A little disappointed with my Akai DPS16!

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sondriven

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I just found out that if I record a song in 24bit mode, I can't put that song to an audio cd. Theres no dithering on this unit. DOes anyone know about an update that might come out on this?
I bought the thing so I could do 24bit recording and now i find out its useless to me.
And Akai Tech Support just tells me that they are adding my frustration to they're wish list of problems to fix.

If anyone knows something please help!

sondriven
 
Sondriven,

Here's how I've been thinking of getting around that. Mind you, I'm new to digital and might find that some of my plans don't work, and I haven't really started to research this, but I'll throw this out anyway. Thinking of buying a new soundcard with S/PDIF in. Then I could record a mix onto my harddrive, normalize and dither with whatever software (soundforge?), and burn audio CD's from there. I would mostly use the SCSI burner for data back-up on the akai, for the time being. For dupes, I would use the one in the computer (if your computer is SCSI equipped, you don't need more than one).

So what unseen landmines are there in my plan? Actually, could the dither take place in the data dump from the Akai to comp? Or is that not a real dither? I really don't know enough yet (and I've been recording in 16 bit so far), so I guess I'm just adding to the questions. Aren't I?

??
 
sondriven,
I have no clue what your talking about.
We recorded a song using 10 tracks at 24-bit. I then connected the S/PDIF OUT on the Akai to the S/PDIF IN on my Phillips 16-bit CDRW.
It worked great. ;)
The recording sounded phenomenal. There was no loss of sound quality whatsoever. No dither problems at all.
It sounds like you're speculating for the worse here.
Don't fret, my man! Once you get into this thing a bit more, you'll understand and appreciate the DPS-16 alot!
Don't be afraid to experiment.
 
Hey Buck

Hey so what kind of equipment do you need for the philips burner? Does it just connect from Akai Digital in/out to a burner. And how much does it cost?

Thanks for the response!

sondriven
 
Buck - does the dps16 dither down? Or was it the CDRW burner?

Another question: the Akai website says the dps16 will record 8 tracks simultaneously at 24/96, and playback 6 tracks at 24/96. I'm confused - what do you do when your song's got more than 6 tracks on it, and you want to play it back?

Last question: what's the CD drive on the dps16 for, if not burning CDs? Is it just a CDROM drive?
 
Buck- where did the conversion occur?
Was it sent to the Philips in 16 bit S/PDIF
or sent as 24 and downsampled in the Philips?
I ask because the dbx 386 will output 24/96 S/PDIF and I've heard that the Akai's pres aren't anything to write home about. But two at a time in pristine 24/96 works for me.
If I got the Akai I'd also get a 24/96 capable soundcard and a faster/bigger computer.
So this option gets somewhat pricey.
I can dream, can't I?
BTW- I wore that T-shirt to my annual Haz-Mat recert class today and they all got a blast out of it; thanks! :)
 
Dobro,

You can bounce any number of the tracks to a stereo pair for playback (or mono). The nice thing about that is that you can move the original unmixed tracks into virtual tracks so that you can remix if, say, the snare needs to come up a bit from your submix. An outboard SCSI CDRW can be used for dupes and also for data back-up and storage. These projects get big pretty quickly, so it'll really come in handy.

Doc- that's the same question I was trying to ask with regard to downsampling. I'm glad you have the digital vocabulary to actually ask directly.

Okay now my turn-anybody know of a fairly good but inexpensive card with S/PDIF in/out. Say <$100?
 
Simply put...

Well guys, all I did was record a song in 24-bit mode (total of 10 tracks), then I ran a digital (S/PDIF) coax cable from the S/PDIF-OUT of the DPS-16 to the S/PDIF-IN of my 16-bit commercial grade Phillips CDR-880.
It worked fine, the recording came out absolutely perfect.
I have very little knowledge of dither, all I know is that it worked great. I didn't do anything special, just connected it up and hit the record button on the Phillips. :)
The digital cable I used is a Monster Interlink/Datalink-100.

