Converters - your thoughts?

 I don't think that the difference between mid level and high end A/D converters is significant although it exists.

http://audiogeekzine.com/...-really-doesnt-matter/
 
Converters have come a long way and become less expensive in a short time.

 If you are not recording at 192khz and are recording a run of the mill rock sound I seriously doubt it makes enough difference to matter if levels are set up ok.I think other factors probably influence it more.

 I watched a few videos comparing high ended gear but few exist that compare something like a decent Focusrite to a high end Apogee or something similar. A real listening test would be the most persuasive and I would think this would be a great selling feature if you happen to manufacture and sell mid level gear like the Focusrite and now Apogee.

 I am curious if  Apogee  have possibly changed the type of converter to get to the price points offered. IOW maybe its not the same as some of their more expensive gear.

 Since I haven't worked in a world class studio with all the best equipment I can only base my opinions on what some of the engineers who have been in these situations and heard a lot of gear have to say about mid level gear as compared to high end. Many of these guys say that the differences are not significant enough to matter in most situations.

 Paul White who has probably tested and seen more gear than most mortals ever will has said that it is now possible to make a good recording with most of the recording interfaces out there. I'm not quoting him exactly here but in a nutshell this is what he says.

 I regularly hear music good enough to pass as pro level coming from small home studios so I tend to agree with him.My music isn't quite up to that point but that limitation is with me not my gear.

 I don't think you could go wrong with either of those choices.
 

Oh... Audio converters.  I thought this was a SONAR/Pro Tools type thread.  My bad.

I often think if 'pres' are your thing having the ability to bypass the cards built in ones in order you can use your own is a good idea.
 
I'm not sure what (if any) cards offer that facility but it might be worth bearing in mind if you ever want to add your own boutique pres to the chain.
Just a vague afterthought I had on the subject.

Karyn

Jonbouy


I often think if 'pres' are your thing having the ability to bypass the cards built in ones in order you can use your own is a good idea.
 
I'm not sure what (if any) cards offer that facility but it might be worth bearing in mind if you ever want to add your own boutique pres to the chain.
Just a vague afterthought I had on the subject.

To bypass the mic pre, use the line in....

 
 
D'oh...
 
You can tell it's something I do everyday...
 
In fairness I did say it was a vague afterthought.

The actual analog to digital conversion is done by commodity chips, for which there are only a handful of manufacturers in the world. Focusrite and Apogee use the same manufacturers, as do E-Mu and RME. Burr-Brown (a subsidiary of TI) makes chips for both Lavry Gold and Soundblasters. Truth is, even the cheapest converters do a good job for ADC/DAC.

What distinguishes converters is the analog components and I/O options. If you use outboard preamps into line inputs, that eliminates the most critical circuits in the interface, the high-gain stages of amplification. As long as the line input has enough headroom (some USB- and Firewire-powered units don't) you probably would not detect any differences from one unit to the next.

Which leaves the only real hardware consideration, which is I/O capabilities. How many inputs, how many outputs, MIDI, S/PDIF or ADAT, USB vs. Firewire vs. PCIe. Those are the main objective criteria for choosing an interface.

Probably far more significant than any of those things is the quality of the company that manufactures the device. RME and Lynx, for example, have reputations for jumping on bug fixes, providing good documentation, and frequently-updated drivers. Apogee's reputation is also good, even if somewhat tarnished by questionable marketing methods in their past. Behringer, OTOH, is not widely respected even though they happen to make a very good interface. I'd be inclined to base my buying decision more on the reputation of its manufacturer than anything else, assuming the product has all the gozintas and gozoutas I need.

Jonbouy

I've yet to find an interface which is a bit-crushing, sound mangling, distortion unit

I've got plugs/presets that do dat.

I've often read how using higher sampling rates when working w/ amp sims could help

That's an interesting supposition, but I can't for the life of me think of any technical reason that would make that true. 


Higher sample rates allow you to record higher frequencies. A guitar amp isn't exactly a high-frequency sound source; there isn't much happening above maybe 10-12KHz, even with gobs of distortion. The speakers just can't deliver highs unless you've got a horn, which most guitar amps don't.

I haven't tested it because my interface doesn't handle higher sampling rates, but most software amp sims indeed seem to have some pretty nasty stuff showing up in the higher frequencies.

By comparison, my old POD 2 seems to roll off pretty drastically starting at 5k, even w/ hi gain models. So much that it actually sounds muffled by comparison. In fact, impulse based cab sim doesn't usually generate as much fizz, though it's still there.

I usually use a tighter Q than he's using in the screenshot and use more notches ... but I totally get what he's doing there. There usually seems to be some kind of pattern as to how far apart the frequencies are that need attenuating, so I always chocked it up to something to do with how the converters worked as apposed to a random kind of input anomaly.

Hope that made some kind of sense. :) Doh! :)

In which case, my original question could probably interpreted as - if your converters are of average quality and don't support higher sampling rates, could the higher frequencies actually be affected (even if just marginally) maybe because you're basically running them at maximum capacity? 

IOW, could better converters help reduce artifacts even at 44khz? Or is the notion of pushing them to their limits a bad analogy between analog and digital?

Rain


In which case, my original question could probably interpreted as - if your converters are of average quality and don't support higher sampling rates, could the higher frequencies actually be affected (even if just marginally) maybe because you're basically running them at maximum capacity? 

IOW, could better converters help reduce artifacts even at 44khz? Or is the notion of pushing them to their limits a bad analogy between analog and digital?

It's dangerous to try and view how digital works in terms of experience with analog - sometimes they behave very similarly, but sometimes it's just totally and completely different.


A few points:

In terms of things like digital amp sims (and also some synths), anytime you create distortion (or certain synth waveforms) you are creating high frequencies which will cause aliasing in digital. But for this reason in the modern world (where CPU power is abundant) any competent programmer upsamples their amp sim/synth plugins internally to avoid this problem. So it's not clear why running at higher rates is of any benefit for modern plugins (assuming whatever "quality" settings they have are set to their highest settings). If it was beneficial to upsample even more, the programmers just should have made an even higher quality setting available. Older plugins may or may not be a different story.


For things like a high EQ shelf, the shape of the EQ curve at high frequencies will definitely vary depending on the sample rate. But don't assume "different" means "better" here (or even audible).


In general, any time a higher sampling rate is necessary for optimal processing, in the modern world any competent programmer would upsample as necessary.


An ADC contains an analog low pass anti-aliasing filter at the front end. Does your converter have different analog filters for its different sample rates, or does it just use the same analog filter (since it oversamples anyway)? Everything may be actually getting sampled identically at the exact same rate, with the only difference being a sample rate change (SRC) at the output. SRC's are not particularly problematic in the modern world.


And most importantly:

You could buy a real nice guitar/bass for the difference in price between inexpensive converters and new "high end" ones.

because it's a ridiculous question.

If you feel you would like to enlighten me as to where headroom comes from, then I will say, "YES, Mike, please tell me where "head room" comes from because I don't know." 
 
then feel free to elaborate how a wall wart can limit or enhance that headroom.  that's what I'd really like to know.

exactly as I expected.  and thus the snark award.