Turtlerock Forum

I always take this stuff with a grain of salt, but have a look at this topic on Gearslutz.
I wonder about listening tests and their results, and having put this up I suppose everyone can guess the result by default. The first post was 16 October, then the ball started rolling.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-sho ... a8000.html

headman

Why do people do converter tests and then convert the results to MP3's to post them for others to compare? OK, I see someone talked him into posting proper files further down. I don't know the worth of things like this, Gearslutz is a chaotic mess with so much background noise, for all the talk on that forum there is so little information of value, it is such an easy place to waste time.

Hmm, interesting.

Hi there,

Results don't really surprise me(people always said the b one was good)....luckily I now have both !
More snake oil in this business.....and manufacturing hype !

Cheers
N
Y
M
O

For what it's worth, I pulled my ADA8000 out of it's rack and binned it because it was so unreliable.

They did end up posting the original wav's as well if you went on to read the whole thread..

TimS wrote:They did end up posting the original wav's as well if you went on to read the whole thread..

I initially read the first post and then went no further because it was the usual Gearslutz thing of putting up an MP3, I did go back out of morbid curiosity later just to see if anyone did ask for something better. I still doubt the methodology of the average Gearslut member with things like this, so I take them with a grain. The ADA8000 sounds good for the price, if you don't mind dealing with underrated phantom power capacitors that blow the power supply, a poorly designed power supply and general borderline build quality.

(Sorry, I must be in a grumpy mood tonight, but both be!@#$%^& and Gearslutz do my head in, so when you mix them together... :-)

Thirteen wrote:

TimS wrote:They did end up posting the original wav's as well if you went on to read the whole thread..

I initially read the first post and then went no further because it was the usual Gearslutz thing of putting up an MP3, I did go back out of morbid curiosity later just to see if anyone did ask for something better. I still doubt the methodology of the average Gearslut member with things like this, so I take them with a grain. The ADA8000 sounds good for the price, if you don't mind dealing with underrated phantom power capacitors that blow the power supply, a poorly designed power supply and general borderline build quality.

(Sorry, I must be in a grumpy mood tonight, but both be!@#$%^& and Gearslutz do my head in, so when you mix them together... :-)

They could be modded though - JLM do a mod to them.. did you see the schematic in the thread on GS??

Interest... though its only the D/A part of the conversion being tested. They didn't exactly skimp on the A/D conversion for the files.

+1 for gearslutz being a black hole for sucking time.
IF you just spend the same amount of time using your gear and gretting the most out of it you wont be lusting after a new piece or wondering whether what you bought was any good.
I still enjoy spending some spare time going through gearslutz but as long as it is spare time (which is not that often) I have gained some useful tips and info.
E.G. I guess it is a trick everyone already knows but to make a mono vocal sound a little wider just make a mono aux track and buss the vocal to it, place a stereo picth shift with 1 side +8 cents and the other -8 cents and mix it in with the original vocal and low and behold a vocal that sounds a little wider.
Once again this was new for me but after I tried it I see I will be using it more.
Cheers

Hi Dale,

Yeah.... I use the ole eventide 949 for that ;-)
Works great.

Cheers
N
Y
M
O

I've come to the conclusion that converter tests are useless anyway unless you take the results and burn them to CD for a listen. If I download a comparison between b#%&*^ and lynx then listen through my apogees there is absolutely no point, they will both sound ok.

But yeah burn it to cd and listen on a stereo or generic computer da outs then the results would probably be a little different.

I reckon gearslutz should be renamed to gearbitchez.

Posting a single stereo track recorded through 2 different converters is not a great comparison really. Depending on the source material they can sound almost the same. Where it gets a lot more obvious is when every track of a song is recorded using the particular converter, and has to handle drums, vocals, bass and so on separately. This kind of "mix build up" shows the limits of a particular converter more clearly I think.

HA_DA_JA wrote:+1 for gearslutz being a black hole for sucking time.
IF you just spend the same amount of time using your gear and gretting the most out of it you wont be lusting after a new piece or wondering whether what you bought was any good.
I still enjoy spending some spare time going through gearslutz but as long as it is spare time (which is not that often) I have gained some useful tips and info.
E.G. I guess it is a trick everyone already knows but to make a mono vocal sound a little wider just make a mono aux track and buss the vocal to it, place a stereo picth shift with 1 side +8 cents and the other -8 cents and mix it in with the original vocal and low and behold a vocal that sounds a little wider.
Once again this was new for me but after I tried it I see I will be using it more.
Cheers

Hey Dale,
I do that on guitars as well - I LOVE my pitch shift (it was a very 80's thing - think Lukather/Huff/Landau - LA rock session monsters)
Gives a very nice shimmer effect..
Tim..