Why do my masterlink mixes suck?

[Dave jett]

My mixes in the control room sound sweet. After recording them to the ML and rendering/burning, the mixes lose all their life/demention. I'm running PT LE through a mackey deck and outboard comps to the ML @24/96. The playback from the master links HD to my monitors sounds like the mix I just recorded, to a T, awesome. But when I burn it to disc it sounds like shit. I'm using good discs. Does the master link blow in anyone else's oppinion? Can it's burner be upgraded? Oh well

[chema]

no offense to anyone, but the studio i usually work out of has had one for years and i think the masterlink is one of the biggest pieces of shit i have ever used, i can't begin to count the amount of errors it's given me, half the time it won't play cd's that it burnt itself! the list of things i hate about it is almost endless and covers almost every aspect of its being but then again a friend of mine (who does a lot more bands than i do) has one and he loves it, so, you have at least one person that agrees with you and one that doesn't for whatever that's worth...

[trianglelines]

This has come up a few times... you are probably noticing the ugly dither as your nice 24/96 mixes get munged into 16/44.1 redbook format.

Basically, your mixes are not surviving the math- 96 does not gracefully degrade to 44.1 so there is a bunch of rounding going on. Also, 24bit has a lot more depth than 16bit, so you basically take a double gut punch when you render from there.

Many people have recommended doing mixes to 24/44.1 instead of 24/96 because the target medium for the foreseeable future is 16/44.1 or *MP3/AAC*, so outside of archival purposes 24/96 is overkill...

Because I was sort of locked in to 24/96 myself (due to master word clock stuff), I now send out an "analog downsample" by sending the mix out of the masterlink, through two channels of my board and back to a standard CD burner (usually with the ProVLA on the channel inserts to get a sort of 'mini-mastered' feel) because the D/A-A/D result is preferable to the 'in box' rendering math.

This makes for better sounding 'take home copies' and 'car copies' than the rendered versions, IMO.

Hope that helps... also try a search on Masterlink and 24/96

-TimT

[gillentine]

We at Tweed Recording have been using the ML for about 10 months now and haven't had any problems but the 24/96 conversion to 16/44.1 makes sense like the others are saying. I tend to use it more in the 16/44.1 so as to not have to render. Over all i like it better than a friggin' DAT recorder. I hate those pieces of dung! If not the ML then what is the best mix down machine?

[I'm Painting Again]

I only record and mix at 24/44.1..its seems to work great..

try putting a really nice ad converter between the masterlink and your analog outs..record through the digital in at 16/44.1..this is just an idea i have never done it..though i did hear a masterlink used with other converters and the engineer said he liked it a lot better than the ML's "brittle" crappy converters..

[snatchman]

I only record and mix at 24/44.1..its seems to work great..

try putting a really nice ad converter between the masterlink and your analog outs..record through the digital in at 16/44.1..this is just an idea i have never done it..though i did hear a masterlink used with other converters and the engineer said he liked it a lot better than the ML's "brittle" crappy converters..

Yeah, I tried this with an outboard da, not even a "high-end" model! (Symetrix 620, 20bit AD) To my ears, the results were more natural,smoother, even though the 24 bit converters on the Masterlink yeilded more definition in the top end. The Symetrix I think, is a better design converter than the on board ones of the Masterlink (IMO). Thinking that when new, it cost more than the Masterlink is going for now! Go figure. So I'm really encouraged to try this with one of the "high end" converters on the market now. Mytek, Benchmark. Lavry 'oh my! Thanks for your time and ears

[swingdoc]

I noticed an big improvement when I went to an outboard converter ( I use Lucid 24/96). Record to the ML at 24/44.1, and burn a data CD for the mastering to convert to 16/44.1.
I agree with your criticism though. Going straight to the ML at 24/96, and burning down to 14/44 is not the strong-point of the ML.


If I didnt use a mastering facility, I'd use an external converter and go straight into the ML at 16/44.1.

