How important are Converters?

Nola

Nola

Well-known member
Over the past five years or so the general consensus has been that budget converters are fine, and these should be the last upgrade in an audio chain. Has that opinion changed at all in 2017? I'm using the converters in a focusrite unit. Pretty low budget. Sometimes I feel I hear harshness. I'm not even sure a good converter would fix that. They seem expensive for what might be very little payoff. Any thoughts from the pros?
 
That's the key question. The consensus seems to be that you are not likely to hear much difference in converters. But your interface also contains preamps. You might hear cheap preamps.

If so, you would need to decide whether it makes more sense to upgrade the interface or put an external preamp in front of it. I do the latter and use the internal preamps in my interface as little as possible.
 
One mostly hears the analog op-amps, but outside the analog nest pre and post converter chip, converters can be different as well as the clocking. It is probably more noticeable with non over sample chips, but I think most every thing is cookie cutter sameness in various price ranges. Some audio gear has DIP for op-amps, so that capability might be worthwhile.
 
Converters used to be a much bigger deal 20 years ago, but as tech has gotten cheaper and better, the difference in converters has become less of a problem. The difference between good and great converters will be a very tiny detail, compared to microphone and preamp quality.

Part of what makes a great set of converters is the quality of the analog signal path leading up to the actual converter chips. In cheaper interfaces, that is the part that gets cheaped out on. (and the clock)
 
Yeah...with the combination "interfaces"...there's more to the picture than just the converter section, so you have to consider all those other things when talking upgrade...
...but AFA just the converters...while there have been new ones put out every year, and many with all the very high rates...I think you need to upgrade a lot more in the studio environment before going to them.

Now there may be some validity to having a higher end of stereo converters for monitoring specifically...but I never understood why people only think you need those higher Q converters for the monitoring. IMO...you would/should have the same Q on the A/D as you do on the D/A....and I actually think the A/D would be more important, because once your audio is converted, that's it...that IS what your are monitoring.
That said...I kinda get why many opt for a high-end stereo D/A converter, so that as they mix that tracks, they can hear the extended audio quality of the mix...which may no be as critical as some of the the individual track audio quality.

I don't use combi "interfaces"...but I have been using the same converters for the last 15+ years now.
I've got 24 channels of A/D and D/A from 3 Layla24 boxes. I've got them clocked with a Lucid SSG box...works great.
Actually... have the ability to go to 32 channels, as I have one of the very, very rare Layla "extension" boxes, that allows you to piggyback off one of the others, without the need to a 4th PCI card...you just use the on-board ADAT connections between them, and you have an additional 8 channels of A/D and D/A.
Just haven't had the need to, since I'm working with a 24 channel tape deck...so "24" is a nice number...but I've been thinking about connecting it so I could have 32 channels on mixdown coming out of my DAW to the console...instead of the 24 I've been use to.
I actually have a rack slot waiting for that 4th Layla box...just been lazy. :p
 
hahah. Actually, laziness probably has more to do with production than we think.

Ya, I can't record over 96k, but I produce (not that anyone wants them) highest rate DSD and PCM, so I need those converters
 
I do have a good external preamp, and run it into the line-in on the focusrite to bypass the FR, so I think the FR is only acting as the converter with this setup. So in this case, it's probably not worth upgrading them, right? It's just I hear a harshness from the FR at times, even when playing back pro audio. I'm not sure what it is. Could be it's not strong enough to power my headphones, so when I turn them up it's messing up the signal. Would bad converters be obvious? Is there something specific to look for?
 
Nola said:
I do have a good external preamp, and run it into the line-in on the focusrite to bypass the FR, so I think the FR is only acting as the converter with this setup. So in this case, it's probably not worth upgrading them, right? It's just I hear a harshness from the FR at times, even when playing back pro audio. I'm not sure what it is. Could be it's not strong enough to power my headphones, so when I turn them up it's messing up the signal. Would bad converters be obvious? Is there something specific to look for?
Click to expand...

What ohm are your headphones?
 
Pinky said:
What ohm are your headphones?
Click to expand...

300. They're Sennheiser HD580s.
I believe they recommend a dedicated preamp for them, but I didn't want to spend the money. I use the FR's headphone monitoring. It's fine until I turn it about 3/4 up then gets really grainy.
 
Nola said:
300. They're Sennheiser HD580s.
I believe they recommend a dedicated preamp for them, but I didn't want to spend the money. I use the FR's headphone monitoring. It's fine until I turn it about 3/4 up then gets really grainy.
Click to expand...

