Reason For A/D/A Converters?

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The Engineer

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What do they do? Sorry to sound like a newbie, but can anybody break it down to why it's essential to have good converters?

I'm planning on buying a Prism Dream A/D/A 8 channel converter for when I open up my studio. Does the Apogee Rosetta 200 compare with it at all? or the Lavry Blue?

Thank you.
 
Oh A/D/A I figured it out that means Analog to Digital or Digital to Analog? I'm slow. :(
 
the higher qualtity converters, the more will the sound you get on pc sound like it's analog input.

X times per second an AD convertor "measures" the signal and creates a "word" containg bits.

X = sample rate = quantity of words that are sampled per second (in Hz)
ex: 44100Hz, 4800Hz, 88KHz, 96KHz, .... Higher means better but more cpu load.
CD's use 44.1KHz

Bit rate= the length of the words
ex: 8bit, 16bit, 24bit, ...
More bits mean better quality, more dynamics

most hi quality ADC/DAC's have at least 24bit/96Khz

Hope this helps you in your decisions!

greets
 
fazil said:
most hi quality ADC/DAC's have at least 24bit/96Khz
Click to expand...

Any recent converter does 24/96, but that doesn't make all of them high-end.

The quality of the converter has much more to do with the stability of its clock and the quality of the filter circuits than its maximum sample rate.
 
Alright thanks guys, I appreciate the feedback. So it's best to record 24/96? I've always recorded 24/48. So does the Apogee or the Lavry compare with the Prism converter?
 
fazil said:
Bit rate= the length of the words
ex: 8bit, 16bit, 24bit, ...
More bits mean better quality, more dynamics
Click to expand...
Not to be a jerk but, it's bit depth. mp3s have a bit rate.
 
The Engineer said:
I'm planning on buying a Prism Dream A/D/A 8 channel converter for when I open up my studio. Does the Apogee Rosetta 200 compare with it at all? or the Lavry Blue?
Click to expand...

At those prices, there is no way you could compare the Apogee Rosetta to either the Lavry or the Prism Sound AD/DA converter. The Prism Dream is about 12k and the Lavry comes in at around eight thousand for 8 channels.
 
At the risk of sounding rude..... here goes.....

If you do not already know the answers to this question, than you should NOT be in the market for a Prism converter.

If you are asking for advice on stuff like Prism converters on HR.com, than you also have a lot more learning to do before you start dropping money on equipment like that. Do yourself a big favor and start with something more realistic and get your feet wet a bit before spending that kind of money. When you are ready for Prism or Weiss converters etc.... you will know it and you won't need help figuring it out:)

Please try not to take that too harshly or personally, I just could not think of a more political way of saying all that:)

Best of luck....


Also...., the Apogee comes in at about 6k or more for 8 channels if you get them all in Rosetta 200's if I remember right.
 
I'm very good at engineering for not knowing much about high-end equipment. I do not know much about converters, but two of my boys (that have graduated from full sail) that I am opening up a studio with know alot about it. I was just wondering for my own sake for when we open up the studio.

and c7sus don't be a bitch, because I'm not a homo-ass gear slut like you are.

Thanks for all the replies people.
 
I believe in always getting the best gear that you can afford. If in your case that means that you can afford enough channels of Prism converters, than go for it. However, unless you have also invested another $300,000+, than I would highly reccomend looking more along the lines of Apogee or something similar. Yes the Prism converters have a different, and in most peoples opinions better, sound, but the money saved will probably be able to purchase a lot of other things that would have a much greater impact on your recordings.

As far as what c7sus said, I don't really think he was too far out of line. There are a lot of people that come around here that ask questions about all this awesome stuff when they really have no intentions on even considering them. When that happens it wastes our time and it wastes server space. If you are serious with your questions, than I am sure he would happily retract anything that implied negative intentions. However, your question when broken down does seem like a bad joke.

It's really like asking if you should go out out and buy an SSL or an MCI console. Both are cool consoles and are very different. However, people that really do need an SSL absolutely know it.
 
Well I've been reading up on converter's and asking alot of questions about them, so I was just trying to learn some more. If I would have asked about a $10,000 mic, I would have gotten joked, but if I asked about a $200 mic ... no jokes! but why? a mic is a mic, one isn't more technical than the other ... so I figured a converter is a converter, some are more expensive and just put out better quality. ... but I'm guessing by peoples responses that the prism much more harder to use than the apogee?

Oh And Xstatic thank you for your time trying to help me out, it's much appreciated.
 
All of the converters as pretty much as the same as far as how they are used. The Prism is just a step up in quality. I would not necessarily call it a huge step up. Like I said, if you can afford 10 grand for every eight channels, thats great. However, at $3000 for every 8 channels in and out, the Apogee's still sound very good. Not many of the huge studios even have Prism converters, at least not for the bulk of their conversion. You could save about $20,000 ish by going with Apogee and still have excellent converters. That $20000 could buy a lot of other gear that in my opinion would give you far greater gains in your recordings than just the converter difference would.
 
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