On the usefulness of ADAT in today's recording environment
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Tim Gillett
Banned
Which digital ??
Exactly. That was my question.
B
Beck
Guest
Not on your life, Gillett. Stop dodging answering questions by asking questions you should be answering! You could go around like this on any topic in any forum, from home dentistry to Stealth fighter aircraft design.
YOU tell US what you’ve used in the past and what you’re using now. No more of your abstract digital deity off in the clouds or the back of your mind. No more conceptually speaking, but specifically, what do you have? What brands? What models? If it’s a 15-year-old Creative Soundblaster soundcard then give us the exact model number. If you have a DAW, what is the interface type, the computer brand, or is it homebuilt? What operating system do you use? What software do you use. What brand and model hard drives? Any partitioning tips you’d like to share?
What converters does you main interface use? What’s your preferred bit depth and sample rate combination? ISA, PCI, PCI-E, USB, or Firewire? CardBus on laptop? Name a few of your favorite plugins while you’re at it. There’ll be a quiz later.
Not far into this thread you said you’d never used ADAT and had to ask the most basic questions before you then graced us with your expertise on the matter. I’m thinking surely if you spoke on something you’ve actually had experience with how much more insightful and beneficial to the other members here.
Over to you…
Tim Gillett
Banned
Fine by me if I go first.
I'm no millionaire so my gear is a trade off. I get by with making smart choices of what's available in my price range.
My main card is an M Audio Audiophile 192. Bought it about 4 years ago.
I bought it for its ability to record supersonics, up about 80khz. Not that I'm into supersonics , but I was working on a project for a client who wanted to digitize thousands of audio tapes quickly. I teamed the 192 card up with their Otari DP4050 high speed duplicator which runs at x8 normal tape speed. Worked well.
Later I read of a company in the UK (Graff) was using exactly the same approach and with the same 192 card in their commercial products.
Interesingly, a guy on this forum who worked in one of the biggest analog tape to digital conversion businesses in the US, put me onto this card and his tip was much appreciated.
Since I mainly do 2 tracks, the 192 stereo card is fine. I also have an older M Audio 24/96 card. I'm considering buying a Zoom R16 for multitracking live gigs, and mixing that to the soundtrack for my live video footage. Still on XP. Only one PC is online. The others can stay on XP hopefully for some time yet. Software? Steinberg Wavelab 4. For video, Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.
Preferred bit rate? For most of the analog tape material, which will have minimal processing and go straight to CD, 16 bits. Maybe 24 bits if the original tape is dbx encoded. 44.1 khz but if the audio is to end up on DVD I use 48khz to avoid sample rate conversion.
If someone asks me to do 24/96, I do 24/96 but nearly always, the sample rate/bit rate is not the weak link in the chain.
I also shoot video of live music gigs but as an amateur. My cameras record at 16/48 which in practice is fine although 24 bit (with converters to match) might get me out of trouble once in a while if I got the record levels way too low. That happened last Friday night. Rare event. The soundguy was all over the place that night and I was depending on his feed.
I also have a Zoom H4 which I use for stereo audience applause. It records to SD cards. Up to 4GB with a software update. Sometimes I use it to record an acoustic act in a small intimate venue when there's no PA. It only uploads to PC at USB 1.1 but since it's only for upload the speed doesnt affect the recordings already made. Wish now I'd waited and bought the H4n which is even more popular than the original H4.
I used to record via a mixer to a tiny M Audio Transit and via USB 1.1 to my laptop. Sound was fine but with three separate components, and cables everywhere, it was too messy so I rarely use the Transit these days.
HDD's? Whatever I can lay my hands on. Old IDE's and newer SATA's. Video avi files use up an enormous amout of HDD space. USB external drives for backup. Currently an HP 2TB and a WD 1TB. In practice they have no effect on the sound or video so long as they can keep up. Bigger worry is how long they will keep going. I keep multiple copies for backup of important material. Of course I retain all original analog and digital tapes used.
Only stuff I've lost is due to some cheap DVD's R's I once bought. Never again.
USB flash sticks are mighty handy for transferring material.
My video cameras use Firewire. I upload via either a Pinnacle Firewire card (PCI) or another 3x Firewire card (PCI) whose brand I cant remember. I have a laptop with PCMCIA but havent had a need for that yet.
Favourite plugins? Mostly I use the ones which came with Wavelab. I also use a freeware VST Azimuth corrector called "Stereo Tool" which does a great job on dynamically aligning analog tape tracks where there has been gap scatter between left and right channels. Means I can sum to mono without phase cancellation/drift - but I'm straying back into Analog tape talk.
No, I never used ADAT, and you know that because I said so on this HR forum. But unlike you, I didnt say that ADAT's main problem was "the harshness of digital". According to Farview, if some ADAT models did have harshness it was because of lousy converters. Having never used ADAT, I'm happy to take Farview's word on this, ahead of yours.
I have about 5 PC's running on XP. Started out on 98. They vary from 1.5GHZ to 3.2GHZ. All old but still working with my TLC.
Well that's most of my digital gear.
Again, over to you Mr Beck.
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Tim Gillett
Banned
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
I'm sure others know better than me, but as far as I know the low pass filters for 192kHz conversion still start at 20kHz and slope gently down to the Nyquist frequency of 96kHz. After you digitize and correct the pitch (x8 speed = 3 octaves) you have a signal that's low passed 3 octaves lower, so the filter effectively starts at 2.5kHz and slopes down to 12kHz.
PRHunt
I void warranties
Here is my understanding. (I also may be wrong
)Current oversampling ADCs sample at an integer multiple of the desired sample rate, with sample rate frequencies in the range of MHz.
