Unit settings

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The upper area of the Atlas Control Panel contains the main settings for the Atlas unit.

 

The upper area also contains buttons for loading and saving Atlas configurations, launching the Verifile Checker app, and accessing the on-line help.

 

 

The Atlas model and serial number are displayed at the top of the Unit settings area. Note that the currently-installed firmware version of the Atlas unit can be displayed by hovering the mouse cursor over this text.

 

The Sample Rate and Sync Source controls allow the unit's reference sample rate and synchronization source to be selected.  For more details, see the Synchronization section.

 

NOTE: If an external sync source such as DI or Wordclock is selected, but is either absent or at a different rate from the selected sample rate, the unit reverts to local (internal) sync at the selected sample rate.  If the reference is later applied at the appropriate rate, audio is re-enabled. Note that during Stand-alone operation an external sync source is allowed to control the unit's sample rate.

 

NOTE: It may not be possible to change the sample rate whilst any of Atlas's ports are in use by an audio application (e.g. a DAW). In this case it is necessary to disconnect the ports from the application before changing the sample rate, or (where possible) to change the rate from within the application.

 

A two-channel sample-rate converter (SRC) can be configured in the S/PDIF input path, or in the S/PDIF output path, or can be disabled, using the SRC control.

 

The ADAT mode control selects the number of supported ADAT inputs and outputs as follows:

 

ADAT mode

ADAT inputs

ADAT outputs

Sample rates available

No ADAT

None

None

44.1kHz - 192kHz

ADAT4

Four channels

Four channels

44.1kHz - 96kHz

ADAT8

Eight channels

Eight channels

44.1kHz, 48kHz

 

In ADAT4 mode at sample rates of 88.2kHz and 96kHz, SMUX mode is used.  By default, ADAT ports are disabled to ease load on the host computer. For more information, see the Digital inputs and Digital outputs sections.

 

NOTE: Changing the ADAT mode causes changes in the number of input and output channels reported to the host computer by Atlas.  It is therefore advisable to close your DAW application before changing the ADAT mode, and to restart it again afterwards, in order to ensure reliable operation.

 

The FP Meters control allows the front panel meters to be switched between the analogue and S/PDIF inputs, and the analogue and S/PDIF outputs. For more information, see the Metering system description.

 

The Clock Out control can be used to cause the Wordclock output to produce Baseclock or 256x clock instead of Wordclock if required.  For more details, see the Synchronization section.

 

The LED Level control allows the brightness of the LEDs on Atlas's front panel to be adjusted to suit ambient lighting conditions.

 

In Windows ASIO systems, the audio delay through the input and output buffers is set by the Buffer control and is entered in samples.  The buffer time may be automatically adjusted by the software when the sample rate is changed. The Base control determines how many ASIO buffers are queued, allowing improved dropout resilience, and is entered in ms.  In general, it is better to keep the buffer time quite long as this reduces the risk of audio glitches, as described in the Stability and latency section.  Atlas's low-latency on-board foldback mixing facility reduces the need for the low latency in the driver. Note that the WDM buffer length is set by Windows; in Mac systems, buffer latency control is handled by OS X.

 

Below the Unit Selector is the Identify button.  This can be latched on or off. In the on state (high-lit red) the LED in the standby switch of the associated unit flashes.  This allows identification of each unit in a multi-unit system (if supported).

 

The Verifile button should normally be lit green to show that all of the analogue input channels are producing Verifile-encoded data.  It is possible to switch this function on and off, but switching it off is via a confirmation box since it is strongly recommended that Verifile encoding is enabled at all times.  Verifile encoding causes no audible performance degradation, but ensures that subsequent Verifile checking is always possible.

 

 

Load, Save, Verifile Checker and Help buttons

 

The blue Help button ('?') opens the online version of this manual in a browser window.

 

The red Save and the orange Load buttons save and load Atlas settings to and from disk.

 

The green Verifile Checker app button opens the Verifile Checker app.