the Apogee and the Lucid series are my favourite, although there are many good ones.

Many better, what's your budget?

My faves are the Lavry Blue series. Clean and clear unlike any I've heard (except for perhaps the Lavry Gold series... $$$$$).

And at around $2500 for a stereo set (Sync, AD unit, DA unit), it's actually quite a bargain for that kind of perfomance.

Benchmark just released their ADC-1 to be a complement to their DAC-1. Street price is suppose to be about 1.5K. I am trying to get one to audition. If it is as good as their DAC-1 it should be GREAT.

Here is the info on the unit

alanhayatt@pmi.com

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: Many better, what's your budget?

I never realy thought about budget , so unlimited ? ...

TanTan wrote: I never realy thought about budget , so unlimited ? ...

Lavry Gold. Not sure of the list price - The "home & HiFi" version DAC unit is around $5,000 used. I was recently offered a Gold series ADC for $5,000 (also used).

No body has mentioned Weiss ADC?
Have any one tried them? Daniel W. seems to think they are better than Lavry and prism... ofcourse one would say, but still...

I will look forward to blow them all away when my new Audio Note ADC arrives. But i don't know the price yet...

Best Regards

Weiss would be one of my first choices. Lavry gold or blue are excellent. Mytek, Apogee rosetta 200, Prism, Benchmark, DCS, Even the Waves L2 converters sound good. I found that I like a little flavor so I like to have a few to choose from. For the Money, I really like the Apogee Rosetta 200. I think they sound very good, have some great usefull features. If money were no object, then I would look at the Weiss and Lavry.

Thank you all for your help guys !!!

The price gap between lavry gold and blue is huge , have you ever ab them ???

We have many fine converters here from Apogee, Mytek, DB Tech., Lucid and Prism.
The lucid is a very good sounding converter for the money. Mytek is also great.
But for me nothing touches the Prism DA2 and AD2 for full rich sound. It does everything I need.

Joe, are you using the old ones or the new?

There about 4 years old. The Dream converters 96K. I think they are still current. They have the 8 channel converters which are good but not nearly as good sounding as these.

The reason i aksed was because I've tested the old ones with the 24bit upgrade, they sound better than many other converters but I felt they made the music "swing" differently and not to my taste. The prism also pushed side effects more "upfront" than they was before going into it.

That's odd. I can't imagine why it would make the effects come out more. What I like is what you put in is what you get out.

well , i've done my research and stil don't have a clue , i will defenetly go for bencmark weiss lavry .
the strange thing about it , is there's a huge price differences betwin them , and they all under the same category, i couldn't really realize the difference betwin lavry gold blue did someone ever ab'd the benchmarkweisslavry ? or the lavry goldblue?

THANK YOU !

well the gold is his better converter. The blue still sounds great but it's expensive to get that extra 10%. Weiss is really good. Benchmark is a great deal for the money. The blue line, you can configure to taste. If you want 2 a/d's and and SRC and a d/a, you can do that. Basically it's set up in modules and you can load to taste. You have to look at the features in each converter. The benchmark is just a d/a, so that's why it's much cheaper. What are you looking to use it for?

Hi Folks

I do not want to hi-jack this thread, but I just have some question.

How do you mastering guys integrate your converters into your DAWS?

Eg do these more expensive converters support spdif? Or is spdif
not a good enough interface?

Cheers
Bob
:roll:

We use AES/EBU interfaces for all our digital connections. We are using an RME digital audio card which supports this format in our DAW and a AES/EBU router from ZSystems which also supports this format to do all our patching.

Hope this helps.

Thomas W. Bethel wrote: We use AES/EBU interfaces for all our digital connections. We are using an RME digital audio card which supports this format in our DAW and a AES/EBU router from ZSystems which also supports this format to do all our patching.

Hope this helps.

Thanx. :)

Seems like my RME card also support AES/EBU. :)

Cheers
Bob
:roll:

An alternate to the Z-Sys unit would be the Lynx AES router. It's incredibly flexible, but it's PC based. Not an issue to some, but somethign to keep in mind.

And Bob, there are converters that go between AES/EBU and S/PDIF out there if you can find them. They're relatively inexpensive. I try to stay AES wherever possible, but if you've got some gear that you like with S/PDIF, you don't have to get rid of it or anything...

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: well the gold is his better converter. The blue still sounds great but it's expensive to get that extra 10%. Weiss is really good. Benchmark is a great deal for the money. The blue line, you can configure to taste. If you want 2 a/d's and and SRC and a d/a, you can do that. Basically it's set up in modules and you can load to taste. You have to look at the features in each converter. The benchmark is just a d/a, so that's why it's much cheaper. What are you looking to use it for?

Thank you Michael , i have several uses for it . i'm tracking mixing and mastering in my studio, so , for tracking obviously i need high end converters, if it's a multitrack recording session so i won't mind using my rme for recording drums , but when it come to vocal recordings it's very important (and it's ok for me not having tons of high end ad's because for the projects i'm working on it's mainly one instrument at a time) i'm mastering through some analog gear so in this point the ada is very important to me, maybe i'll need more da's because i'm soon to finish my custom made mixing desk and then i'll sum it all analog and converters will be the most important thing .

Well then i'd look into the lavry blue. you can customize it more to your needs.

The new Lavry mic preamps (that fit into the Blue series chassis) are out!

What about the Lynx converters. I've heard from many people that the Lynx2 sounds just as good, if not better than the Apogee stuff. Don't know if has been compared to the new Rosetta's though.

