No. In fact, you can bounce tracks to one machine to another without the BRC, but the method and options vary according to the setup. With the original ADAT, you can bounce tracks from one machine to another in a one-to-one manner. For example, if you were to arm tracks 9 & 10 with DIGITAL IN selected, machine 2 would receive information from tracks 1 & 2.

The XT, XT20 and LX20 have the capability to bounce tracks digitally both internally and to other units. The fiber optic cable carries information for up to eight channels of digital audio simultaneously. The XT can be instructed to designate source tracks on the fiber optic buss. These tracks are then received in order on the armed tracks. For example, by selecting tracks 1 & 8 as the source tracks and arming tracks 9 & 10 with DIGITAL INPUT selected, track 1 will be recorded on track 9 and track 8 will be recorded on track 10.

The big advantage of the BRC is you can select any track to be a source track and any track to be a destination track, up to eight tracks between machines at a time. Source tracks still route to destination tracks in order, but the entire system can be controlled from the BRC and recalled later as part of the setup information stored to the DATA portion of tape.