Hello all.
I worked out a method of testing my converters and I'm wondering if there's some giant logical point that I'm missing.
Lowly up-and-coming slut that I am, I have a years-old Darla24 (24 bit/96khz). Problem: Are my Darla's wanging my sound before I even begin mixing? Test: Run a line from one of Darla's outs to one of its ins, then run multiple generations of audio, always using the last-imported audio to feed out and then back into the converters. Like a photograph endlessly copied on a Xerox, I'm reasoning, the nature and degree of degradation should become apparent.
Assuming -- for the sake of the argument -- no flaws in my monitoring system, are there holes in my logic?
Briefly, looking for high frequency content, I used separate samples of a bell tree, a triangle, a clave hit (which I ran through a giant reverb to check degradation of the tail) and then just for the hell of it a snare and a beefy kick. Matching levels was a bit of a chore, as Cubase's buss meters are hardly the best; I wound up using RMS Buddy from DestroyFX. I ran twelve generations (at 24 bits/44.1 khz), and finally compared the last to the original itb samples which had never seen my Darla.
Result? Yup,
some degradation, (in two or three of the sample hits) but
much less than I would have expected from twelve runs through the Xerox, and nothing I feel that I would notice in a mix (of course the cumulative effect of multiple tracks should be considered, but usually just about a quarter or third of my tracks require the conversion). But that was after
twelve generations, which actually is more like 24 conversions, counting all the ins and outs, while my usual tracking method requires I just hit the converters once.
I realize it all comes down to what I personally can live with, and I may well invest in superlative converters in the coming year or two, but I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts on the subject. thanks.
