sleeper42 said:
Anyone have any suggestions on a piece of hardware that isn't a preamp that can do this? Maybe an EQ, or just a converter box?
I won't claim to know the whole market, but there are a number of relatively inexpensive converters.
One inexpensive one I've seen (but not actually used) is
the M-Audio Transit.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-main.html
I think its street price is something like 50 or 80 dollars. Its biggest selling point (other than price) is that it's very portable, if that's something you care about.
Companies like M-Audio and Edirol have a whole range of converters in different formats.
Other possibilities:
- "Vintage" (heh) converters on eBay, like, say, a Symetrix 620 (20-bit, 48k, but a quality product).
- Some reverb/multi-effects boxes (cf. Lexicon) have digital outs. Run it completely dry, and it's an AD converter. Plus, you can use it as a multi-effects box if you want.
- Any digital recorder which has analog ins has a converter in it somewhere. Some of them also have digital outs. This route, I think, is less likely to be worth pursuing, unless you're in the market for a DVD recorder or something. Otherwise you'd likely be either paying a signifcant amount for a recorder you don't want, or getting converters of questionable value (like in an old DAT or something).
I'll strike a slight disagreement with, perhaps, some others. The low-price standalone converters are almost certainly no worse than what's bundled into a low- or mid-priced preamp. The chip itself is probably the same. The surrounding electronics are likely either the same or a little better, if only because the converter gets its own separate signal path, power supply and box. There's a price (not a huge one, but still ...) for the separate box/power supply/circuit board. Sure, it's cheaper to throw a converter into an existing box with a preamp than to put one in its own box ... but if you don't have a driving need for another preamp, buying an extra box with the converter in it is still a lot more efficient than buying a whole extra preamp with the converter in it.
An $80 or $100 converter isn't as good as a $2,000 converter. But it's as good as or better than the $40 or $50 converter included with a value preamp.
