ADAT

 

The ADAT Lightpipe is officially known as the ADAT Optical Interface.

It was developed by Alesis.

 

It stands for e Alesis Digital Audio Tape 

 

It uses  fiber optic cables to carry data.

Its very popular today and many third party hardware manufacturers use Lightpipe interfaces on their equipment.

 

Lightpipe uses the same connection hardware as S/PDIF, but dont be confussed.

Both have  Toslink connectors at either end.

The data streams of the two protocols are incompatible.

S/PDIF is used for transferring stereo or multi-channel surround sound audio

ADAT  in comparison, supports up to 8 audio channels at 48 kHz, 24 bit