Quote:
Originally Posted by s o l v e n t  Hi,
I did a lot of posting during the beginnings of this thread, and just wanted to report that I finally picked up a Zed R16, and I am definitely mighty happy with the sound quality, and it is a great step forward for improving my workflow (these being the main attractions for me about this board -- & it doesn't disappoint).
Can we have an official response from A&H about this supposedly inferior quality of the AD/DA on the Main stereo in/out versus the AD/DA of the 16 channels? I don't want to just "use my ears" here -- if the Main stereo AD/DAs are technically inferior, it will alter the way that I use the board, so I want to know...
thx
Jason |
Hi Jason,
Sorry for the delay.
Glad you've "taken the plunge" and got yourself a ZED-R16.
Regarding the stereo AD/DA, the DAC is 114dB dynamic range and the ADC is 108dB so is just a few dB below the performance of the channel converters. My reasoning is that in an analogue mix bus situation, the slightly higher noise of the bus (compared to an individual channel) will be dominant, and the stereo AD/DA is matched so as not to degrade the bus performance.
So the fact remains that the cleanest path is through the channel converters, then you can mix in your DAW whilst monitoring with the L/R channels, or you can mixdown in analogue recording the L/R ADC signals. This is dependent on method and personal preference - some like the sound of summing in analogue rather than in the computer.
Also, regarding the new (XP/Vista64) drivers - I posted them on this thread first as a few guys were keen to try them before full release, but there were some WDM mode channel issues which needed sorting so we didn't put them on the website. I believe these are fixed now so we should have them on the website soon (and here probably!)
Cheers,
Mike.