Doc....
I haven't even tried using the Akai's pre's, since I have a MindPrint Envoice with the optional Di-Mod (24-bit) converter.
...oh, and you're very welcome on the "T".
If another good one crosses my path, I'll let you know. ;)
 
Re: Simply put...

Buck,

How much is the philips burner?

sondriven
 
He truncated the music....

What Buck62 did is referred to as Trucated, where you feed a higher bit word to a smaller bit word. Usually, the least significant bits are cut off, meaning the lowest 8 bits.

Truncate MAY be alright, if, your recordings lack much depth and have a fairly high noise floor.

I have truncated files before and can hear the difference. Mainly, it is just in the overall depth of the music. Definately, the reverb trails don't sound as smooth, and fade outs don't fade out as smoothly. They seem to sort of fade out, then all of a sudden end!

So, in the right environment, with monitoring, and maybe a bit of lack of experience in hearing the effects of truncate, you would never know the difference.

Basically, I think that lazyboy has the best idea about going into a soundcards digital input and using some software to dither. This would also give you the ability to burn well prepared CDR's, and to also do some mastering to that audio if need be. Make sure you get a soundcard with digital in and out that can accept 24 bit audio. Like the Lynx One card! http://www.lynxstudio.com . Only about $450 for the card. Another $200 will get you a nice CD burner for the computer. Software can be got for free if you know where to look, and don't mind the, uhhhhhhh, "shareware" versions of what you would normally pay for.....:) (sonusman officially does not condone the pirating of software in any way!) (officially......)

Ed
 
Hmmm... for me, the whole point of a standalone box would be to do without a computer if I wanted to. This puts a new slant on it.
 
I see no problems with computers for mastering...

About the only thing I have found computers usefull in the studio is to mix to. For that, once I got the hard drives working right with DMA, you really can't beat it. A stereo 24 bit 48KHz sampling rate is not too taxing for most computers to handle.

The Lynx card is about the cheapest way I know of to get very high quality 24 bit converters, and to have some digital I/O. You will actually hear much better into the mix monitoring with that card then most any mixer or standalone unit that only has 16 bit converters. I know that it really opened my eyes to the audio quite a bit once I started using quality 24 bit D/A converters.

A stand alone box also is not capable of providing you with a disk that is exactly what you want if you are sending the disk to a duplication plant. I know, they burn Red Book Standard disks, but you have no way of making a PQ time sheet from a stand alone CD burner. You will be paying the duplication plant to make one for you.....:(

Also, having to kick down to 16 bits means you lose a lot of resolution come time to master the product, if you are going to master. That doesn't make ANY sense to me when you can have a high quality soundcard and a internal CDR burner for the same price as a stand alone CD burner that is only 16 bits, and still doesn't give you the ability to master the product!

Forget those stand alone units. In a few years, they will all be selling for like $100 because by then, people will have realized that the computer route makes much more economical sense.

Ed
 
Actually, Ed... you CAN master your recordings (for the most part) on the DPS-16. The editing functions on the Akai are excellent.
I know what you're saying about the PQ time sheet, because we had our first CD professionally mastered.
But the Akai and a quality stereo preamp can do just about everything else as far as editing and mastering goes. Heck, a decent engineer could normalize your songs and pop you out a time sheet in less than 2 hours. That would still be less than two hundred bucks for ten or twelve songs.
I still plan on getting a 24-bit CDR, and we'll do a good portion of the mastering ourselves.
Anyway, I'm not that good with computers, so a stand-alone unit with an instruction manual is still my preference. Besides, I couldn't stand looking at a computer screen all day for both recording AND the internet. It gives me a headache.
..... or maybe it's just because I'm getting old. ;)
 
Buck,

What are you guys talking about, What is a PQ Time sheet?
 
sondriven,
The PQ time sheet is the specs that the duplication company needs to make multiple copies of your CD. It shows the EXACT start and finish times of each song (to within 1/1000th of a second) as well as the amount of space between each song... also within 1/1000th of a second.
These numbers are crucial to the duplicator, since they have to pound out a glass-master, which is the actual source from which they mass produce CD's.

