Hello, hopefully someone here understands this better than me...

I have two Apollo x8p interfaces daisy-chained, with all their ADAT ins/outs connected to my Ferrofish A32 Pro.

A Signex bantam patchbay is connected to the Ferrofish’s analog ins/outs (1-16), routing signals to my rack gear.

The Issue:

When I send a mono drum track from Logic via ADAT 1, the Ferrofish meters show the signal appearing in unexpected places:
• Analog Input 1
• Analog Output 1
• Analog Output 9 (mirroring Output 1 exactly)

Why is Ferrofish sending the signal through Output 9 as well?

Possible Cause:

In Logic, both Apollo interfaces appear with ADAT 1-8 I/O—one labeled as ‘A’ ADAT 1-8 and the other as ‘B’ ADAT 1-8. Is it possible Logic is sending the signal to both ADAT 1s?

If so, how can I configure my Apollos to register as ADAT 1-16 in Logic and UAD Console?

I’ve attached photos of my Ferrofish meter during playback and my Ferrofish I/O matrix settings.

You can change the labels for the adat ports in UA Console, and then in Logic you can set the IO labels to “use driver”. Thats probably not the problem though, because Logic is going to treat them uniquely no matter what you label them as. Do you have the routing set correctly in the ferrofish? You can change the IO in banks of 8, so if you want to map adat 1-8 to analog 1-8 you can do that, adat 9-16 to analog 9-16, etc.

Thanks for that tip on labelling to ADAT ports, I will do that!

Not sure if you can see from the photo (might have to zoom in a way) but I've got the ferrofish IO set up like you said I think, ADAT 1-8 corresponding with Analog 1-8 etc, so I don't think that's the issue. I am... befuddled

I think it is more an issue on how the apollos are set up. I don't own the units but from checking online it seems to me that you need to select one of the apollos as the master and then connect the second one to it as a slave. Then on the UA routing software you'll be able to setup The apollo "master" as ADAT 1-8 and the "slave" as ADAT 9-17.

Not sure if this is might be the issue, but if your are going at 48khz (or less) sample rate make sure you select the SMUX/1 option on the ferrofish and that the Apollo's are setup accordingly on their digital outs.

So you're basically using the A32 as an extender for your two Apollos? I do something similar but then using adat to hook up another A32 to a madi connected A32.

If you have your A32 hooked up via USB with a/your computer you can use the RemoteFish application (download at Ferrofish site) for remote configuring. When you are there you also can check if you are running the latest firmware. (Earlier firmware versions had issues with ADAT routing)

As for the routing matrix it should be setting up analog 1-32 ins to adat 1-4 and adat 1-4 to analog outs 1-32. (see pic) In my example the madi is in full bypass mode.
Iirc you cannot route to two sources at the same time. So if you get double signals there may be going something on at the Apollo side.

thanks - going to try this now and check all of this is okay - will let you know!

Ok I have an update!

I dis-connected my Apollos to see if it would still be the same problem, and yes, there is still the same issue!

Even with just 1 Apollo, when I send audio out through ADAT 1 in my DAW, the Ferrofish outputs analog signal on channels 1 AND 9...

So I think it's a Ferrofish problem... Any idea what it might be?

I just want to have signal sent into ADAT 1 on the Ferrofish come out of Analog 1 ONLY, rather than mysteriously appearing twice...

Let me know what you think I should try next 😆

I contacted Thomann who I purchased from and they have asked me to send the unit back in for a refund... Looks like it wasn't an issue on my end at all!