A/D Converters, can you actually hear any difference?

[Ford Van]

From Better Off Dad forum:

"Our recordings use more than the above, but that's only because cool people like jwoo10 and Milan and Tjarko and dtb and TomD use their gear to contribute tracks. "

Ford Van, i agree with you... but i doubt if someone can have this kind of sound with an DMP3, and Audigy and an AKG 3000.

Nice to hear BOD, anyway. Thanks.

No, really, the acoustic guitars and vocals are done with a DMP 3, Audigy, and a AKG 3000. That is it.

When you have a brilliant sounding acoustic guitar, a great player, and a singer with a great voice, you get great results no matter what you are using to capture. Really.

I have recorded bands in great studios, that had all ClassA signal paths, but the band sounded like shit, because, well, the band sounds like shit!

 

[lumbago]

I'm certain that mics and preamps make more of a difference to a vocal sound than the A/D converters do.

I'm certain that A/D converters would sound different from model to model. Just not different enough to warrant the difference in price.

I'm certain that people who can tell you the difference between converters can't tell you when they listen to a CD from an unknown artist what converters have been used.

I'm certain that people who can pick the quality of converters can't tell you what the audiologist says about the frequency response curves in their ears. Or how much earwax is in them.

I'm certain that half the people here can't accurately transcribe a 70 piece orchestral work to manuscript. And if they can, they probably can't tell you which brand of oboe reeds are in use. But they *can* tell you the brand of A/D converter - which is half a relief.

I like digital. Certainly. More than I liked tape hiss in the 1980's. And I like a good tube sound - presently I favour Fallopians. I am going to look for a good set of ectopic converters at some point - they have a fuller sound.

 

[JuliánFernández]

No, really, the acoustic guitars and vocals are done with a DMP 3, Audigy, and a AKG 3000. That is it.

I should start posting less and recording more!

 

[Ford Van]

I should start posting less and recording more!

You are FAR from the only guilty party of that around here!

I have done plenty of great sounding recordings using gear that I shouldn't be able to get as good of a sound as I do out of it. But, I did!

 

[ozraves]

To answer the original post...

It depends. There's a certain brand of converter I can't stand (the versions I've heard thus far). Yet when everyone wants to talk about upgrading from the prosumer stuff it's like the automatic answer. I think they must have read it on Gear Slutz or something and taken it as Gospel without ever hearing a unit themselves. Yet I wouldn't even put that one brand in the big middle where most pro gear and some prosumer stuff falls. Instead I'd put it in the big low end where most of the low cost shit lives. There are a couple of converters (think the best of the Lavry and Crane Song HEDD) that I think outclass everything else. I'd love to own a Crane Song HEDD.

The good news for most of us is that where the prosumer stuff used to fall in the low end camp that there are now certain reasonably priced converters such as the EMU "m" series that sounds fairly good when A/B'ed up against Lucid or Benchmark gear. I'm not saying it sounds better necessarily or even worse.

In my old set up I could flip a switch to change converters. I usually found the differences fairly easy to tell on certain source material and almost indistinguishable on others. It's a learning exercise that might provide some benefit. It won't lead to creating music however.

I remember being in a studio once where the proprietor was showing me around. He played some stuff tracked through RADAR and some tracked through Pro Tools HD. I didn't particularly like the plasticky sound I heard in the RADAR but I otherwise liked its fidelity. I thought the Pro Tools HD to be thin and unmusical up against the RADAR. Even at that level (and this is an incredible studio) the guy wasn't absolutely happy with his converters. He wasn't absolutely happy with the two-inch 16-track tape machine in his studio either. Converter obsession (or gear obsession in general) occurs no matter what the pocketbook.

I say at some point you just got to shut up and make some music.

 

[BigRay]

absolutely. I tested out the lavry blue, benchmark ADC1 and the Crane Song, as well as the Apogee. There is absolutely a difference, if you are listening through anything but cheap speakers, that is. If you are listening through even halfway decent monitoring gear youll hear a difference. The difference between A/Ds in the higher end of the spectrum is subtle, but the difference between a POS Prosumer ADC and a professional level ADC is like night and day audibly.

Is there anyone here with experience that has had the chance to A/B test any A/D converters and soundcards? Could you describe the difference in sound....are we talking a "tiny inch" or "my mom can hear it" ?

 

[nkjanssen]

http://www.3daudioinc.com/3db/showthread.php?t=5742

 

[Marcellovalerio]

Thanks For All The Reply's!

