Converter confusion....

[locosoundman]

I suppose you have to consider other things in a person's signal chain as well.

If your microphone choices are confined to an SM57 and/or a $75 Chinese condenser mic and you are recording through a Mackie or Behringer mixer into a prosumer interface and listening back on $100 powered monitors, you will probably not hear much of a difference if you simply insert some great converters.

Recording is a "game of inches." Every little step in the chain makes a bit of difference. At any given juncture, you may or may not notice a "huge" difference between two pieces of gear when using a single track on a single source, (also, you may not even know what exactly you are listening for), but all of these bits of quality add up in the end - especially when you have recorded more than a few tracks through the same signal chain.

At some point in my life, I was feeding a stereo mic array to an Apogee AD16 and a SONY 16-bit DAT recorder from the same preamp when recording a concert. I will never forget how taken aback I was when I AB'ed the two later in a DAW. The depth and clarity of the 16-bit DAT was actually astounding when I compared it to the 24-bit Apogee - not at all what I expected.

However, the first time I used the AD16 to record a mutitrack live session while simultaneously feeding a prosumer interface, there was no comparison between the two recordings. The AD16 had air and clarity (and bottom) and was quite easy to mix. The tracks from the prosumer interface had a grainy cloudy quality to it and did not come together as easily and never sounded as good.

[Alex Netick]

Personally, I wouldn't take the advice of anyone, including you or me, regarding how something sounds without seeing for myself. Nobody gives a shit about your advice, anyway. So get off of your high horse. Later.

What makes your advice so great? Not that it really makes much difference, anyway, you pinhead.

The difference in sound between a converter like the Apogee Rosetta and the converters in the 002 or the latest Mackie interface are not subtle. It's not some creepy esoteric subtlety that can only be heard by mastering ninjas. It's a real, obvious difference. Not that the digi or Mackie converters are bad. I've used worse and still managed to get a result that I was pleased with. But, the difference between them and even the midrange stuff like Apogee, Lavry, and Lynx should be pretty obvious.

My advice to the original poster is to listen to some converters rather than a guy who admits to not even being able to hear the difference between converters that sound quite a bit different. I'm advising that listening to the gear would be more beneficial than listening to a guy who advises to the lowest common denominator with disclaimers like this:

Chances are you're probably like me and you don't have a space or monitors or ears that are even good enough to hear the difference.

I'm not going to make insulting assumptions about the poster's gear and experience and then tailor my advice to suit that.

[calaverasgrandes]

(bought a twintrack at a fleamarket for $150, sold it a month later for $200 on CL. It SUCKED!) .

the twin track might of sucked but at least you got to make 50 bucks off of it, lol.

did you report that profit to the IRS?

O hell no! I dont apologize for my lackadasical attitude towards reporting petty income to the IRS. I also tip in cash always so the waitstaff/pizza guy doesnt have to declare their tips.
I think governments are evil, ours in the US very much so. I see paying less taxes as a good deed. Giving the armies of evil less amunition, metaphorically at least. If anyone on this forum has a problem with that, just adjust your income bracket up by 10% and that should cover it.


More on topic, when I had a lot more outboard stuff I experimented with patching the digital outs of my outboard directly into my audio interface using spdif or toslink. It was pretty educational how bad a lot of stuff sounds when you skip its built in transfer function. Like my Quadraverb II. Not the most delicate of reverbs, but it was useful. When patched in digitally it sounded like a tin shack in a hailstorm. Noisy as hell.
My DBX DDP and my Tascam DAT tied for best converters. All of my regular
effects sounded horrible and noisy.

As far as the difference between "elite" and run of the mill converters. I notice more bass and treble in good AD/DA. Not in a way that sounds like a smile curve. More like the same amount of highs and lows a cheap converter would give you. But less fuzzy and vague sounding.
I have heard differnt converters on the same setup sound like you were flipping a swtich on the tweeter everytime you went back to the crap converter.

[trodden]

O hell no! I dont apologize for my lackadasical attitude towards reporting petty income to the IRS. I also tip in cash always so the waitstaff/pizza guy doesnt have to declare their tips.

ahhh it was a joke! didn't mean to get it all started again! like that last thread...aahhhhh..

i like to tip. ask morespaceecho's mom about it.

[calaverasgrandes]

no worries. I just got fed up with that other thread and quit responding to other posters judgemental statements about my tax evasion.

I am curious about LUCID. They seem to have a paucity of models. The 2496's came out almost 10 years ago. I think now they have a 192 version?
I cant find any reviews off these. I wonder are they any good?

[roygbiv]

to recap:

[losthighway]

I've noticed all of these come as two separate units. The 'converter' and the sound card. Excuse my ignorance, but I've only used cheap Delta stuff and each A/D box comes with its own soundcard. Do people mix and match these things? Which is more important? Could I have a Lynx A/D hooked up to my Delta card? Would I even want to?

Sorry to bump, but I have been confused on this for a while. Anyone?

[Patrick McAnulty]

Personally, I wouldn't take the advice of anyone, including you or me, regarding how something sounds without seeing for myself. Nobody gives a shit about your advice, anyway. So get off of your high horse. Later.

What makes your advice so great? Not that it really makes much difference, anyway, you pinhead.

The difference in sound between a converter like the Apogee Rosetta and the converters in the 002 or the latest Mackie interface are not subtle. It's not some creepy esoteric subtlety that can only be heard by mastering ninjas. It's a real, obvious difference. Not that the digi or Mackie converters are bad. I've used worse and still managed to get a result that I was pleased with. But, the difference between them and even the midrange stuff like Apogee, Lavry, and Lynx should be pretty obvious.

My advice to the original poster is to listen to some converters rather than a guy who admits to not even being able to hear the difference between converters that sound quite a bit different. I'm advising that listening to the gear would be more beneficial than listening to a guy who advises to the lowest common denominator with disclaimers like this:

Chances are you're probably like me and you don't have a space or monitors or ears that are even good enough to hear the difference.

I'm not going to make insulting assumptions about the poster's gear and experience and then tailor my advice to suit that.

cool your jets there, bud. The OP obviously wants to hear the opinions of those who have had experience with this type of gear and know how to recognize the minute differences they can have.
And what makes your input on this thread any better than his? Who gives you the right to say no one wants to hear his opinion? I, for one, have read a lot of posts on this messageboard by Subatomic Pieces that hold a hell of a lot more weight than yours, so lets just take it easy telling others that their advice isn't worth shit.


/rant