the master after	Both machines stop
	backup is complete

ALESIS M20 REFERENCE MANUAL 1.06 15-5