My thoughts on the RNP

[Duardo]

Thanks, Duardo. I don't think anything I said is in direct disagreement with any of your points

Yeah, I wasn't trying to disagree with you, just trying to clear things up.

As far as price, what i thought i said was that the 201 was almost 3x the price of the 101. the implication was that if they were nearly identical it would be more likely to be only about twice the price. i stand by that statement. My point really is that i have enough respect for the grace design team to believe that if the 201 is priced that much more per channel, there must be some useful differences - otherwise no one would bother buying it.

Actually, I think kudos should go do their design team for coming in with a preamp that sounds just as good as their high-end box at just over 60% of the cost of the high-end box on a per-channel basis. I think you nailed it when you said "useful differences"...to those who can afford it, not having to deal with two wall warts, or being able to drive a thousand feet of cable, or having smaller gain steps may well be worth the extra money. I think it's great for those of us working on more of a budget who want that level of quality that we can get it cheaper (and not even have to buy two channels if we don't need them). Same reason I'm still considering an RNP...despite the corners that were cut in terms of features I don't see where any were cut that will negatively affect the sonic quality.

the 201, i always assumed, was a two channel version of the 801, which might really be the quality/price per channel champion out of the three. Or are there differences there as well?

Sure, it's the quality/price per channel winner (comes out less per channel than the 101), but that's only if you need all the channels. By sharing a power supply and chassis they can use the same output drivers and higher-resolution stepped switches as the 201 and still keep the price on a per-channel basis down.

We've got pretty damn good A/D converters on RADAR, and the recording level we could get with the RNP was either -3 dB from optimum or + 3 dB over optimum.

What is "optimum"? On a well-designed converter, any level that's hot enough to capture the entire dynamic range of the signal is just as good as any other. I can't imagine that the performance of those converters would decrease if you had to lower the gain by 3 dB. That's the beauty of 24-bit converters...you don't have to sweat getting your signal to peak as close to 0 dBFS as possible.

Not that I wouldn't appreciate having a trim control on it, but if it's going to drive the cost up or necessitate the dropping of another feature I'll pass. I'll take the quality over convenience any day.

-Duardo

 

[regebro]

every six DB increase doubles the volume of the audio

Well, it doubles the AMPLITUDE of the signal, which really isn't the same thing as volume, just almost. In digital terms, 6db is one bit in the bit-depth.

I don't think 6db is that much of a deal, either I use a compressor, and then it takes care of it, or the level is all over the place anyway. But of course, with better musicians and better engineers, you may need some more control, and then you would have to route the signal through the mixer before commiting it to tape/disk/whatever, which of course is an uneccesary step in many cases.

 

[geekgurl]

Question about gain ...

I think setting optimum levels is pretty fucking important!!!

More so to newer recordists than us old guys. Many of the old preamps we worked with (that are fetching big bucks these days) were either fixed gain (i.e., no damn gain switches or pots), or were in large steps (5 to 6 dB per step).

I wonder whether any of you more experienced recordists feel the "optimum levels" are more important NOW, in digital realm, than they were in the "old days," when everyone was using analog. I've heard (and my humble experience confirms) that, when recording digitally, it's best to get the signal sufficiently hot to use available bits ... however, you can't go over the threshold because digital distortion is atrocious. But people use analog distortion sometimes as a tool, right? Does this mean that outboard gear designed to be used in a digital setting would be easier to use and afford better sound with gain control in smaller increments?

EDIT: I just read Duardo's posts above. So I guess it's up for debate whether one really needs to sweat optimum levels, as long as the gear you're using offers a reasonable increment (some here think 6dB is reasonable, others do not). My experience dealt with signals that peaked lower than even 6db, so ...

 

[regebro]

Re: Question about gain ...

I wonder whether any of you more experienced recordists feel the "optimum levels" are more important NOW, in digital realm, than they were in the "old days,"

No. It's no different, it's just that the effects of setting them wrong are not the same. With analog, low levels give you noise, and high levels give you analog clipping (and when it comes to tape) compression. With digital you get low resolution with low levels and digital clipping with high levels.

Digital clipping is noticable much faster than analog clipping, and therefore it's more impotrant not to set the level too high with digital than analog. But levels are not more important with digital.

 

[Harvey Gerst]

I typically try to peak at -2 to -6dB on digital equipment. On my older Tascam DA30, the sound would change if I went over -3dB.

 

[Fela]

For those who feel that the RNP is a toy then I will trade my Behringer Ultra Gain Pro straight up for your RNP.

The Ultragain Pro has a _metal_ case and better knobs than the RNP. Plus it has got the tube gain stage to "warm up" your cold scaley out-of-tune rhythmically challenged non-transparent low down 'n trifling bewitchingly non convincing program material.

Did I mention the pirates ? ARGH!! there be pirates matey !!

Anyways send me a private mail if you want to get rid of your RNP. I have some other gear to swap for it too.

Screw it, I'll swap it for the other one you were talking about TMP ? Tampa ? Hell Yeah. How many channels does that one got ? How are the knobs ?

If it runs on 110v then I am interested.

 

[Duardo]

I wonder whether any of you more experienced recordists feel the "optimum levels" are more important NOW, in digital realm, than they were in the "old days," when everyone was using analog. I've heard (and my humble experience confirms) that, when recording digitally, it's best to get the signal sufficiently hot to use available bits ... however, you can't go over the threshold because digital distortion is atrocious.

No, I don't think getting optimum levels are any more important now than they were back in the old days when everything was all analog. It's just that in most cases the "optimum level" is a much more specific level with analog than it is with digital. With analog gear you had tape hiss to contend with, and analog gear tends to sound better the closer to unity you run it (unless you're going for distortion, in which case you want to run hotter). With today's digital gear, converters are pretty much linear all the way down to the point where you can hear quantization noise, so a "colder" signal won't hurt you, and the distortion you get running hot is very nasty. So if you have a 24-bit converter with a usable dynamic range of 110 dB and you're recording a signal with a dynamic range of 70 dB there's no need to keep your peaks as close to 0 dBFS as possible (at least not for the sake of the converters). You can peak at -20 dBFS and you're still getting the exact same resolution as you would peaking at -2, or -.2. This is a huge benefit to digital recording...you can set your levels fairly conservatively, sit back, and enjoy...

Not to say that there aren't still good reasons to peak fairly close to 0 dBFS, especially if you're interfacing with analog equipment, which still should run as close to unity as possible...

-Duardo