Lynx also has the new Aurora's coming out, which they advertise as "Mastering Quality" converters. If they truly are THAT good, I plan on picking up the Aurora 16. Sixteen channels of "Mastering Quality" conversion for something like $3500 is a damn good deal.

Johnjm22 wrote: What about the Lynx converters. I've heard from many people that the Lynx2 sounds just as good, if not better than the Apogee stuff. Don't know if has been compared to the new Rosetta's though.

Lynx also has the new Aurora's coming out, which they advertise as "Mastering Quality" converters. If they truly are THAT good, I plan on picking up the Aurora 16. Sixteen channels of "Mastering Quality" conversion for something like $3500 is a damn good deal.

As in every other thing in life, you will never know untill you have tried it.

I have the AES16 card witch is a good AES/EBU audio routing card but my DA converter needed a very high quality AES/EBU signal and with the standart Lynx cable and the standart parts on the PCI card my converter revealed some low quality transfering parts and low quality cable. So I modified the AES16 card to sound better and much more contrasted through my converter, I would say that i got an improvement of over 50%.

So lynx is good, but to call it mastering quality...? Well maybe it is when considering all the compromises that is legalized in mastering. So what I'm saying is that Lynx isn't High End.

Best Regards

Ammitsboel wrote: [quote=Johnjm22]What about the Lynx converters. I've heard from many people that the Lynx2 sounds just as good, if not better than the Apogee stuff. Don't know if has been compared to the new Rosetta's though.

Lynx also has the new Aurora's coming out, which they advertise as "Mastering Quality" converters. If they truly are THAT good, I plan on picking up the Aurora 16. Sixteen channels of "Mastering Quality" conversion for something like $3500 is a damn good deal.

As in every other thing in life, you will never know untill you have tried it.

I have the AES16 card witch is a good AES/EBU audio routing card but my DA converter needed a very high quality AES/EBU signal and with the standart Lynx cable and the standart parts on the PCI card my converter revealed some low quality transfering parts and low quality cable. So I modified the AES16 card to sound better and much more contrasted through my converter, I would say that i got an improvement of over 50%.

So lynx is good, but to call it mastering quality...? Well maybe it is when considering all the compromises that is legalized in mastering. So what I'm saying is that Lynx isn't High End.

Best Regards

You did what? This makes no sense whatsoever!! I use Lynx converters, superb...

Care to explain your mod a bit more just out of curiousity? Thanx :D

timster wrote: [quote=Ammitsboel][quote=Johnjm22]You did what? This makes no sense whatsoever!! I use Lynx converters, superb...

Care to explain your mod a bit more just out of curiousity? Thanx :D

If your converter doesn't care much about the quality of the AES/EBU(some don't) then you will get absolutely nothing out of doing this.
As i wrote earlier i modified the AES/EBU sending circuit by removing the parts on the PCI board and replacing them with the best I could find, and I also did a small change in the circuit.
You will have to be good at soldering to do this as it involves removing small smd components.

Best Regards,

Ammitsboel wrote: [quote=timster][quote=Ammitsboel][quote=Johnjm22]You did what? This makes no sense whatsoever!! I use Lynx converters, superb...

Care to explain your mod a bit more just out of curiousity? Thanx :D

If your converter doesn't care much about the quality of the AES/EBU(some don't) then you will get absolutely nothing out of doing this.
As i wrote earlier i modified the AES/EBU sending circuit by removing the parts on the PCI board and replacing them with the best I could find, and I also did a small change in the circuit.
You will have to be good at soldering to do this as it involves removing small smd components.

Best Regards,

Cool. So you are saying you didnt like the AES/EBUto start with and were able to improve it? Are the mods available on line or is it something you figured out yourself?

timster wrote:
Cool. So you are saying you didnt like the AES/EBUto start with and were able to improve it? Are the mods available on line or is it something you figured out yourself?

Yes i didn't like them to begin with.
But still better than RME's AES/EBU interfaces.

There is nothing about the mod online... with High End you are on your own.
A confirmation of this is that Lynx didn't even care that I modified their PCI card = they don't care about High End.
It take a lot more than a test bench and a few designers to make High End.

As a firm that makes sound equipment you have to be open about these things or you are going to dig your own grave and contribute to the wonders of the mediocre lane.

Write to my email if you want to discus if the mod would be an improvement for you.

Best Regards,

I've found a dcs 904 ad converter for sale ,

Did anybody try it ?

Are there any PCI interfaces that DO have good D/A and A/D converters? I'm looking at RME currently and they are supposed to have great converters compared to your run of the mill audio interface cards (M-audio, Echo and the likes).

lucidwaves wrote: Are there any PCI interfaces that DO have good D/A and A/D converters? I'm looking at RME currently and they are supposed to have great converters compared to your run of the mill audio interface cards (M-audio, Echo and the likes).

Not for Mastering.

I can't think of any either.

So I think the prefered digital interface here is AES/EBU for getting signals in and out of the DAW and to/from the DAC/ADC. Any recomendations for a PCI card with AES/EBU? I know Ammitsboel doesnt like the RME, but that is the only one I know of. Is s/pdif a viable option for digital transfer to and from the DAW to the DAC/ADC?

Lynx AES16

I use the Lynx AES16 witch I must say is a big step up from RME.

What about connecting via firewire as opposed to AES/EBU?

I am thinking specifically of the Rosetta which has the expansion firewire card. Is anything lost connecting via firewire?

katapult wrote: What about connecting via firewire as opposed to AES/EBU?

I am thinking specifically of the Rosetta which has the expansion firewire card. Is anything lost connecting via firewire?

Lost...? no, but the Jitter may be higher.
Take a listen to one of those boxes and compare them with AES/EBU.