Yup, that's likely the issue. 300ohms is a lot to push, so a dedicated preamp is really a must. The FR will only put out maybe 80ohms, which means the headphones are grossly under powered and usually that results in brittle, lifeless playback.

I have the HD600 and a dedicated headphone amp, they sound great for doing mixing (final mixing and mastering on the monitors of course).
 
Pinky said:
Yup, that's like the issue. 300ohms are a lot to push, so a dedicated preamp is really a must. The FR will only put out maybe 80ohms, which means the headphones are grossly under powered and usually that results in brittle, lifeless playback.

I have the HD600 and a dedicated headphone amp, they sound great for doing mixing (final mixing and mastering on the monitors of course).
Click to expand...

Crap.
Any suggestion for a good/affordable preamp for it?
 
How old are your 580s...?

From another site...

...the HD 580 had a problem: The small springs that are used as contacts for the cables connection to the ear were too soft and malleable. Over time, the spring would stretch a the coil into which in the contact pins were inserted resulting in an intermittent connection...

I'm sure the Ohm thing is your problem, I've seen that mismatch between phones and the amps that power them, especially when you have like a bunch of phones on the amp...and people are just not doing the math when they select their phones and amps...
...but I'm wondering if the contact springs might be causing just enough intermittent issues to create some "hash"...?
You can get better spring replacements from Senn...I think for free....probably depends on how old they are. If they are newer ones, then they already should have the better springs.
 
miroslav said:
How old are your 580s...?

From another site...

...the HD 580 had a problem: The small springs that are used as contacts for the cables connection to the ear were too soft and malleable. Over time, the spring would stretch a the coil into which in the contact pins were inserted resulting in an intermittent connection...

I'm sure the Ohm thing is your problem, I've seen that mismatch between phones and the amps that power them, especially when you have like a bunch of phones on the amp...and people are just not doing the math when they select their phones and amps...
...but I'm wondering if the contact springs might be causing just enough intermittent issues to create some "hash"...?
You can get better spring replacements from Senn...I think for free....probably depends on how old they are. If they are newer ones, then they already should have the better springs.
Click to expand...

I believe they're from 2007, but yeah Senn sent me some replacement springs for free a few years ago. I opened the cans up a few months ago and the springs are fine. Good contact. They appear to be the newer springs in there, too. They're great headphones.

Anyone know of some audio interfaces (i'm on windows) that can power these headphones? I have limited space, so it would be nice to have all in one instead of adding another piece of hardware. A quick google search didn't yield much, but I'm not exactly sure what search terms to put in.

What's the downside of them being under powered? Say I keep them lower to avoid the harsh break up. Is the downside just a loss of volume? Does the frequency response change at all (at reasonable volumes) when they're under powered?
 
Nola said:
Anyone know of some audio interfaces (i'm on windows) that can power these headphones? I have limited space, so it would be nice to have all in one instead of adding another piece of hardware. A quick google search didn't yield much, but I'm not exactly sure what search terms to put in.

What's the downside of them being under powered? Say I keep them lower to avoid the harsh break up. Is the downside just a loss of volume? Does the frequency response change at all (at reasonable volumes) when they're under powered?
Click to expand...

Most interfaces (in our budget end of the spectrum) won't have very robust headphone circuits. I'm not sure what the search criteria would be either, but it shouldn't take too long to look up the specs sheets of all the major affordable interfaces to see what their output impedance and wattage are.

The lower volume could get you by. But then you're sacrificing much needed playback volume control with good headphones for saving some desk space. Most of the one or two channel headphone amps could sit atop a one or two input audio interface. From what I've read, there is a difference in the way in which the headphone is creating the frequencies when under powered, but I can't say for sure to what degree you would notice. Since you probably don't own anything that would fully support 300ohm headphones you have no way of checking/doing a comparison test.

I'm tight on space as well, I can feel your pain. That's one thing that attracted me to the HP4 - it had all the connections I needed at the time but had a relatively small footprint. Take some measurements and maybe you'll stumble on an amp that will fit. There's a lot of portable headphone amps out there that should output enough juice for the HD580s that would take up nominal amount of room on the desk. Most of the pricing I've seen has them starting around $100 and quickly going up from there. They're kinda a boutique thing, but there's more and more makers now.
 
This amp here says 10,000-ohm in the manual : ) even though that's probably the loading, power still calculates to a couple watts with the difficult 600-Ohm phones at worst case distortion ,

You can buy phones across the price range, but you won't be hearing much with cheap outputs - headphone, or, line.

ya, 300-Ohm will be about half as loud as 32-Ohm
 
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