A/D/A converters - help me cut through the BS

[seva]

use ears

ADDA converters are a big topicl. The sound is the most important thing if you want to make music. I think that you can only judge  an ADDA converter when you have heard different price ranges in an AB,C comparison. The listening should take place in an adequate environment with speakers in a price range corresponding to the converter. A ratio of 5/1 to 10/1 is a good value. This means that you should listen to a 10k converter on a 50-100k speaker system. Then you will notice significant differences.
Clocking is also very important for tightness and stereo image of a converter. CraneSong has very tight DA converter right now.

In an AB comparison, all converters will sound different. Especially in mastering it is useful to make these differences nutritious. For example, an aurora has a distinct bass cut. Who likes that can use that.

For my ears are DAD, Prism, Antelope, CraneSong, Merging, Forsell
worth their money.

I had bad experiences with Motu, RME.
good experience with metric halo on mac, mytek

For me, converters are the most important tool next to my ears, the room, and the speakers.

I hope that help you!

 

[metalb00b00]

This means that you should listen to a 10k converter on a 50-100k speaker system. Then you will notice significant differences.

people who have that kind of money to burn don't hang out in a DIY community.

Clocking is also very important for tightness and stereo image of a converter. CraneSong has very tight DA converter right now.

and how would you know which one has a superior clocking? have you dissected the circuit? have you taken measurements with the proper test bench tools to back up your claim?

In an AB comparison, all converters will sound different. Especially in mastering it is useful to make these differences nutritious. For example, an aurora has a distinct bass cut. Who likes that can use that.

bahahahahahahaha, what a BS.  did you not know that mastering is 99% public relation and 1% audio engineering?!

sorry if i came up as hostile, but you're not helping the OP cut through the BS.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Clocking is also very important for tightness and stereo image of a converter.

Indeed it is. It has been shown that currently manufactured internal clocks have jitter level at least one order of magnitude better than the value needed for inaudible degradation.
The only clocking issues today are due to poor implementation of synchronization to an external clock. Current professional converters use WC synchronization schemes that produce jitter as low as that of their internal clock.

 

[seva]

Jitter is also a big topic.
I have done some blind tests with a 10mhz clock and various high-priced converters. All converters sounded better with the external clock.
The bass is much tighter and the stereo image is much more high resolution.

It's easy to argue that it makes no difference if you never heard  it and only think from a theoretical (technical) point of view. I am really no audio esoteric and would like to agree with you. Experience shows, however: Some things you understand only when you can hear them.

PS: Many Top Engineers uses Best Rooms with Best Speakers and build their analog setup themselves or technichins.

I have that feel: Hearing is a little bit underrated!?

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Jitter is also a big topic.
I have done some blind tests with a 10mhz clock and various high-priced converters.

This was definitely not WC sync. I surmise it was Master Clock; then what was the SR and the exact MC frequency? 10MHz does not correspond to any standard MC frequency.

 

[seva]

I had the Antelope 10mx, Eclipse, Pure2, Mytek192, hapi ... in the test.
The 10mx has 10mhz and wc outputs. But also the WC outputs give more stability and width.

 

[bluebird]

All converters sounded better with the external clock.
The bass is much tighter and the stereo image is much more high resolution.

I think the bass is a little blue-er and the black of the resolution image is deeper.

Please read Lavry  on clocking. External clocking will always be less accurate than a crystal sitting next to the converter chip.  Only time external clocking should be used is if you need to sync multiple devices.

I’ll just say that when I had my 192s for 10-years, I longed for better converters, but still did the best I could with them. Nowadays with the new Avid converters (along with the Iikes of Lynx and  plenty others), it make me careless about better converters. Not to say that there aren’t better ones I’d love to have, but honestly I’d rather more great gear, a bunch more cool accessories, even better acoustics, and simply way more space. If that was ever satisfied, sure I’d look at better converters.

I did get to hear direct Burl and Avid comparisons at Fantasy Studios. A difference? Yes. And I still feel the same way.

5 years ago I did extensive listening tests in a major studio with multiple house engineers and mastering engineers. It was for picking an archival converter for a labels vast catalog of tape recordings.

We had the original Digi 192's Apogee, Lynx Aurora, Prism ADA 8XR, and some others I don't remember. A special AB/X box was made and the source was a Nora Jones master tape recorded into the computer at different sample rates. Tones from the tapes were references for exact adjustment of level for each converters digital output into the computer.

No one could tell the difference between ANY of the converters in a blind AB/X. In the end the old 192's were chosen.
The old 192's are better built than the new Avid 192's. Just pop the top. Avid had to seriously cut cost on the new hardware. When the new Avids came out we did some tests on the Audio Precision and there was no significant difference between the old and the new 192's regarding distortion figures and frequency response.

There are a lot of opinions floating around out there but in my many years working in studios either recording or being a technician has anyone ever proven to me one converter "beat" another converter...
Just ask yourself how many great sounding albums were made on the old digidesign 888's. Or ADAT's remember those? Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill was recorded on ADAT...

Dude just get the MOTU...Concentrate on your gain staging with that console, the distortion and image problems you have are going to be a result of your ability as an engineer, not your converters.

 

[Matt C]

Dude just get the MOTU...Concentrate on your gain staging with that console, the distortion and image problems you have are going to be a result of your ability as an engineer, not your converters.

This is the conclusion I've come to as well.  I'm sure its quality is at least adequate for my needs, but I thought it was worth starting the conversation to hear from some people who knew more about the design issues at hand. Thanks to everyone who chimed in. When I win the lottery and spend 20k on 24 channels of Burl converters I'll A/B it with the MOTU...

