Converters on the 192 I/O ?

[jkhuri44]

Hey guys...

Ive heard about how awesome other converters like Apogee Rosettas, Cranesongs, Benchmarks...etc... are...

how much of a difference is there between those converters and the convertors on the stock PT 192 I/O...??? if there us a difference at all :P

[heathen]

I prefer Apogee a lot more, never tried the cranesong or lavry's or Myteks or Lynx but any of these and you could not be dissapointed. Especially the Cranesong HED is very popular in the US. A bit pricey here though for 2 channels. Lynx would be the best value. There definately are differences between them. I've heard of the Myteks described as clinical compared to the apogee rosetta's which have are described as having a slight colour to them, though very nice. The hed has tape emulation of some sort. The Lavry blue has soft clip/saturation and other functions.

[tonymite]

after adding colour everywhere else - why would you want to add colour at your conversion stage ?? I can't stand this mentality ...when someone says a converter sounds " clinical" just 'cause it sounds " true" .. gimmie a break let me see ...mic, placement,pre, agreat f#king chain of outboard incl. transormer i/O,tubes,morexfmrs some opamps some inductors some transistors, VCAOptoFeedbackFeedFwdVarMu Passive parametric what not dis-dat-dis-dat YMTs ... and .... hell ....... maybe I should sell my ass on Gray St. to earn that extra buck so I can tear my hair out come time to choose a converter .... cos I have the: apoggee,mytek,lavry,lynx,prism,02R,adat,craneSongs, UA ... but I hear the "dix" is best.

[Chris H]

Just as well the holidays are round the corner........

[Linear]

In a recent session I had the opportunity to compare, in a fairly objective way, the difference between stock 192 converters and Apogee AD16X's (both @ 24bit 96k).

It's a long story but basically some sessions were tracked to tape, and an earlier (demo) session was called upon for the final tracking. The tape of that session had been lost, and the only thing we had was a transfer done on 192 converters at another studio.

So for all overdubs, we had 9 tracks converted on Apogee AD16X's, and 3 tracks converted on Digidesign 192's. We were constantly moving between tracks.

To say that there was an obvious difference was a serious understatement. The AD16X's had a sheen and crispness that the 192's didn't. Also the top end on the 192's seemed to be a bit smudged, and there was less depth. At the other end, the 192's seemed to lop the bottom off as it seemed as though there was a HP filter on. Midrange was different too, not bad on the 192's just different (and hard to quantify).

That's my own personal experience, as always your milage may vary. You could say I'm biased because I own the apogees (and that always makes things sound better...) but I really did notice all this, so much so that we pondered whether or not the beds should have been tracked again.

Chris

[heathen]

Yeah I like the Apogees they sound very true and a pleasure to work with though yep they do have a sheen to them which is actually nice. In 96 k mode they really shine.

[heathen]

[quote="tonymite"]after adding colour everywhere else - why would you want to add colour at your conversion stage ?? I can't stand this mentality ...when someone says a converter sounds " clinical" just 'cause it sounds " true" .. gimmie a break let me see ...mic, placement,pre, agreat f#king chain of outboard incl. transormer i/O,tubes,morexfmrs some opamps some inductors some transistors, VCAOptoFeedbackFeedFwdVarMu Passive parametric what not dis-dat-dis-dat YMTs ... and .... hell ....... maybe I should sell my ass on Gray St. to earn that extra buck so I can tear my hair out come time to choose a converter .... cos I have the: apoggee,mytek,lavry,lynx,prism,02R,adat,craneSongs, UA ... but I hear the "dix" is best.[/quote]

Huh?

[Linear]

...just one thing I forgot to add - both conversions were done on 16 track Ampex MM1200's, however I can't confirm what sort of state the other machine was in (just in case anyone is wondering whether the tape machines had anything to do with it.)

Chris