Why is digital audio so rare in synths and mixers?

Airlane1979

Airlane1979

New member
As an amateur synthesist, I'm struck by the lack of digital audio paths being used in modern synths and mixers. Yamaha seems to be an outlier in providing USB audio outputs on its synths, but none provides separate digital audio outputs such as S/PDIF or whatever the current equivalent is. Most low-cost mixers are completely analogue. This seems odd to me. Surely using digital audio paths would lead to higher quality with lower noise? There must be a good reason for this.
 
Airlane1979 said:
As an amateur synthesist, I'm struck by the lack of digital audio paths being used in modern synths and mixers. Yamaha seems to be an outlier in providing USB audio outputs on its synths, but none provides separate digital audio outputs such as S/PDIF or whatever the current equivalent is. Most low-cost mixers are completely analogue. This seems odd to me. Surely using digital audio paths would lead to higher quality with lower noise? There must be a good reason for this.
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Hi are you AKA "Wreckage"? (see soundonsound.com)

Dave.
 
The snag I suspect is simply that there's a clear split in usage - live vs studio, and if you had SP/DIF out on stage, your PA folk would probably just pass you a couple of jack cables. I've just thought about some of the kit in my studio and even the ones that do have USB on them, have nothing plugged in simply because of the multiple device aggravation. Sonically, I think DI still works best for me because it's reliable and simple. With a computer every boot up is a wait of death in the making. They power up and something didn't;t get picked up - today it was my Steinberg CC controller - USB just didn't connect. This PC takes forever to boot, but I went and made a coffee and 2nd time with worked. Only this Monday I was squeezed behind a rack trying to make the light pipe that was glowing red actually produce some audio plugged into a Yamaha amp that had light pipe in. I came close to replacing it with a couple of analogue cables.

We've not really got a digital replacement for the two ¼" jacks everything has for ins and outs. Nobody ever invented one!
 
rob aylestone said:
The snag I suspect is simply that there's a clear split in usage - live vs studio, and if you had SP/DIF out on stage, your PA folk would probably just pass you a couple of jack cables. I've just thought about some of the kit in my studio and even the ones that do have USB on them, have nothing plugged in simply because of the multiple device aggravation. Sonically, I think DI still works best for me because it's reliable and simple. With a computer every boot up is a wait of death in the making. They power up and something didn't;t get picked up - today it was my Steinberg CC controller - USB just didn't connect. This PC takes forever to boot, but I went and made a coffee and 2nd time with worked. Only this Monday I was squeezed behind a rack trying to make the light pipe that was glowing red actually produce some audio plugged into a Yamaha amp that had light pipe in. I came close to replacing it with a couple of analogue cables.

We've not really got a digital replacement for the two ¼" jacks everything has for ins and outs. Nobody ever invented one!
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Interesting, thank you. PA engineers are quite conservative, and rightly so given how vital their role is. I noticed when watching recent YouTube live music videos of arena shows that included closeups of the synth racks, that even those synths which have balanced XLR outputs have only the jack sockets in use - perhaps the engineers like to have everything at line level going into the same boxes where they'll be balanced up.
 
There are mixers with digital inputs, things like the Yamaha 01V96 have ADAT input, but that system isn't really designed to have a half dozen different devices converging into one ADAT input. It's more designed to send multiple channels between 2 devices.

I think for the most part, analog inputs (which would be microphones and direct in pickups on things like guitars) are going to be the typical sources going into a mixer. Of course you can have E-drum kits, or guitar amp simulators like the AxeFX or Line 6 which have USB inputs, but they will most likely be used one at a time. I haven't seen many instances of a full band using a totally digital path for all instruments. Besides, the analog inputs work perfectly well.

Of the systems out there, I think something like Dante would be a better candidate for multiple devices being fed into a mixer. It's a packet protocol like the TCP/IP, designed specifically to address many devices, whether they are speakers, keyboards, microphone mixers, or video feeds. Of course there is the fact that it's a proprietary protocal, and you must license the system from Audinate. That can be a barrier for a lot of companies... they might not want to pay the royalties. Just look at Thunderbolt. It's inherently more efficient than USB, but you had to pay Intel a royalty to implement it, so companies just went USB which was much cheaper to implement.
 
If you get stereo jacks plus XLR balanced out, you'd be doing very well.
It does seem daft to flip between analogue and digital and back again.
In cheap mixers it is all about money. It is amazing what you can get for sub £100.
Jack output is simple, and it works.
My favorite synths are wholly digital.
 
rob aylestone said:
Monday I was squeezed behind a rack trying to make the light pipe that was glowing red actually produce some audio plugged into a Yamaha amp that had light pipe in. I came close to replacing it with a couple of analogue cables.

