Anyone have the Aardvark Q10?

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CanopuS

Amateur music since 1847
Hey, if anyone has the Aardvark Q10, I'd love to know a bit more about it, just to be able to talk about it. I've looked over the options and if the preamps are good, it looks pretty sexy to me. I thought about the Delta 1010LT, but it looks kinda..... without preamps :D

Please respond if you have it, and if you have any sample music, that would be great. Cheers guys :)
 
I've got one!

I love mine, it is admittedly my first A/D converter, but I love it.

No sample music from me, tho. My partner is all freaked out about ditributing stuff right now (long story).

I would be happy to answer any questions you have about it.
 
I own one and can not say enough good stuff about it. My cousin owns his own studio and when I told him what I was looking for in a project studio he steered me in the Q-10 direction and I am so glad he did.

I don't have samples for downloading, but I can tell you that the Q10 was the best solution for what I was looking for. It's an all in one package: class-A preamps, great drivers with ultra-low latency, hi-z inputs, the spdif inputs on the back are great for my M300 effects unit because I can use all the effects in routing without having to send them through A/D converters. You can piggyback up to 4 units together...

I am sketching out an acoustic project and gave some friends a CDR with a few tunes that I literally spent less than 2 hours on each one recording, mixing and mastering, and they can't believe that I did it at home. The quality of the unit is incredible. It's expensive, but worth it imho....
 
I'll let you know how I like mine when I manage to use it successfully:mad:

Really though, I think I will love the thing once I finnaly get going. The pre-amps sound pretty good (can anyone tell me what pre-amp was ever made that wasn't class A?) And the guitar DI's seem actually usable.

Ptron
 
I read about your troubles Ptron and I'm sorry to hear it. I hope you get everything up and running very soon. You'll love the Q-10.
 
I am thinking of getting one as well.

So, it looks like you can do everything with this. Does it come with a sound card?
 
It IS a soundcard. It has a breakout box that attaches to it that you plug the mics/instruments into.
 
Ptron, I read about your problems, earlier, too. Actually I posted on them, also.

I would try this:

1 - Disable your virus scanner before doing anything audio related. Same goes for anything else sitting in your systray

2 - If you are on an always on network conecction (i.e., cable modem or possibly DSL) disable your network connection before doing anything audio related. (you will need to re-enable to go on the net, even if you reboot

3- set your bit depth/sample rate in the aark manager

4- Open cakewalk (but NOT a project)

5 - to have PA9 automatically set up PA9 for your soundcard, use the Wave profiler (dunno where it is exactly in PA9, I am using Sonar 2.2XL... you probably will have to look through the help files to find out exactly where.....Thank the sweet Lord for help files)


6 - Make a new project

7 - check to make sure bit depth/sample rate match your earlier settings on the Aark manager. If they don't change them in PA9

8 - Record one track at a time, and keep piling them up, one on top of the other.

At what number of tracks does it start acting funny? (Maybe it never does if the Wave profiler did what it was supposed to)

As far as latency, even a little annoys the hell outta me, so I up just monitor the channel(s) I am recording dry, or with outboard effects patched into just the monitoring channels, so there is NO latency at all.

I feel your pain, man. I have been working with PCs for over 10 years now, and they can be a challenge. If you are SURE that you have started from a clean slate, and that any comparisons between 2 programs are equal in every possible way, except the programs, then you can fairly safely assume that the problem is with one of the programs. If that is where you end up, you may wanna cut your losses and get a different program. You have been sayin you think it is a compatibility problem with the Q10 and PA9, but I haven't seen anything anywhere else about there being one. And like you said, they ship the Q10 with PA9, so you would definitely be seeing a LOT of posts about it if there were a compatibility issue between them.



I hope you get it straightened out, man. Good Luck.
 
and actually, another comment on the Q10...

The only feature of it I don't like is that the effects inserts are not balanced. I would have liked them to be...
 
NeuzGrouper said:
and actually, another comment on the Q10...

The only feature of it I don't like is that the effects inserts are not balanced. I would have liked them to be...
Click to expand...
IMO that's a feature you only find on +2,000$ equipment... not homerecording/prosumer.
You can always use an output and input for that purpose.


Herwig
 
Hmmm, I didn't know that was usually on much more expensive equipment only. I feel even better about my choice in buying the Q10.

It was a kind of big leap to take when I bought it, there were so many out there. I almost bought the Wami rack 192 XL (I think it's called). In retrospect, I am really happy I got the Aark.

Thanks for the tip on using the output/input thing as an insert. It made me realize that is what I have been doing, but I wasn't thinking of it that way. For some reason, thinking of it as an insert when I go out and back in just seems more "right".

It's weird, how little bits of other peoples perspective make things clearer...
 
;)

1.5 years ago I decided to go with a C-port - Behringer mixer because at the time the Q10 still had driver problems + it would cost me 200-300$ more than the Cport/Behrie combination.

I now regret that... the C-port is a fantastic piece of equipment, but the mixer is ... you know ... Behringer.


BTW on the balanced/unbalanced topic: as long as you have short, clean runs of cable it shouldn't matter if your connection is bal/unbal (noise-wise). The diff in signal level otoh could be more important.



Herwig
 
I was wondering about the short runs thing, thanks.

On the sig level, is there any kind of matching transformer to take care of that that isn't total crap?
 
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