I've been of the comp for some time...I have a question though:

If I recorded with great Mic's In A Great Room, and recorded analog and got a great recording,
Then sent it through a cheap M-Audio Card, I would still have a great recording right? If I'd made "thriller" on analog tape and sent it trought some crap A/D it would still be good sounding.

I guess I'm wandering what kind of sonic differences the A/D converters have...

 

[Gilliland]

If I recorded with great Mic's In A Great Room, and recorded analog and got a great recording,
Then sent it through a cheap M-Audio Card, I would still have a great recording right? If I'd made "thriller" on analog tape and sent it trought some crap A/D it would still be good sounding.

Michelle Shocked made her first album on a portable cassette recorder around a campfire at a Texas festival. It was quite successful and drew a huge following to her. We all strive for audio quality, but it's the performance that matters.

 

[SonicAlbert]

If I recorded with great Mic's In A Great Room, and recorded analog and got a great recording,
Then sent it through a cheap M-Audio Card, I would still have a great recording right?

You might still have a great performance, but you would no longer have a great recording. The point being that if you've gone to all the trouble of using great mics in a great room, why compromise that by running it all through cheap converters?

However, I think it would be highly unlikely that scenario would even happen. Because someone who has the mindset of using only top quality gear in top quality settings is not going to suddenly lose that approach part way through the process and compromise on conversion. What we are talking about here is really the mental approach, after all.

Also, the business about people recording albums on cassette machines and then having big hits is misleading in my opinion. I'm pretty sure most of those few albums that were done that way were in fact *mixed* at pretty major studios using some really nice gear. It's also a case of using the exception to the rule as an example.

Most commercially released albums have high quality sonics and need to combine great music with great performances and top flight recording and mixing work in order to be successful, or even to have a chance at being heard. Yes, you need a great performance of great music, but the few home brew cassette recordings that have made it big are the exception to the rule, not the rule.

 

[nkjanssen]

You might still have a great performance, but you would no longer have a great recording.

You should really track down a copy of the 3D Audio ADC Test CD that was being discussed in the link I posted above. If, after giving that a good listen, you could honestly say that the Prism made the Digi001 sound like shit in comparision, I'd be shocked. The Prism sounds better, but it is not a "night and day" thing at all. More like 4:00 p.m. vs. 5:00 p.m. In fact, I've got $100 that says that nobody here who thinks cheap pre's sound like "shit" could even pick out the Digi001 (the cheapest pre on the CD) in a blind listening test. If nothing else, the 3D CD taught me that if you can't make a great recording (yes, great recording) with a Digi001, then you're not a great engineer.

Depending on your other gear and, much more importantly, your engineering skills, that extra benefit you get from an expensive ADC will either be very important or completely irrelevant. The vast majority of people posting here will see much greater improvement by working on their engineering chops than anything else. After that would be mics, then pres. Once you've got all that sorted out, I'd say you've reached the point where you should be looking at the high priced ADC's.

 

[xstatic]

Isn't it quite possible that those who are ready for the nice converters also have enough experience and ear training that what someone else considers a minor difference may be substantial for that person? Or isn't it possible that the budding engineer who is just getting started wouldn't have the experience yet to fully appreciate the difference?

Even in double blind tests I just don't care about how a 2 track mix sounds going through the converters. Even on a two track mix there will be an audible difference, but not always a huge difference. However, what I really care about is what happens when all 32 tracks of a mix run through the different converters. In my experience there is a difference. Whether it be an actual scientifically tested difference or not, I didn't care in the least. If however I feel better about the whole process and as a result put out a better mix, then it was worth it. Personally, I believe that clocks and converters do make a big difference. I still believe that mixing on an analog desk makes a difference though. How do these things happen? Who cares! I have just accepted the fact that they do. It makes me feel better, it makes my clients feel better, and it makes my mixes feel better. Thats all that matters to me.

I do also believe that great work can be done, even with cheap converters. What I want to know though, is how much better it would have been with better converters in the same scenario One other thing I have noticed about using better converters is that mixing seems to go that much easier. Not only do you seem to need less work to get a mix to gel, but it just feels better the whole way through. I view preamps in the same way. Just plugging a mic into a preamp and listening isn't really the most accurate way to assess a preamp to me. I don't care about that much at all. However, stack a few tracks up or even just put that track in the mix. Then what happens? Thats how I pick preamps and mics. I learn how they affect my whole recording process and make my decisions on that and not just how it affects a solo'ed channel.