We've not really got a digital replacement for the two ¼" jacks everything has for ins and outs. Nobody ever invented one!
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SPDIF cables aren't particularly rugged. One of the inputs on my receiver has broken, and it doesn't get plugged and unplugged dozens of times a month, maybe only a dozen times in several years, but one bad knock and CRACK! I can't recall ever breaking an XLR input jack.
 
rob aylestone said:
The snag I suspect is simply that there's a clear split in usage - live vs studio, and if you had SP/DIF out on stage, your PA folk would probably just pass you a couple of jack cables. I've just thought about some of the kit in my studio and even the ones that do have USB on them, have nothing plugged in simply because of the multiple device aggravation. Sonically, I think DI still works best for me because it's reliable and simple. With a computer every boot up is a wait of death in the making. They power up and something didn't;t get picked up - today it was my Steinberg CC controller - USB just didn't connect. This PC takes forever to boot, but I went and made a coffee and 2nd time with worked. Only this Monday I was squeezed behind a rack trying to make the light pipe that was glowing red actually produce some audio plugged into a Yamaha amp that had light pipe in. I came close to replacing it with a couple of analogue cables.

We've not really got a digital replacement for the two ¼" jacks everything has for ins and outs. Nobody ever invented one!
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Is this the same one you were enquiring about not long ago?
No modern computer should need two attempts or longer than about 30 seconds.
Strongly recommend making sure all files are backed up, then check the health of that hard drive.

I know you're a mac+pc guy so, if it's removable, give it a once over with DriveDX (free trial) on MacOS.
It'll give you some meaningful info on whether or not that drive is failing. (y)
 
Also, sorry for derailing.
In addition to what's been said I'd guess maybe the answer is in the question.
"Most low-cost mixers are completely analogue."

Seems like adding digital IO would increase the costs?
 
Steenamaroo said:
Is this the same one you were enquiring about not long ago?
No modern computer should need two attempts or longer than about 30 seconds.
Strongly recommend making sure all files are backed up, then check the health of that hard drive.

I know you're a mac+pc guy so, if it's removable, give it a once over with DriveDX (free trial) on MacOS.
It'll give you some meaningful info on whether or not that drive is failing. (y)
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Most annoyingly, the checks done so far show decent transfer speeds, but it seems I've got something adrift - Cubase, of course has to search through all the VSTis - BUT - the computer itself is slowing down and no clear reason I can find at the moment. I have two identical computers in 19" format, and hotting the power button on them at the same time brings the video and general stuff computer up in around 30 secs, reliably. The iffy one takes at least double that, and sometimes a bit longer. Often the cubase licence system reports it's unauthorised. A reboot cures it. The spinning drives are not the fastest - but once it is running, everything works absolutely fine - including audio coming in via the network from some NAS drives. I must admit it's tempting to tweak - but if I mess it up, I'm really stuck, so a new one has to be on the cards so when I've got all the music stuff installed and running, then I could reinstall windows, which I feel would be sensible. It won't run windows 11 sadly. Currently, it has C,D,E,F and G drives attached (C, d and E inside)
 
Yeah, it doesn't sound great.
Unless it's cluttered with crap, slowing down's going to mean hardware failure of some kind.
Could be anything, of course, but ruling out the HDD is easy.
Unfortunately a speed-test doesn't really do that, unless by fluke it hits a problem during the test and hangs or something.

Viewing it under DriveDX or similar (I'm not aware of anything similar) will tell you...this drive is going to die soon, if that's the case. (y)
 
The other issue could be some device driver that is either corrupted, or the device is missing and the driver spends eons waiting for a time-out before progressing. It might be helpful to run a boot log, and see if something is dragging down the system during bootup.

If the system is basically sound, then it might well be worth buying a new SSD and cloning the current drive to see if it is hardware failure. With the price of SSDs where they are, it's almost a "cheap" fix! A new 1TB SATA Samsung 970Evo is selling for $50 on Amazon in the US.
 
Now "Hai know NO thing" but as an old electech I suggest removing all MOBO connectors and giving them a dose of WD-40 contact cleaner. Pull all the PCIe boards/ram and treat the same. Remove and clean hard drive plugs (SATA data leads are so cheap, chuck and replace) Plus, and this caught me out some years ago, check the MOBO screws are tight to the chassis and replace any that are missing.

Dave.
 
S/PDIF isn't very robust. In live sound there are enough other challenges. If it isn't an XLR device or 1/4" with a direct box (or stereo RCA for break music), it's not getting connected, at least on my system. In bigger productions there may be some digital interface, but that will be AES or Dante.

In a home studio, you mostly have audio interfaces with consolidated A/D conversion and USB connection to the computer. Once you have more than one digital source, they need to be externally clocked, which adds a whole new layer of complexity. That's also why I wouldn't want to use it live, because there's no way I'm going to clock my whole system off of someone's synth, and don't even ask me to provide the clock source. I've got enough to do.
 
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Papanate said:
There is no shortage of Digital Mixers or Synths.
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True. I have a UI24R for live sound, but the only digital I/O is USB (for direct to USB drive multitrack recording, USB drive for 2-track playback and connection to a computer for DAW) and Ethernet for cascading two mixers. There's no S/PDIF, AES, ADAT or Dante.
 
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