The low pass analogue filtering at the input is designed so the corner frequency lies well below Nyquist for the highest oversampling sample rate but well above the highest frequency of interest. For example, the filter might have its corner frequency at somewhere between 200kHz and 300kHz.
This filtering and conversion arrangement eliminates both aliasing as well as harmful effects of "brick wall" filtering.
The ADC then down-samples to the desired sample rate by decimation.
Paul
Tim Gillett
Banned
Here are the A/D specs for the M Audio Audiophile 192 card:
Frequency Response ±0.1 dB, 20Hz to 20kHz @ 48kHz
±0.1 dB, 20Hz to 40kHz @ 96kHz
±0.5 dB, 20Hz to 80kHz @ 192kHz
Cheers Tim
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
So after correcting for x8 speed it would roll off at 10kHz, right?
Blue Jinn
Rider of the ARPocalypse
B
Beck
Guest
And which of the above methods do you find is the most transparent going from A to D. By the way, I’m glad to know your sound achieves the speed of sound, and by the way when dealing with audio the term is “Ultrasonic” not Supersonic. It's not about taking people's word for it. Your research methodology, what of it you have, is too emotional and too forum-centric. This explains a lot of your nonsensical posts. You believe something because you like someone or don’t like someone. Your background is a patchwork of tears, anger, feel goods and feel bads. That’s no way to approach science. You proceed as though you’re a good judge of character and good at scoping people out. Flying by the seat of the pants is only recommended for those who can.
So anyway, which is most transparent and true to the source of what you have.
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Tim Gillett
Banned
Right...
Tim Gillett
Banned
And which of the above methods do you find is the most transparent going from A to D. By the way, I’m glad to know your sound achieves the speed of sound, and by the way when dealing with audio the term is “Ultrasonic” not Supersonic. It's not about taking people's word for it. Your research methodology, what of it you have, is too emotional and too forum-centric. This explains a lot of your nonsensical posts. You believe something because you like someone or don’t like someone. Your background is a patchwork of tears, anger, feel goods and feel bads. That’s no way to approach science. You proceed as though you’re a good judge of character and good at scoping people out. Flying by the seat of the pants is only recommended for those who can.
So anyway, which is most transparent and true to the source of what you have.
Tim,
They're not "methods", just audio recorders. And I havent got around to doing controlled tests to see which converter is the most "transparent". I trust the manufacturer's specs, I connect them up and I use them - a lot. I listen. They sound fine, or more correctly, they dont "sound" anything. Most of the time, they dont intrude. That is the bottom line.
I did do one test some years ago on my first card, an M Audio Audiophile 24/96 to test the left/right phase accuracy. I recorded FM radio off station noise/hiss at 44.1/16. I then phase inverted one channel but not the other. Then I listened to the result: Essentially silence.
I had done this test because someone on the Analog forum (I think it was Ethan) was adamant that the phase accuracy was poor unless you went to 192khz sample rates. My simple test using only 44.1khz, and with a modest card assured me that was not so.
All my cards/converters have pretty low distortion, which i'm sure it typical of even many reasonably priced cards and interfaces these days. The chips have just got better and better, it seems. On paper the M Audio 192 has better S/N but if Dan Lavry is right, the performance at 192 khz can be worse than at more modest sample rates, because at that high sample rate, it is pushing the limits. But that doesnt concern me because I never used that card at 192 anyway, except for high speed tape copying which was a specialised and cost saving compromise anyway.
There are far better converters out there, and they will undoubtedly get cheaper as time goes on, but recording is for the now.
Speaking of the immediate, I've unexpectedly been asked to record video and audio for most of tomorrow, on location, 2 hours' drive a way. I'd thought it would be Friday. Should be fun and a challenge. It wont be HD video or ultra fidelity audio, but it will be fine. For me, it's the songs, the music, the performance, the stories, the people, the history.That comes first, always, for me.
The guy being interviewed is known to be afraid of people with recorders and cameras. ( his past experience, no doubt) If he is intimidated by me placing a microphone closer to him that he's comfortable with, I will back it off straight away, even if it means the audio comes out less than ideal. I'm just trying to capture that fleeting moment in time, to share (with his permission) with others. Sometime strict audio fidelity must take a second place, if the alternative is needlessly ruffling people's feathers, and inhibiting their performance.
Thankyou for the correction in nomenclature. Yes I should have said "ultrasonic", not "supersonic". Major gap in my audio understanding...
Now Tim Beck, when will we on the (non Analog Only) HR forum be honoured with your great wisdom on digital recording and its great deficiencies? Why are you holding back? So uncharacteristic of you. What are you afraid of ?
TASCAM MAN
New member
Man Im a NEWBIE here and I think ya'll should stop all of the bickering man wow !!!
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
Adequate for spoken word I guess, but I wouldn't use it for music.
Man Im a NEWBIE here and I think ya'll should stop all of the bickering man wow !!!
You said it man. Im glad this got moved over here. The analog only forum is for people to discuss all things analog. Its a small sliver of the forum pie. The denizens of that forum, which include me, like/love analog for WHATEVER reason. I have yet to see an example of one of those guys coming into the digital forums and starting crap. But there are a few of the digital persuasion who just cant stay out of the analog forum stirring the pot. The real downside to that is that new people coming to that forum see the bickering and think that everyone over there is an asshole. Thats what I noticed first and foremost when I joined. Thats also why I now use the ignore function.....
Tim Gillett
Banned
It was for spoken word.
B
Beck
Guest
Different recorders, different bit depths and sampling rates, etc, are methods in the lingo the rest of the professional recording world uses. Where have you been?
So you are saying then that one converter can be more transparent than another, which also means a given converter can be less than transparent. That's all you have to know to be correct.
Indeed.
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