Luca - of the devices you mentioned, I would say it really depends whether you are focusing on location recording or studio mainly. The Korg units would be fantastic for standalone location recording (they aren't interfaces, but location recorders), but remember to gain the most of DSD you need an editor/mastering app that can handle DSD (Pyramix comes to mind as one of the few, though it may edit in PCM and render DSD back for SACD mastering). You can of course convert to PCM with the Korg units at any rate up to 384k I believe (the latest review I read said even converted DSD to PCM recordings sounded better than direct PCM at the same sample rate, so there is value even if you don't work with DSD to final output).

The Konnekt 24D would give you a nice interface if you are using a laptop/desktop for recording, whether location or studio, but it's a bit of a different animal from the Korg units - of course not as portable since you would need the laptop as well.

If you are recording a lot of on-location classical, I would probably seriously consider one of the Korg units. You can still dump audio to the studio rig and edit/master there, even without DSD support. And if you move up to DSD mastering in the future, you have DSD source files of all your recordings. I would go for the MR1000 first if you have the budget just to get XLR I/O and the larger drive.

Regards,
Dedric

Dedric,
really thank you for your advice, frankly I had your same idea :wink:
By the way many times my clients ask me to do some cutting/mixing work after the recording, and at the moment I'm not able to afford editors such as Pyramix, I'm using WaveLab for my works. So do you think it makes some sense converting to PCM 24/88.2, mixing, dithering and resampling to 16/44.1 for CD? In addition I should remix another version in at least 24/96 for archival or DVD production... Or maybe converting with the Korg software two masters for work, one in 24/44.1 and one in 24/96 or 24/192 for archival and editing both separately? And then does it make sense converting back in DSD? Are we getting some extra quality with all this convertions? Wouldn't be better to record a master pcm 24/192, mixing/rendering everything at this resolution and then eventually converting to DSD?

Sorry for my replay but I'm getting a bit frustrated with this choose... Thank you for clarifying me :)

I would edit at the highest rate possible when tracking/converting from DSD, then dither/src down to the client's required format. Conversion can impact quality to some degree, but I think the quality will still be at least slightly superior to tracking, mixing and delivering 44.1k all the way through (if not noticeably better), as long as you use high quality SRC (Voxengo's R8Brain Pro, or other higher end SRC).

I would mix at 192k for 48k delivery, or possibly 176.4k for 44.1k delivery; and if going to both 48k and 44.1k, or back to DSD, I would probably just stick with 192k for mix/edit.

It wouldn't hurt to go DSD and if you find that converting down to the delivery sample rate (44.1/48) from the Korg recorder sounds better than SRC after edit/mix, you are still ahead of the game in terms of having quality original tracks on file in DSD.