ADAT Light pipe?

I was seeing the sample kings video bout the 4k, and he had the one with ADAT light pipe, and 8 outs or something. What is all this? I heard people dont really use ADAT that much. Thats just what I heard, I asked in the Futurproducers.com forum, and someone said that ADAT is a different more complicated way to record, and people would rather now just use a computer with CD/R's? Is this right? I'm just really interested in all this, and wanted to know whats light pipe is, and why you would want 8 outs?, whats the difference?

Please excuse my dumb newbie questions, Im interested in learning all this stuff, it's new to me!

ADAT was a widespread recording system a few years ago, from about 1994-1999 it was pretty big but with the computers getting better and soundcards better etc (and cheaper) the ADAT as a system (using S-VHS tapes) is pretty much extinct in a pro environment.

However, what ADAT means in reference to spec's on the MPC4000 and alot of other hardware is that the connection protocol that ADAT used is still used alot. In practice it means that you can send 8 seperate channels within the digital domain, meaning its not going through the AD/DA conversion, and this means theres no loss of soundquality at all when sending to a digital mixing desk for instance.

So basically, the MPC4000 can send 8 channels DIGITALLY to hardware that also have the ADAT lightpipe connection, like digital mixers etc.

The reason for having 8 seperate channels is pretty obvious, you can set EQ/FX's etc on each channel seperately with the external digital mixer.

Hope this makes sense to you.

Kalei