[snatchman]

Good deal, Swingdoc.. . I think I may try the Lucid a little later!

[BrianK]

I noticed you mentioned "rendering" - are you doing mormalization or EQ or compression? Thpse features on the MLink are just toys to tweak things you take home. They are NOT pro-level processors. On it's own EVERY mix I do on a Masterlink is far superior to anything back when people mixed to DATs, converters included.

Maybe your ML has an issue, because CDs I make on mine (two) will play ANYWHERE, which is unusual for CDRs...

[joeysimms]

I usually mix 24/88.2, since the 88.2 does degrade more gracefully than 96.

Somewhere down the line I will likely end up where swingdoc is, and use a nice converter in between, but, I've generally no complaints about my masterlink as is.

[honkyjonk]

You know, concerning a converter upgrade, you might notice a bigger difference sending it in to Jim Williams (isn't that his name?) at audio upgrades. I remember someone raving about their 'upgraded' masterlink and saying it was a night and day difference. I called and asked exactly what he did once and I forget which components he actually replaces. I don't think he replaces the converters, but he might replace the clock.

Anyway, as for the Lucid, I didn't notice that much of a difference between the Lucid and the masterlink stock converters.

I remember a thread a long time ago where someone was raving about how much better their apogee rosetta was than that "crappy" Lucid they'd been using, I guess expecting them to be pretty similar quality because they're in a similar price range.
This is all just heresay, but I'm ready to believe it because I wasn't all that impressed with the Lucid I had.
I'm not a converter geek or anything. I havn't tried many that aren't already built into machines. Actually the best converters I've heard so far are the ones in my
HD24XR.
I wonder why Alesis doesn't offer an upgrade for the masterlink like they do for the HD24. Let's see, $800 for 24 channels, that's under $80 for two channels on the masterlink, right? That would be nice.


Hmmmm. . . Looking back Im wondering if my math was right. Ah, let's not think about that.

[Kevin Kitchel]

You haters are crazy! The Masterlink's converters sound great! j/k

They are pretty good. I use mine all the time, and they are great. Better than any of the converters built into an PTLE hardware, IMO. I bought one when they first came out, upgraded the HD to a 32 G, and loved it!

[trianglelines]

Well, once I put my Apogee Rosetta in front of the ML, and had the better A/D and better clock, the sound improved immensely. My friend has a Lucid A/D-D/A and had the same experience.

In my experience, clocking is THE crucial factor, followed by the nature of the converters.

-TimT

[kittonian]

I always record/mix at 24/96 and then use a Dangerous 2-Bus for all the summing. Then I send that analog signal back into an Apogee PSX-100SE set at 16/44.1 and then out digital to a Tascam CDRW2000. The sound is noticeably better than using dithering/downsampling and I basically play the track in realtime onto a CDR.

If it's being sent to a mastering facility (which all my important mixes are) I send the analog signal from the 2-Bus back into a Prism ADA-8 at 24/96 and then take the data file (the mixed down AIFF at 32-bit float) to the mastering house and let them work their magic.

[leigh]

Basically, your mixes are not surviving the math- 96 does not gracefully degrade to 44.1 so there is a bunch of rounding going on. Also, 24bit has a lot more depth than 16bit, so you basically take a double gut punch when you render from there.

This is true - the math to go from a 96K to a 44.1K sample rate is rough.

So I'd say run the Masterlink at 88.2K, which should downsample much more gracefully to 44.1K. Try it and let us know if it's an improvement. That way you also get your high sample rate copy for archival purposes. Of course, if you don't care about that to begin with, just stay at 44.1K!

As far as the bit depth conversion, I have no idea what dithering the Masterlink uses (I don't own one), but that's not usually the kind of problem that screams "suck." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think dithering issues, if noticable at all, are noticable during quiet passages.

To those who have suggested using different converters on the way in to the Masterlink: the original post said the mixes sounded great off the Masterlink's HD, that the crappy sound only started once the mixes were burned to CD. Doesn't sound like a converter issue.

Leigh