P
pg4c
New member
looking at getting my fw1814 modded by BLA. they offer two versions. I mainly record female hip hop vocals only what is anyones opinion of the mod choices for the fw1814
Overview
The FW1814 is M-Audio’s mid-level firewire interface. Like several of its Digidesign cousins, it uses AKM conversion. In some aspects, it has less dynamic range than its Mbox counterparts, but in some aspects it has more. Line level A/D conversion is handled by the AK5381, which has a paltry 106dB dynamic range. Mic input D/R is 114dB, which is actually greater than the 002 and the Mbox. DAC output sits at roughly 112dB, which is comparable to the MOTU 896HD and Traveler. Analog stages have fairly limited headroom (roughly 9-10dB), and consist of NJM4580’s and LVM722 opamps, which we find to be slow and dull sounding.
Clocking and clock management are handled via an NSK 24.576mhz crystal oscillator and a BridgeCo DM1500. Areas of concern that arise are the amount of phase noise from the oscillator itself and the accumulation of phase shift, noise, and ringing as the clock signal is divided and then propagated throughout the FW1814. All of these things contribute dramatically to poor quality conversion.
Solutions
One primary limitation of small-format interfaces such as the FW1814 is the severe lack of headroom. This device has about 9dB of headroom. That's not much to work with, and one often discovers that it's easy to make the mic and line preamps on this interface clip. We've not only added improvements to the existing modifications we offer for this device, we've also developed a way to increase its analog stage headroom by almost 30dB! That's an enormous improvement, and can help give your small-format interface the big sound normally associated with more expensive multi-channel converters.
When approaching the FW1814, we wanted first of all to clean up the quality of the audio signal as it heads into and comes out of the conversion process. We achieved this by using an amplifier with roughly half the noise, twenty times the bandwidth, and forty times the speed of the existing circuit. By doing this, we not only reduce noise, we improve the ability of the circuit to provide a clean, detailed signal.
The second area we wanted to address is, of course, the internal clock. We knew from our experiments with clock circuitry and propagation that we would need some way to limit oscillator jitter and noise down to the theoretical minimum, so we've developed an internal clock for the 1814 that utilizes a proprietary method that limits jitter at the clock source to 3-4 picoseconds.
What's really cool is that we have developed methods to take the 1814 even further. By implementing the same approaches to converter decoupling that we offer in our 002 modification, we can reduce distortion within the conversion process itself. And by utilizing a higher power supply voltage for the analog stage, we can increase headroom by almost 30dB!
Pricing
Price is $275 for the basic package, which covers analog stages and internal clock.
Price is $395 for the Tweak Head modification, which includes all analog stages, our proprietary converter decoupling, internal clock, and internal analog stage power supply.
Overview
The FW1814 is M-Audio’s mid-level firewire interface. Like several of its Digidesign cousins, it uses AKM conversion. In some aspects, it has less dynamic range than its Mbox counterparts, but in some aspects it has more. Line level A/D conversion is handled by the AK5381, which has a paltry 106dB dynamic range. Mic input D/R is 114dB, which is actually greater than the 002 and the Mbox. DAC output sits at roughly 112dB, which is comparable to the MOTU 896HD and Traveler. Analog stages have fairly limited headroom (roughly 9-10dB), and consist of NJM4580’s and LVM722 opamps, which we find to be slow and dull sounding.
Clocking and clock management are handled via an NSK 24.576mhz crystal oscillator and a BridgeCo DM1500. Areas of concern that arise are the amount of phase noise from the oscillator itself and the accumulation of phase shift, noise, and ringing as the clock signal is divided and then propagated throughout the FW1814. All of these things contribute dramatically to poor quality conversion.
Solutions
One primary limitation of small-format interfaces such as the FW1814 is the severe lack of headroom. This device has about 9dB of headroom. That's not much to work with, and one often discovers that it's easy to make the mic and line preamps on this interface clip. We've not only added improvements to the existing modifications we offer for this device, we've also developed a way to increase its analog stage headroom by almost 30dB! That's an enormous improvement, and can help give your small-format interface the big sound normally associated with more expensive multi-channel converters.
When approaching the FW1814, we wanted first of all to clean up the quality of the audio signal as it heads into and comes out of the conversion process. We achieved this by using an amplifier with roughly half the noise, twenty times the bandwidth, and forty times the speed of the existing circuit. By doing this, we not only reduce noise, we improve the ability of the circuit to provide a clean, detailed signal.
The second area we wanted to address is, of course, the internal clock. We knew from our experiments with clock circuitry and propagation that we would need some way to limit oscillator jitter and noise down to the theoretical minimum, so we've developed an internal clock for the 1814 that utilizes a proprietary method that limits jitter at the clock source to 3-4 picoseconds.
What's really cool is that we have developed methods to take the 1814 even further. By implementing the same approaches to converter decoupling that we offer in our 002 modification, we can reduce distortion within the conversion process itself. And by utilizing a higher power supply voltage for the analog stage, we can increase headroom by almost 30dB!
Pricing
Price is $275 for the basic package, which covers analog stages and internal clock.
Price is $395 for the Tweak Head modification, which includes all analog stages, our proprietary converter decoupling, internal clock, and internal analog stage power supply.