So, I think that better converters would benefit everyone. How much they benefit each person however is a combination of the rest of their current signal chain, and where their current abilities and experience level is.

 

[Robert D]

I upgraded my converters (LYNX II) way ahead of where it probably made sense, given the rest of my gear, but my thinking was this - In a DAW, the converters are the sound of your DAW, not the hot shit MoBD, uber fast CPU, memory, etc. And since every gear evaluation I would make in the future would be evaluated through the converters, I wanted to be reasonably sure that whatever I was hearing was the truth, and not because of the deficiancies of my converters. Also, once the tracking is done, it's all about the converters. So even though I would place the impact on recording quality order as Mics/Pres/converters, I felt it worth investing in at least 1 pair of A/D and D/As that were a little better than decent.

-RD

 

[nkjanssen]

I upgraded my converters (LYNX II) way ahead of where it probably made sense, given the rest of my gear, but my thinking was this...I wanted to be reasonably sure that whatever I was hearing was the truth...

Which raises another issue - monitoring and listening environment are arguably *the* most important part of the chain gear-wise. If you can't hear what's going on, its like painting a picture in the dark.

 

[SonicAlbert]

The vast majority of people posting here will see much greater improvement by working on their engineering chops than anything else. After that would be mics, then pres. Once you've got all that sorted out, I'd say you've reached the point where you should be looking at the high priced ADC's.

That's an excellent post with a lot of good points. I'd like to respond to a couple...

The last part of your post is basically a buying list, in the correct order. That doesn't mean that the converters are less important, in my opinion, just that you'd start at the beginning of the signal chain and work down. If you had the money, you could get them all together.

If you know what to listen for you can pick out the cheap converter designs from the better ones fairly easily. My engineer blind tested me on this a while back, and actually I think he got a little frustrated that I was able to pick out the converters 100% of the time.

The cheaper/poorer converter designs have certain characteristics. Generally speaking, there is a loss of detail--or less detail perhaps I should say. Frequency ranges tend to get skewed a bit, meaning that certain frequencies will be emphasized when they shouldn't be. The stereo field will also probably be a little collapsed, even if only slightly. Likewise, the lesser designs will also tend to sound more shallow and have less depth of field.

These characteristics will be more or less pronounced, depending on the converters. In addition, you will *not* be able to identify these issues unless you have become accustomed to listening to really good converters. As has been mentioned, there is a strong element of ear training involved.

Additionally, it's important to remember that when you are listening to the 3D Audio ADC Test CD you are listening to it through your own converters. This will not give you as clear an example of the differences as you would get when auditioning the units in person. So if you are listening to the ADC Test CD through your Digi 001, it doesn't surprise me if the Prism really doesn't sound that much better. The reason is, you are listening to the Prism through your 001, so it's going to sound a heck of a lot like your 001.

xstatic made another good point, and that is that the difference between converters becomes more apparent the more tracks you use them on. It's a cumulative effect. Listening to two tracks of one converter compared to two tracks of another is not going to show as much of a difference as tracking an entire project on great converters versus tracking the same project on budget converters.

The engineer makes a huge difference, there is *no doubt* about that. However, having better tools allows the same engineer to do a better sounding job. Part of having great gear is that it makes it a lot easier to get good sounds. The sweet spot is bigger and allows for more range and extremes in the use of the gear.

 

[nkjanssen]

Additionally, it's important to remember that when you are listening to the 3D Audio ADC Test CD you are listening to it through your own converters. This will not give you as clear an example of the differences as you would get when auditioning the units in person. So if you are listening to the ADC Test CD through your Digi 001, it doesn't surprise me if the Prism really doesn't sound that much better. The reason is, you are listening to the Prism through your 001, so it's going to sound a heck of a lot like your 001.

Well, I'm listening through a Benchmark DAC-1 into Dynaudio BM-6A's. Of course, a better listening chain will allow you to hear nuances that a lesser chain won't. I would argue, though, that if the difference between any two given ADC's can only be heard by using a high-priced DAC, the difference can not, by definition, be a "night and day" difference.

Again, I'm not saying that I don't hear a difference. It's just not as massive a difference as some would have you believe it is. To say that anything recorded to a Digi001 is going to sound like "shit" because those are cheap converters is just nonsense. Those kinds of statements tend to skew the viewpoints of people who don't know better. As I mentioned above, you suddenly have people who think that after they've bought their Digi002 rig and a couple of radio shack mics, the next things they need to buy are new converters and an alalog summing box.