Thread: good multichannel A/D converters?

You don't say whether you want the converters to feed the ADAT inputs of the HD24 or if you are jumping ship and going to an audio interface connected to a portable computer of some sort.

In good-quality external converter boxes, there isn't a huge amount of choice for 16 channels in 1U height. In addition to the ones you mentioned, the Lynx Aurora 16 is a reasonable unit and has modular interface adaptors, so you could get it with ADAT and migrate to USB (or some other interface) at a later date without ditching the converters.

Have you considered using an EC-2 kit to upgrade your HD24 to an HD24XR? The converters in the XR are every bit as good as those in most of the upper-end interface units, and produce noticible a improvement over the standard HD24 at 44.1/48KHz in addition to the ability to record at 88.2/96KHz when required. An EC-2 kit is, unfortunately, not easy to find these days, as it (and the HD24XR) was discontinued a couple of years ago, despite still being shown as current on the Alesis website. It requires zero additional rack height as it replaces the converter boards in the HD24, and you get 24 channels.

I know there's a lot of folk's who'll disagree, but the HD24 or the HD24XR are the real deal for remote work. The only other choices I'd consider for remote work are the Tascam X-48MkII, the JoeCo Blackbox or a RADAR 48.

Taking converters and lappy on the road... sure, there's quite a few folks doing it... and a few even have few failures with EM'... but the majority of folks not running stand-alone rigs have some pretty scary tales to tell about their prosumer and professional level rigs.

In the last several years of multitrack remote wok, I've had a coupla' drives give me a fit, but I ALWAYS carry extra drives... and thus have not has a single failure in 4 years.

IMHO, unless you're doing higher end remote sessions, I'd stick with stand alone recorders... and even then, there's more folks who use stand alones in broadcast quaility situations than don't.

I'm gonna agree with Max on this one.

Recently, I did a remote at a live venue (300 seater) where the performer was singing and playing acoustic guitar.

I took my laptop, (Sonar) my audio I/O (Tascam) and a bag full of various dynamics, condensers and various odds and ends adapters.

I ended up taking a split from the FOH before it hit the house console - not wanting to chance dealing with a post signal from the console and having any changes the FOH engineer made effecting the signal being sent to me.

I ended up running these direct lines to 3 ins of the Tascam I/O (one lead vocal and two for guitar - L and R outs of a Line 6 Pod)

I then placed two mics in an XY array out front, in close proximity to the FOH mixing position. I ran these two lines to 2 other inputs on the Tascam, and assigned them to three inputs in Sonar... 2 mono for the individual mics and one stereo track for the XY sum.

So, what I ended up with was 6 discreet tracks total in Sonar, 5 mono and 1 stereo.

I was very happy with the results BUT... if I had had access to a stand alone like the HR24, I would have much rather gone this route.

Now, the downside to that is that I would have also needed a separate mixer to get the mic signals to the stand alone recorder, but, truthfully, I would need this anyway...

Why? Because I got very lucky this time, in that I was working with a very obliging FOH engineer, who went out of his way to give me what I needed in terms of splits at the board and such, but I recognize that this wouldn't always be the case, and I'd be better off running my own mixer in the long run if I was to do this type of gig on a regular basis.

Although, knowing my luck, I would have probably still run the laptop rig as well as a safety backup. ;)

I was lucky. No bumps, hiccups or glitches. I delivered the wave files to the producer and they are happy.

But, if I was going to make a habit of doing remote work, I would invest in a mixer and a stand alone recorder, as Max mentioned, for this purpose.

fwiw

-d.

If using stand-alone recorders such as the Alesis HD24XR, you need pre-amps if you are using your own mics or if you are taking mic splits, but you don't need a mixer, at least not in the recording signal chain. For headphone monitoring in the venue, I use a simple line mixer that has only level, pan, solo and mute for each channel, and feed it from the analogue outs of the HD24XR. In this way, I know at least that my signals are present and correct at the digital level, since the HD24XR analogue outs are re-constituted from the converted inputs.

For monitoring MS mics while recording the M and S channels, I use an insert lead from the HD24XR analogue output of the S channel going to the L and R of a stereo channel on the mixer, which I set at 6dB greater level than the mono M channel. This trick does not work with a standard HD24, as the outputs on that are impedance balanced and not signal balanced.

Thanks for the replies!

You don't say whether you want the converters to feed the ADAT inputs of the HD24 or if you are jumping ship and going to an audio interface connected to a portable computer of some sort.

Boswell- I am currently thinking both. Let me explain:

My HD24 has been both my A/D and my safety up to now. I have been using it's A/D conversion, recording onto it as a backup, and take (live) the litepipe outs to feed the inputs of my computer, where I record all the tracks from the HD24 and also (live) create an automated mix on the PC. That is sent to a CD recorder. I then hand the CD to the talent after the show.

My objective would be to upgrade my conversion. If I get the right box, it will have dual outputs to feed the HD24 (still a backup) and the PC.

I would love to have a small mobile unit instead of this larger rig, but my clients and I are used to having more than 8 tracks live- often 16 to 24. The Metric Halo, Sound Design, and other units are not enough tracks, though I would love to see a 16 or 24 tk version of such a box. If I could afford.

Using the EC-2 kit to convert the existing HD24 sounds like a good idea- the lest disruptive of my choices, in terms of kit. Can you tell me where to look for this? Will it work on an HD24, or only an HD24XR?

The EC-2 is the kit that converts a standard HD24 into an HD24XR. Although now discontinued, it is still available if you look around. Musicians' Friend has a couple of units for $799 BIN on Ebay US at the moment. In terms of value in your application, let's just say that you would not get that number of channels at that conversion quality any other way for that sort of money.

Nevertheless, you ought, of course, to look as well at alternative solutions. So, other units you might look at include the JoeCo BBR1 Black Box recorder, which will record up to 24 line-input channels at 96KHz to a USB disk drive. It also will record to a USB pen drive, but probably not that number of channels at that speed to standard pen drives.

Also in the frame is the RME UFX, again recording to an external USB drive. It has 4 good pre-amps, 8 additional line inputs and 2 ADAT inputs plus S/PDIF, so assuming you are already using analogue-output pre-amps, you would need only a further 4 channels of ADAT-output pre-amps to meet your requirements.

How is the installation process for the EC-2? I'm not doing many remote gigs right now, but I've always regretted cheaping out and getting the HD24 instead of the HD24XR.

It's not more than a half-hour job. That's assuming your wrist does not give up during the unscrewing and subsequent re-tightening of 48 TRS jack nuts.