 

[seva]

I started with
1. Audiowerk2
2.Motu 2408mk3
3.RME Fireface
4.Metric Halo 2882
5.Mytek192
6.Aurora16
7.Eclipse 8.Solaris 9....
still have 5-x in use for different tasks

 

[seva]

Please read Lavry  on clocking. External clocking will always be less accurate than a crystal sitting next to the converter chip.  Only time external clocking should be used is if you need to sync multiple devices.

Please hear clocking the metric halo, mytek, aurora or by the eclipse or 10mx. It sounds amazing. Only Solaris can come close to that.

Old digidesign/Avid converter are still good. I did a comparison of the AES/SPDIF Ports of one of this units. SPDIF sounds really bad

 

[scott2000]

I think the bass is a little blue-er and the black of the resolution image is deeper.

Please read Lavry  on clocking. External clocking will always be less accurate than a crystal sitting next to the converter chip.  Only time external clocking should be used is if you need to sync multiple devices.

5 years ago I did extensive listening tests in a major studio with multiple house engineers and mastering engineers. It was for picking an archival converter for a labels vast catalog of tape recordings.

We had the original Digi 192's Apogee, Lynx Aurora, Prism ADA 8XR, and some others I don't remember. A special AB/X box was made and the source was a Nora Jones master tape recorded into the computer at different sample rates. Tones from the tapes were references for exact adjustment of level for each converters digital output into the computer.

No one could tell the difference between ANY of the converters in a blind AB/X. In the end the old 192's were chosen.
The old 192's are better built than the new Avid 192's. Just pop the top. Avid had to seriously cut cost on the new hardware. When the new Avids came out we did some tests on the Audio Precision and there was no significant difference between the old and the new 192's regarding distortion figures and frequency response.

There are a lot of opinions floating around out there but in my many years working in studios either recording or being a technician has anyone ever proven to me one converter "beat" another converter...
Just ask yourself how many great sounding albums were made on the old digidesign 888's. Or ADAT's remember those? Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill was recorded on ADAT...

Dude just get the MOTU...Concentrate on your gain staging with that console, the distortion and image problems you have are going to be a result of your ability as an engineer, not your converters.

This is pretty awesome!

Too bad the Motu wasn't on this list of converters tried but it's good to hear some expert opinion and that's good enough for me.

Now where did I put my old  Soundblaster???? lol

 

[Recording Engineer]

there was no significant difference between the old and the new 192's regarding distortion figures and frequency response.

The thing I didn’t like about my 192s was the low-end. The simplest test was bass DI’d into powered-speaker compared to bass DI’d into 192 into powered-speaker.  Where’d all the low-end go? Same thing happened with MCI JH-16 to SSL 6048 compared to JH-16 to 192 to 6048. Where’d all the low-end go?

Haven’t done any test at all with the new Avids, but eventually will. However, if I was going start improving the 192 design, that’s the first thing I’d take care of!

 

[john12ax7]

Regarding clocking,  Lavry is not entirely correct.  Grimm has demonstrated that you can actually lower jitter with external clocking in certain circumstances, with actual data to back it up.

Interesting about the Avid converters,  as I've almost universally heard that the new ones were better.

For evaluation I've found diffmaker useful.  In my listening tests,  the better the correlation depth,  the more transparent the converter subjectively sounded.  Subtle differences though

In the end I think just getting something with a proven track record,  good support,  reliability,  drivers, etc.  will be more important than the sonic differences for most users.

 

[seva]

Many AD converters tend to eat the bass.
I know that many studios have replaced the 192s with auroras. However, the Aurora 8/16 also have a noticeable bass cut.

some other point of views about clocking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoKqnBJN8iQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqau_-dO_GM

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Regarding clocking,  Lavry is not entirely correct.  Grimm has demonstrated that you can actually lower jitter with external clocking in certain circumstances, with actual data to back it up. 

These certain circumstances are when the internal clock is incredibly poorly designed; it's not likely to happen in real life, except if the internal clock is defective. This is clearly a case of degraded performance, which should not be the basis for generalization.
Grimm have to find an argument for selling their master clocks.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I suggest reading this
http://www.mixonline.com/news/news-products/digital-audio-clocks-how-they-work-and-why-you-need-them/383737

Comments by Lynx's Bauman are full of good sense. OTOH the Antelope distributor shows his technical limitations on placing the subject on subjectivity.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Many AD converters tend to eat the bass.

How do you explain that, when measurements show a ruler-flat response down to about 2 Hz?

 

[bluebird]

The thing I didn’t like about my 192s was the low-end. The simplest test was bass DI’d into powered-speaker compared to bass DI’d into 192 into powered-speaker.

But see, that's not a way to judge a converter. There are so many variables impedance wise The input impedance of the powered speaker and the A/D will be different. Could be a little, could be a lot. A DI Box will be sensitive to that.  AND the output of the DI is WAY different than the output of the D/A. If your doing A/B tests make sure your comparing apples to apples a half DB difference in level and that throws the whole test off.

I spent many months dealing with this very thing so I share my experience, nothing is absolute and I could be wrong about my observations but I like to share them anyhow.

Many AD converters tend to eat the bass.
I know that many studios have replaced the 192s with auroras. However, the Aurora 8/16 also have a noticeable bass cut.

Yea man, this is just a ridiculous statement. You do know your gonna need a power amp between the converter and a speaker right? Are you driving passive speakers with the line level from your D/A? That's what your descriptions sound like your doing.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

Yea man, this is just a ridiculous statement. You do know your gonna need a power amp between the converter and a speaker right? Are you driving passive speakers with the line level from your D/A? That's what your descriptions sound like your doing.

Who was it that said I could be a bit blunt sometimes?  ;D

 

[ruairioflaherty]

Why do converter and clocking threads always go off the rails so quickly?  Next up digital stair steps…