A/D converter question.

Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 11:49 pm

hi to all,
at the moment, i use tc electronics konnekt 24 with my pc. i am looking for a good quality d/a converter to feed my pres to without adding any color or noise. i'd like to keep the chain as transparent as possible. my budget is $2500.
any suggestions?

much appreciated.

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 12:09 am

In truth, you're not going to find much in the way of DA converters that beats the Konnect 24 for around $2500. You'll find other (similar) flavors, but nothing that smokes it or even is marginally better.

The contenders would be -
Lavry (black or blue)
Mytek
Lucid
Apogee
Lynx
RME
Benchmark
and a few others that most have never heard of.

However, I have the Konnect 24 and the Benchmark, and the Lynx and the RME, and the Lucid and in truth, none of them reveals anything that the others don't.

Save your money or spend it on better stuff elsewhere.

The one thing that puzzles me in the post is that you say you want a DA converter to feed your pres...That's a bit of an odd statement. Could you elaborate?

Do you mean AD converter? Do you intend to add a few extra channels to the unit by going from Pre to AD to Konnect into the computer? If so, how many channels are you looking for?

If 8, seriously consider the Lynx or the RME. If fewer, I would lean towards the Mytek or the Lavry Blue series. Any of these are as transparent as you can get in this range.

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:21 am

Imaginaryday, and its questions like yours that always have me scratching my head. You have a beautiful, highly respected, German created & made device. You don't like the way it sounds? Why did you purchase it? There's nothing wrong with that device. Different microphone preamps will provide you with nuance differences from what its internal preamps had to offer. It won't make your recordings any better. That comes from experience and technique. You should learn how to make good recordings with your current piece of equipment and exhaust all possibilities and combinations before moving on to another variable. You want an uncolored preamp? Why? All I use are colored preamps. I use those because I know what they deliver. A recognizable sound with quality and sweetness bar none. I don't need any modern-day thin, crispy, strident, neutered preamps with frequency response is high enough to receive AM radio. Screw that! That's not going to give you a quality sound. Now a API or Neve, highly colored preamp will give you that sound that you've heard all of your life on every hit recording. Hit recordings are not made with boutiquey preamps. They were made with quality consoles that were highly colored and in highly experienced good hands that knew what to do with those colored sounding preamps. Now what do think you should do?

A very colored white girl
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 6:15 pm

hi cucco, first, i meant a/d (sorry for the typo).

since you own a few a/d converters in my price range, i'll take your advice and use the cash for other things.

remy, i appreciate your input. i do like the tc interface but, it's been having issues with my toshiba computer... tc is well aware of this issue and they've been promising a fix for the last 4 months. they just came out with a new driver which does not seem to work either.

Moderator Joined: Apr 13, 2006 Posts: 121

Imaginareyday - is this a desktop or laptop? Most firewire interfaces are picky about the 1394 chipset, with TI being the only normally reliable chipset. However, as you've found, the TC interfaces seem to be a bit less predictable than some others (great interfaces otherwise).

If this is a desktop, I would try a firewire card with a TI chipset or perhaps even VIA and see if you have better results. If it's a laptop, hopefully TC will post a fix eventually.

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:04 pm

hi dterry, it is a laptop satellite. i do like this unit. i think it's well built.

i gave it some thought last night and decided to upgrade to a new laptop. i might get an hp.

thanks for writing.

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 1:20 pm

I second the Lynx card. I have the L22 and it stands up quite well to my Cranesong Hedd.

Moderator Joined: Apr 13, 2006 Posts: 121

Just watch the firewire chipset. A lot of new laptops have gone to the Agere chipset, and it's been problematic with a lot of firewire interfaces, not just TC. My HP laptop (which I don't use for audio) has RICOH interface, which I doubt would work well with most firewire audio interface, but haven't tried it yet. It's an HP Pavilion dv6000 series, fwiw.

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:29 pm

dterry wrote:

Just watch the firewire chipset. A lot of new laptops have gone to the Agere chipset, and it's been problematic with a lot of firewire interfaces, not just TC. My HP laptop (which I don't use for audio) has RICOH interface, which I doubt would work well with most firewire audio interface, but haven't tried it yet. It's an HP Pavilion dv6000 series, fwiw.

i think i might go for a mac. the fact that i can run win xp is a plus.

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:55 pm

Imaginaryday wrote:

i think i might go for a mac. the fact that i can run win xp is a plus.

Except they just switched their firewire chipset to Agere (macbook pro and macbook)..... how stupid of them, DOH! Embarassed

I would do some serious research (here and other audio forums) about laptops and firewire interface compatability before putting all that money down on a new laptop.... or you could end up with new laptop and have the same problem.

Try to get ahold of Scott from ADK audio.... he seems to be very well informed and pretty much a straight shooter. Plus there are numerous threads about this subject.

The last thing I would do is go buy something blindly and assume it will work....

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:20 am

Yeah - the Ricoh chipset sucks about as badly as all the others.

RME just released a fix for the Ricoh chipset, but it's been met with mixed reviews.

FWIW, I just bought a laptop for location recording and it has turned out to be quite nice. It was a VERY inexpensive Dell Vostro machine. I added an external (or ExpressBuss) Firewire card which has the TI chipset (manufactured by SIIG) and disabled all services and hardware which caused dropouts and the thing works GREAT.

The biggest help was disabling the internal Wifi card as this was causing major dropouts with both my Fireface 800 and the TC Konnect 24.

Lower latencies came by getting rid of all of the extra services that were running.

Recently, I ran 12 tracks (IIRC) of 192kHz audio for 2-3 hours without even so much as a hiccup (on the FF800).

Considering the laptop came with XP and cost about $500 brand new (with a battery that lasts about 4 hours), I think it's a pretty good deal!

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