Okay, Ed....

After re-thinking what you're saying about truncating here, I have three thoughts on this.

Should we.....

1: Master our songs to a 24-bit CDR and bring THAT in to get spec'd out and normalized?
............(OR)................
2: Master our songs to DAT and then to a 16-bit CDR?
............(OR)................
3: Master the songs to DAT, and take the DAT tape to be naormalized, spec'd, and put on CD by a pro?

Keep in mind that I own a Mindprint Envoice with the 24-bit stereo Di-Mod (S/PDIF in & out), which will be used during the process, and the Akai has awesome editing functions, which will cut down on the time and money spent on professional mastering.
What would be the most cost-effective way to do this, and still not step all over our 24-bit recordings? :confused:
 
Hmmmmmm

I spend maybe all of an hour at best in the mastering process to put the songs in order and create space in between them. No biggie.

Most of the time is spent playing with eq (if needed) and limiting (if needed, usually does with project studio stuff though....).

You CANNOT master effectively on your AKAI unit. It is a recorder/mixer. Mastering is a whole other deal.

I have said again and again, supply the mastering engineer with the highest resolution (bits) and highest sampling rate mixes you can.

Mastering engineers don't "Normalize" songs. Mastering engineers "match perceived levels" in songs. There is no automatic process that works well for this except the good ol' ears.

Re-read what I wrote. If the AKAI will output a 24 bit mix via it's digital output, you will get a better product mixing to a unit that can record 24 bit. The cheapest way right now for many to get 24 bit recordings is to do so on a computer. The only other viable unit on the market for that is the Masterlink. But there are many things that a computer has an advantage over a Masterlink. More software choices, you actually HAVE a choice in what eq's and compression and limiting you want to use (with the Masterlink, you HAVE to use what they supply, even if it isn't what is really making the most of the mix), a graphical interface to see what the hell is going on, etc.....

If you want to retain the highest quality, have the most flexibility, and the most upgrade potential, you will abandon stand alone stereo recorders and mix to a computer. I didn't say mix ON a computer, but TO a computer. You can do so interfacing with digital consoles, as well as analog consoles.

If retaining the most flexibility in what you CAN do with your mix after it has been mixed is not important to you, or if you don't care to have your mixes at 24 bit, then you will either go to a Masterlink, or a computer. My point is that a computer is a much better value, and allows much much more flexibility down the road.

Get in the game now guys. Or, forever wonder why your audio has problems....;) Going to computer to mix to is not a big deal if you even have a fairly modern computer with around 4GB of hard drive space available for audio.

Ed
 
Re: Hmmmmmm

Hey sonusman,

What about using software like sound forge to mix and then burn to cd. Does something like that work well?

Also if this is a good way to go, how do i hook up my Akai to the computer?
 
Re: He truncated the music....

Originally posted by sonusman:
What Buck62 did is referred to as Trucated, where you feed a higher bit word to a smaller bit word. Usually, the least significant bits are cut off, meaning the lowest 8 bits.

Uhm, yeah, is there any other way? I can't see any...

I have truncated files before and can hear the difference. Mainly, it is just in the overall depth of the music. Definately, the reverb trails don't sound as smooth, and fade outs don't fade out as smoothly. They seem to sort of fade out, then all of a sudden end!

Huh? how is that possible?
 
regebro....

Go to http://www.google.com and do a search on dithering......The difference between dithering first THEN truncating a file, and just truncating a file are very different in the resulting audio.

Also, again, I link you to http://www.digido.com . Read all the articles on bit depth and dithering by Bob Katz.

Ed
 
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