Upon post cup o Joe reflection, those numbers could be for the EIN* of the mic pre amps at some optimized gain but the noise OUTPUT will be vastly greater.
How could Julian Krause be measuring something other than the output?
Upon post cup o Joe reflection, those numbers could be for the EIN* of the mic pre amps at some optimized gain but the noise OUTPUT will be vastly greater.
I probably confused myself and others. Back to the JK measurements - he measures it, and in the chart I referenced in another of his videos, the very best measured noise is about -112dB (and you have to read the chart to see what that number means). Actual noise in typical use is a lot higher (smaller number), and is also in the chart. Maybe Dave can explain it, but I do pretty well trust that he is doing apples-apples types of comparisons.How could Julian Krause be measuring something other than the output?
A 16-bit depth has a dynamic range of about 96 dB (which is nothing to sneeze at) but a 24-bit depth has a dynamic range of about 144 dB, which is pretty huge. It makes setting your gain to a setting of "loud enough to overcome the noise floor, but not loud enough to clip" almost a no-brainer. The wiggle room is huge, so it takes a lot of the stress out of setting your gain. That's pretty much the "trick" to gain staging: getting your signal level into an ideal range at each spot where you have control over it.
I'm a little skeptical that a Sound Blaster would be indistinguishable from an Apogee, but I'll reserve judgement until I've watched Ethan's content on the subject. I'd like to hear a null test between the two signals to see if they're truly identical or not.
But after having used several entry-level interfaces from (almost) all of the major brands, I'd say to do yourself the favor of getting one that has dedicated ASIO drivers if you're recording on Windows. That'd rule out the UM2, UMC22, UMC202, and anything in the U-Phoria line without the "HD" in its model name.