How do I get connected?

[JLM]

I'm wondering how to connect an external converter such as an Apogee AD 16x to my computer. What exactly do I need to make this happen? Are my options simply an RME, Lynx or Apogee pci card capable of supporting the 16 ins from the Apogee? Is it that simple? Will the card choice affect sound quality or is the quality strictly going to be coming from the Apogee converters in?

How would I connect a DA converter? Would it be connected to the same card I used to connect to the AD converter?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Phyl]

Great question.

I've been wondering the same thing whenever I look into standalone coverters, pre-amplifiers, word clock generators, and the like.

 

[fraserhutch]

I'm wondering how to connect an external converter such as an Apogee AD 16x to my computer. What exactly do I need to make this happen? Are my options simply an RME, Lynx or Apogee pci card capable of supporting the 16 ins from the Apogee? Is it that simple? Will the card choice affect sound quality or is the quality strictly going to be coming from the Apogee converters in?

How would I connect a DA converter? Would it be connected to the same card I used to connect to the AD converter?

Thanks for any help.

Generally, external D/A convertors connect to a soundcard via ADAT or SPDIF.

In the case of the Apogee, you would need a card (or cards) that accepts 16 channels of AES, ADAT/SMUX.

For your purposes, any soundcard that supports the digital format of the Apogee will do. As your AD/DA conversion will be done by the Apogee, you don't care about convertors on the soundcard, so you could go with straight ADAT card(s)

Since the signal has been converted to digital, assuming that the sound card is the same format as the Apogee (bit rate and depth), then there should be no degradation in quality.

So the basic idea is :
Analog gear as line in --> Apogee digital out --> sound card(s).

Hope this helps.

 

[JLM]

Thanks for the help fraserhutch. That does help me a lot. I have one more question. Is there any truth in that using a firewire card over a pci card would add latency to the system?

 

[fraserhutch]

Thanks for the help fraserhutch. That does help me a lot. I have one more question. Is there any truth in that using a firewire card over a pci card would add latency to the system?

There shouldn't be. The firewire specification is for 100-400 mb/s. Standard PCI is 133 mb/s, and PCI 2.0 is 266 mb/s. Firewire is considered to have a faster throughput than eiuther PCI inplementation (except fort 64-bit PCI 2.3).
For audio purposes, none of these throughputs should cause significant latency. Of course, it usually comes down to driver implementation, and the latency imposed by a particular solution should be indicated in the documentation.

Hope this helps.

 

[xstatic]

RME makes a couple killer cards for pure digital I/O (no converters, just an interface).

 

[Phyl]

Stupid questions but here goes...

Say I've got eight outboard preamps.

In order to use them all simultaneously would I need an A/D converter unit with 8 channels? I suspect the answer is yes.

Would I then need an RME card (or equivalent) with eight digital input/output channels to get the data in/out the computer?

Coming out of the computer I suspect I would need at least two D/A channels, and more if I wanted to do any external mixing.

Finally, if I bought a standalone word clock unit, I would need one with enough outputs to supply the A/D unit, D/A unit, RME card, and any outboard device generating a SPDIF output.

Have I overlooked anything?

I was looking at the Apogee Rosetta 800, it seems to combine a lot of these functions.

 

[fraserhutch]

Stupid questions but here goes...

Say I've got eight outboard preamps.

In order to use them all simultaneously would I need an A/D converter unit with 8 channels? I suspect the answer is yes.

Correct.

Would I then need an RME card (or equivalent) with eight digital input/output channels to get the data in/out the computer?

You would need a card that accepts 8 channels of digital audio in the format output from the convertor. For example, I have a Lucid AD/DA, 8 in 8 out. I feed my pres and whatnot into that, and then take the ADAT out from my Lucid and run it to my mixer (to have pre-processing options). My mixer sends 24 channels digital audio to my computer via a firewire interface. I could just have easily have run my Lucid output to my Emu 121 card, which accepts ADAT.

Coming out of the computer I suspect I would need at least two D/A channels, and more if I wanted to do any external mixing.

You will have to make that determination yourself, but 2 seems a bare minimum. The Rosetta is 8 in/ 8 out.

Finally, if I bought a standalone word clock unit, I would need one with enough outputs to supply the A/D unit, D/A unit, RME card, and any outboard device generating a SPDIF output.

Yes. You would need a way to sync all units. If you can afford it, I've heard the Big Ben is the way to go. I use a Lucid Genx6.

I was looking at the Apogee Rosetta 800, it seems to combine a lot of these functions.

This is a great unit - I would love to have it. It will provide everything you are looking for, with the possible exception of the word clock. It does have an internal word clock, however, many argue that for more that two digital devices it is desirable to have a dedicated external word clock.

 

[Phyl]

Thanks a bunch.