Does a multiple I/O spdif-usb2 interface exist?

[GeneralBigbag]

i.e., one with no AD or DA, just something to get multiple channels of spdif in and out of a (PC) computer, and if so, is it cheap? My searches tell me no, but I can still dream...

[Stab Frenzy]

How about Firewire?

http://www.tcelectronic.com/Default.asp?Id=11617

[meatballfulton]

Multiple channels of SPDIF is an oxymoron.

SPDIF is defined as a stereo stream that includes clocking information. It's not suited for multitrack applications because each pair would have it's own clock and receivers could get of of sync.

That's why you only see one SPDIF I/O on audio interfaces.

[GeneralBigbag]

How about Firewire?

http://www.tcelectronic.com/Default.asp?Id=11617

That looks about right... It's too bad there's not a cheap version, since all I really want to do is have my Minime, DAC, and Rumour all talking to the compy w/o having to unplug/replug etc. I hear the converters on the Rumour are pretty good, I suppose I'll see when it gets here...

Meatball - with SPDIF, are you saying that it's set up in such a way that you can't have several devices hooked up to a hub, with one device serving as master clock for the others? I know that clocking w/ SPDIF is not ideal (at least compared with word clock) due to the mix of data and time code that is carried, but how is that substantially different from running an ADC into a firewire interface via SPDIF, and listening through a separate DAC, which, presumably, is being clocked by the interface which is being clocked by the ADC?

[meatballfulton]

Meatball - with SPDIF, are you saying that it's set up in such a way that you can't have several devices hooked up to a hub, with one device serving as master clock for the others?

You'd need to reclock and realign timing of each stream at the receiver to get sample accurate transfer across all the channels. That costs $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ so that's why you don't see it.

The ADAT Lightpipe protocol is already well established for multitrack digital transfers and can be found on many interfaces.

[Stab Frenzy]

Multiple channels of SPDIF is an oxymoron.

SPDIF is defined as a stereo stream that includes clocking information. It's not suited for multitrack applications because each pair would have it's own clock and receivers could get of of sync.

That's why you only see one SPDIF I/O on audio interfaces.

When you're using S/PDIF you have to set up your clocking properly no matter if you're just using one device or multiple ones. If you know what you're doing there won't be any problems.

To use multiple S/PDIF devices together you just need to hook up both the ins and the outs on each device and then clock them all from the interface. Easy!