Converters - holy crap, what a difference

[Ermz]

My RME ADI-8 AE just arrived. Prior to now I've been using an RME Multiface for all my monitoring, tracking and outboard.

I just finished setting up the ADI about 5 minutes ago. I decided to test fire a track to see whether signal was passing and.... not only was signal passing, but what came out of the monitors was drastically different to what I expected.

Quite honestly I expected absolutely no appreciable difference, but I was immediately hit with more defined lows, and a sudden sense of space in the mids and highs. It's really hard to explain this, and I'm running through all the tracks just to make sure my mind isn't inventing this, but so far it's fairly consistent.

Even a fairly meagre converter upgrade in my case made a rather large appreciable difference. I'll definitely be paying much more heed to conversion in the future, ESPECIALLY in regards to monitoring. Way bigger than I expected.

 

[amarshism]

So will you use this unit to handle all your conversion or...? I'm gonna be in the market for a converter soon as the 002/003 units apparently aren't all that great.

 

[Kazrog]

What sample rate(s) were you doing the testing at? Curious to see how oversampling at the converter stage is playing into this.

 

[Ermz]

Yeah it will handle all recording and mix outboard duties from now. I dread to think how much I compromised my prior mixes without realizing by running the Multiface.

Found a snug place at the top of the rack:

Sample rate is just 44.1khz, Shane. No Double Sampling mode or anything engaged. Windows is playing audio back at 16-bit, 44khz.

 

[Ola Englund]

would be cool if you can post clips of before and after!

 

[Ermz]

I think that would be great... in theory.

In practice the DAC of anyone playing the tests back factors in and mitigates the actual results. I heard plenty of converter tests in the past and always thought 'wow, is this REALLY the difference what people pay $3k+ for?'.

Ultimately none of it prepared me for how big the difference would be right here, in this room. No matter what tests I provide, it won't give you the same insight of having worked on the Opals for almost a year, knowing them back to front, and then suddenly hearing them improve even more in ways you didn't think were possible without moving to a larger room.

I guess I'm not trying to sell this to anyone in a scientific way. It's just a personal experience, of how significant the upgrade actually was. You'll just have to let me prove it by running your album through while mastering eh

 

[Fragle]

that was exactly my experience when i made the switch from profire to fireface - better at the extreme highs and lows, better imaging, more details. since the fireface equals to the multiface i guess the adi8 must be very nice, hehe.

actually, if you're just looking to upgrade your D/A converters, the benchmark dac-1 or the apogee mini dac are supposed to be great, too.
obviously you won't get any upgrade on the a/d side of things this way, but i have a feeling that when recording there's so much more that can go wrong in terms of mic placement, mic selection, mic pre, tone choice etc that great a/d conversion really just puts the icing on the cake. the monitoring however is way more important, after all that's what you rely on when mixing, jugding your tones, and referencing.
now, if you're using outboard (like you're doing) that's a whole different game - after all you're running your tracks through repeated stages of conversion, hence a/d becomes much more important. plus with those 2 channel d/a units you're not able to use the great d/a conversion without sacrificing your monitoring.....guess that sort of works better with an all itb setup.

matter of fact, the apogee mini dac looks like a hell of a deal...i wish my car hadn't died on me, fuck.

how much did the adi 8 set you back?

 

[Morgan C]

So it improved your monitoring situation a lot but not really the actual quality of the recordings?

 

[Ermz]

The DAC is still useful for monitoring, as you say. I think down the track if I ever do go for a two channel unit, it would have to be the Avocet, mostly because I'm sick to my balls of this passive M-patch unit and its noisy pots.

The ADI 8 AE set me back $801 AUD.

@Morgan: Not sure what you mean. It's an 8 channel unit and all my outboard is now running through it. I've yet to see whether it leads to a tangible improvement in my work.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

cool, so you bought it...
RME makes great converters in that price range IMO

 

[Ermz]

I assume you compared your ADI 8 DS to several high-end offerings, Lasse? How much more of an improvement are we talking with stuff like Lavry, Mytek, Lynx etc.?

 

[Lasse Lammert]

I assume you compared your ADI 8 DS to several high-end offerings, Lasse? How much more of an improvement are we talking with stuff like Lavry, Mytek, Lynx etc.?

tbh I only have a comparison of the AD side atm, cause I only have the Apogee AD-16x and not the DA-16x (so far).

for AD I've compared the Apo to lynx aurora and 192 and preferred the apo out of those.
would love some lavrys one day though (compared lavry gold to RME ADI8 and 192 a couple of years ago and the lavry absolutely killed).

 

[Ermz]

A local mastering place that got the Lavry Gold about a year or two back were raving to me about how much more clarity it presented in their playback. They were hearing all these weird tracking mistakes in landmark records of the past.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Heh, I experienced the exact same thing when switching my Firepod for a Profire. Never expected any change in monitoring, but eventually I had to confirm the improvement with my fiancé just to make sure I wasn't imagining things Congrats on the new purchase!

 

[Morgan C]

@Morgan: Not sure what you mean. It's an 8 channel unit and all my outboard is now running through it. I've yet to see whether it leads to a tangible improvement in my work.

You said that showing US the differences it makes wouldn't do much, but it makes a big difference on your end?

Does that mean that it improves the clarity of your monitoring situation a lot, but doesn't really do a huge deal to the actual recorded files (files you record THRU this interface, not files already recorded, if that's confusing)? Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding..

 

[Fragle]

no, he said that the monitoring did improve a lot, and that it's too early to tell if the difference is equally large when recording stuff.

other than that, you can only do a shootout with the a/d side of things, as d/a depends on the system you're listening to. playing captain obvious here, hehe.

 

[jangoux]

Emrz, We´ve got a RME FF800 at the studio i work on, plus a Mytek 192 thing, a Hedd 192 and a Lynx Aurora 16. I swear i can hear NO difference whatsoever in any of them. The thing is, the room is really small (4m x 4m with a ceileing height of around 2.5m) and there is no acoustic treatment (my boss thinks this is bullshit). So your thread made me realize how bad i actually hear things in there.

btw, congrats for the purchase!

 

[Melb_shredder]

Congrats ermz!!! Now don't tell me the multiface I bought is a waste of money please lol!!!

 

[Ermz]

Nah the multiface is okay for the money. I knew I had to be missing something though. Down the track I'll likely sell it in favor of one of those HDSP interfaces that just have ADAT connections on them and run all 3rd party conversion.

 

[Mikaël-ange]

Quite honestly I expected absolutely no appreciable difference, but I was immediately hit with more defined lows, and a sudden sense of space in the mids and highs. It's really hard to explain this, and I'm running through all the tracks just to make sure my mind isn't inventing this, but so far it's fairly consistent.

Even a fairly meagre converter upgrade in my case made a rather large appreciable difference. I'll definitely be paying much more heed to conversion in the future, ESPECIALLY in regards to monitoring. Way bigger than I expected.

Finally you believe in this
Now you need to comp your multiface clocked via ADI vs multiface clocked by itself.

I think that would be great... in theory.

In practice the DAC of anyone playing the tests back factors in and mitigates the actual results. I heard plenty of converter tests in the past and always thought 'wow, is this REALLY the difference what people pay $3k+ for?'.

I didn't want start an other converter war but all this converter shoutout doesn't show for everyone how much difference converter have imo. Listen this test through a firepod or through a lavry blue for exemple. No or less difference with first and massive difference with second.