It was originally developed by Alesis but has since become widely accepted,[1] with many third party hardware manufacturers including Lightpipe interfaces on their equipment.
The protocol has become so popular that the term ADAT is now often used to refer to the transfer standard rather than to the Alesis Digital Audio Tape itself.
Initially used for the transfer of digital audio between ADATs, the protocol was designed with future improvements in mind.
While the original ADAT machines did not support this, the Lightpipe format was modified using bit-splitting techniques by the company Sonorus.
[5] The lightpipe is "hot-pluggable", which means devices do not need to be turned off for plugging in or unplugging (although it is advisable to mute the receiving equipment, since there will be a large signal spike when the connection is made).
The optical connect avoids ground-loops, which can be troublesome in larger installations, and will not transfer any harmful electrical spikes from one device to the next.
In order to fit 8 channels within the bandwidth limits of the standard TOSLINK transceiver modules, the bitstream is not biphase mark coded like S/PDIF.
This is twice the baud rate used by S/PDIF (3.072 Mbit/s, doubled by biphase coding to 6.144 MBd), but still within the specified 15 Mbaud capacity of the popular TOTX147 [3]/TORX147 [4] TOSLINK transceivers.