AD/DA Conversion - Real Talk

Tex Mexico

Hi guys,

Apologies if this is an oft-trod or otherwise contentious subject, but I went down a bit of a Gearslutz rabbit hole on this and came out none the wiser (as is customary with any GS excursion). The way I see it, this is a pursuit that could get very expensive very quickly so I'm trying to nip it in the bud right away.

I've been a homestudioist for about 25 years, having started with an 8-track cassette Tascam and run the gamut of cobbled-together rigs to the point where I have a setup which is still very much on the -sumer side of prosumer but is certainly enough to serve my now hobbyist-only needs. Until quite recently I've been too poor to worry about the fine detail of audio quality (I didn't even have dedicated monitors for the first ten years), but in the past few years I've invested in what I believe to be good quality gear, and just now I've invested in a pair of Focal Shape Twins, which while not exactly pricey by studio monitor standards are I think really excellent, and by any standard good enough to be worth making sure the rest of the chain is up to scratch.

The interface I'm currently using is a Mackie Big Knob Studio +, which I got for its monitoring management functions as well as its interface capability. I was briefly using a Focusrite Scarlett 8-track but sold it because I don't want any rack kit and only ever use 2 inputs anyway. Which brings us to the meat of the subject:

The AD/DA conversion on the Mackie is not as far as I know particularly well-regarded, certainly not as compared to RME or Apogee and not even in the same ballpark as the high-end stuff like Cranesong. The fact however that it had until maybe a year ago (I've been HD-recording since 1998) not even occurred to me to wonder how "good" my A/D conversion was leads me to suspect that this is basically something that is not broken, so I shouldn't waste time, energy, or hundreds of pounds fixing it.

I'm listening to my setup now and my honest feeling is that the sound is, in terms of fidelity, as close to perfect as I'll ever need it to be. I can't hear anything about it I'd like to improve. It's not missing anything and it's not doing anything it (in my opinion) shouldn't. And yet I'm constantly reading posts from studio guys saying when they upgraded to a set of Burl converters from their already pricey (and putatively already way better than mine) RMEs, the difference was "huge". But are we talking "huge" like the difference between a Marshall MG15 and a Marshall 1987x, or like the difference between a Marshalll 1987x and a Marshall Handwired 1987x?

Or, as I suspect, are we talking "huge" like "I just spent £4k upgrading something 99.999% of people don't even know has a spectrum of quality, so I'd better swear blind there's a meaningful improvement"? Honestly, some guys talking about it like lifting a blanket off their speakers, but I'm here with these Focals wondering how much more airy and detailed it's possible to get.

I haven't developed this opinion in isolation. As well as my own rigs, over the years I've done hundreds of sessions in a number of other studios ranging from education to pro-level, and although there are clear differences between all of them, they most obviously come down to room design, choice of monitors and so on, and most importantly the tracking and mixing decisions made by the people involved. I don't think there was ever, at any point, in any of those situations, in over two decades, a moment where anyone stopped to point out the sound was somehow lacking in quality in a way that couldn't be tracked down to anything other than how the analogue signal was being turned into a digital signal, or vice-versa.

I've had countless conversations with countless fellow gear nerds about countless pieces of gear, and literally ZERO times has anyone ever said "yeah, but what about your A/D converters" outside of the context of an internet thread where someone's asking what A/D converters are best (and everyone has a completely different answer, ranging from "spend as much as you can" to "your sound will suck unless you buy exactly what I bought", via "who gives a sh*t?")

So it would seem I've answered my own question, but despite appearances I am genuinely open to being schooled on this. Would I be better upgrading my apparently entry-level converters rather than spending the money on for instance a nice mic preamp? If so, why is that?

And, crucially, if I can't hear a problem with my sound, is there in fact a problem at all?

Sorry to have waffled on, I look forward to your answers.

Stuckfast

What you need to understand here us that Burl is a bit of a special case. Their converters are designed NOT to be transparent. They have a deliberately coloured sound which is meant to be appealing and possibly a bit reminiscent of older analogue recording systems.

So if you replace AN Other set of generic converters with Burls, you might well notice a difference, but it wouldn't exactly be a better/worse difference. And I suspect it would still be subtle.

I've never done a shootout of A-D converters because that's really hard to set up properly. I have sat in on a couple of D-A converter shootouts, and have always come away with the impression that the differences are absolutely minuscule. I would be doubtful about my ability to tell them apart in a blind test in many cases.

So, for what it's worth, my opinion is that there are many, many other ways in which you could make a bigger difference to your recordings by spending £4k. Top of the list would probably be proper acoustic treatment.

Lodious

I use a Lavry DA-11 with a pair of ATC active speakers for domestic listening. I bought a RME converter to replace the DA-11 a few months back. The differences were (IMHO) very, very small. I actually preferred the DA-11 and returned the RME, but either sounded great. 

