Ah the joys of a good A/D D/A converter

[vinterland]

I think the most overlooked aspect of any studio besides quality cabling is a good freakin A/D D/A. I ran over to a good studio friends house of mine yesterday and listened to some DAW stuff through an Apogee Rosetta 200. I'm always amazed at the difference a high end A/D makes especially compared to something like my M-box. Its almost like removing cotton from your ears. So any of you studio dudes looking for better clarity, depth, and imagining look no further than you're A/D.

 

[DeadSkinSlayer3]

Re: Ah the joys of a good A/D D/A converter

How much does a good sound A/D cost? I've never really heard them discussed much, I think they're very overlooked.

 

[ratherdashing]

Re: Ah the joys of a good A/D D/A converter

The trouble is if you want to work in ProTools, you're tied to the Digidesign hardware (which can be good or bad depending on your perspective). You can get outstanding AD/DA converters for ProTools, but they cost an arm and a leg. I have no complaints with the quality of the MBox, but I wouldn't record a film soundtrack or anything like that on it. That's not what it's for.

 

[vinterland]

Re: Ah the joys of a good A/D D/A converter

How much does a good sound A/D cost? I've never really heard them discussed much, I think they're very overlooked.

The really good stuff is gonna start around $1000 or so and thats gonna just be for like a two channel A/D. Try a multi channel A/D for about 2500-3000 or so.

 

[vinterland]

Re: Ah the joys of a good A/D D/A converter

The trouble is if you want to work in ProTools, you're tied to the Digidesign hardware (which can be good or bad depending on your perspective). You can get outstanding AD/DA converters for ProTools, but they cost an arm and a leg. I have no complaints with the quality of the MBox, but I wouldn't record a film soundtrack or anything like that on it. That's not what it's for.

I'm not questioning the quality of the Mbox either, its a great little unit. But, for LE running like the 002 couldn't you run a good master word clock to clock the internal A/D or run an outboard A/D into the digital inputs neither of which would have to be a digidesign product? I don't have one in front of me to look at all the inputs.

 

[ratherdashing]

Re: Ah the joys of a good A/D D/A converter

I'm not questioning the quality of the Mbox either, its a great little unit. But, for LE running like the 002 couldn't you run a good master word clock to clock the internal A/D or run an outboard A/D into the digital inputs neither of which would have to be a digidesign product? I don't have one in front of me to look at all the inputs.

I don't know about the word clock, but you COULD run an outboard A/D into the digital inputs of either the 002 or the MBox. I think you'd still be limited to a 44.1kHz sampling rate anyway though, so I don't think it would make a difference. I'd have to check to be sure, but I don't think there's a way to get around the Digi hardware's sampling rate.

 

[vinterland]

Re: Ah the joys of a good A/D D/A converter

I don't know about the word clock, but you COULD run an outboard A/D into the digital inputs of either the 002 or the MBox. I think you'd still be limited to a 44.1kHz sampling rate anyway though, so I don't think it would make a difference. I'd have to check to be sure, but I don't think there's a way to get around the Digi hardware's sampling rate.

Ah, see I think you could get a better sound even at just 44.1. The Mbox has pretty good converters for what it is and the 002s are better from what I've heard. Throwing on a great quality converter would have to make a difference IMO. I can also attest to dudes in the DUC using Apogees and other converters in LE and getting some amazing sounds. Maybe at higher sample rates its much more apparent though.

 

[ratherdashing]

Re: Ah the joys of a good A/D D/A converter

Ah, see I think you could get a better sound even at just 44.1. The Mbox has pretty good converters for what it is and the 002s are better from what I've heard. Throwing on a great quality converter would have to make a difference IMO. I can also attest to dudes in the DUC using Apogees and other converters in LE and getting some amazing sounds. Maybe at higher sample rates its much more apparent though.

Yeah, I was assuming all AD/DA's of the same bit width/sample rate are created equal ... probably not the case.