For recording, I went from a Focusrite Saffire to RME UFX II. I think the RME is slightly better, but nothing to get excited about. Room treatment would make a far bigger difference.

maltingsaudio

Coming from a live sound point of view you can hear a difference between preamps on different desks and supposedly a difference between 48 and 96k bit rates although I can honestly say it is so miniscule as that justifying hundreds of pounds to upgrade is not worth it. You were concerned about the Ad/da converters this is just a process which chops up the audio into digital bits and chops them back after they’ve hit the preamps. Which provided they are working as they should shouldn’t have any effect on the signal, it’s only the quality of the signal that counts, 

So in answer to your question if you are happy with the sound your getting , you could go out and spend thousands to find little or no improvement, on the other hand you could find a great deal of difference using more or less gain on the analogue side of the Input 

octatonic

Stuckfast said:

What you need to understand here us that Burl is a bit of a special case. Their converters are designed NOT to be transparent. They have a deliberately coloured sound which is meant to be appealing and possibly a bit reminiscent of older analogue recording systems.

So if you replace AN Other set of generic converters with Burls, you might well notice a difference, but it wouldn't exactly be a better/worse difference. And I suspect it would still be subtle.

I've never done a shootout of A-D converters because that's really hard to set up properly. I have sat in on a couple of D-A converter shootouts, and have always come away with the impression that the differences are absolutely minuscule. I would be doubtful about my ability to tell them apart in a blind test in many cases.

So, for what it's worth, my opinion is that there are many, many other ways in which you could make a bigger difference to your recordings by spending £4k. Top of the list would probably be proper acoustic treatment.

Agree^^^.

IMHO conversion quality is less of an issue than it ever has been- even prosumer devices are pretty decent sounding now we have 24 bit devices.
I would personally worry more about driver support, low latency and mic preamp specification than anything else.

I have a variety of different converters/interfaces here and the difference in the conversion is not so noticeable if I am using good quality outboard going into them.

The onboard mic preamps do sound quite different though- I generally don't use them in the cheaper devices and instead use an outboard device.

The only set of converters I've heard recently which were clearly on another level to anything else I had heard were the Avid MTRX (same conversion as the DAD AX32), but they are £5k for an empty shell and then about £2k for every 8 channels of input or output. A 16 channel MTRX is £11k. It should be amazing sounding for that.

Burl make quality gear but their digital to analogue converters only make sense to me if you are using some sort of summing mixer, a console or an external 2 track device, otherwise you are monitoring a signal that you will not be hearing in the final product.
Their analogue to digital converters have a particular sound I like but don't immediately need.
I have a couple of their mic preamps and they are excellent.

Winny_Pooh

Yes conversion is not so much of an issue but I'd look at something mid priced as an interface as I'd  not want to use the Mackie preamps. I went from Digi-002 pres/conversion to Audient many years ago and that really helped everything.

So in your situation I'd get a better 2 channel interface for less than £400 and then if you want a noticeable improvement spend Over £500 on a nice mic. The difference between a £100, £500 & £2000 mic is worth it if you have the money and far more so than a £2000 AD converter. Just dont go and spend £2K on a Neumann U87 from Thomann or something silly, do your research.

andy_k

Eric Valentine did an excellent video recently discussing this very topic, (listening tests ) well worth a watch. He's put the time in, so you dont have to.

Tex Mexico

EV's comments in general on his Q&A posts are very interesting. I note that while dismissing the question of A/D conversion as mostly academic for the kind of music I trade in (which is reassuring), he also says "I think the reality is that the differences between a Mackie mic pre and a Vintage Neve mic pre are relatively subtle. I feel I could make a record I was perfectly happy with using either mic pre." His take is that mic choice is more important than preamp choice, because it's the mic that has the right or wrong character for the source.

All of these things coming from someone who produces records at his level, and of the kind of music I make, are very encouraging and they do in hindsight reflect my own experience of the kinds of equipment which have made real differences to the quality of my recordings (e.g. good monitors), and those which have made surprisingly little difference considering their cost (e.g. valve channel strips). EV does clarify that he sees a point in pursuing incremental improvements through better gear, but that he's unsurprisingly of the opinion that it's hard work and good choices that contribute the most to the sound of a record.


It's weird, considering how many years I spent hacking records together on a shoestring of cheap gear and improvisation, how prone I am now to putting stuff off until I have the "correct" setup. Even now I'm sort-of annoyed that I'm just using the Onyx preamps in my interface and my microphones aren't all that expensive, knowing full well that they're actually pretty good (and not just for the price, either), and limited not by their quality but by the space I'm in and my technical ability. I could drop £5k upgrading them and probably see no actual benefit. The difference is that I previously could never have afforded £5k, or £1k, or even £500 for mics and preamps, so I had to make do with what I could find and make my recordings as good as I could with that, whereas now I'm too tempted to write off the problems in my tracking and mixes as caused by whatever corners were cut to make my gear at a price point. All this, of course, in the context of trying to self-produce records in my spare bedroom that sound like they were cut in Rick Rubin's million-dollar studio.