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Originally Posted by Teletude  If I'm not mistaken, so does MOTU and a number of others. I've been told there's actually only a handful of companies that manufacture these chips. The real differences are of course in the clocks, filters, and supporting analogue circuitry.
My point is this. I've got to believe that if ANY professional DAW out there (Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, ProTools, whatever) didn't pass digital audio bit for bit, we would have seen the empirical data ad nauseam. ESPECIALLY if the detractor was ProTools.
If fact, didn't Lynn Fuston and crew over at 3d Audio kind of prove this a few years back with their Awesome DAWsome experiment? That isn't to say that different DAW's with different pan laws would sound the same on all mixes. Nor would a 32 bit float mixer give the same results as a 48 bit fixed on all material regardless of dynamic range (or even each time you hit play). I'm just saying, isn't it a bit myopic to overlook the converters as the primary source of the differing timbres? Not saying they're not there; just discredit where discredit is due.
Maybe I'm just one of the huddled masses. The last DAW I used before PT was Opcode Studio Vision. And I bought it new if that tells you how long ago that was. I will agree on this though, the Radar converters do sound especially nice. There is something intrinsically natural to their sound. |
Cubase / Nuendo is closest to the Radar sound naturally not factoring converters in...the RME is closer to the HD system in specs / functionality than most.
I have also used the recent MOTU's in an another exhaustive test concerning preamps of all things (not for use in a recording studio) and found several flaws with how the Traveler in particular is constructed. The build quality is such that phantom power on those units isn't even a functional 48 volts. (I measured it with a volt meter...it's dangerously underpowered, and I'm still not sure how that one got off the production line) I've disected those units and they never made it to the table with comparing converters because quite simply put...they were completely lacking in all counts in terms of construction. The RME...love them or hate them...is built like a tank. Nothing by Motu feels like anything but a flimsy toy by comparison.
The RME paired with Cubase has been the mainstay of my studio for two and half years...I see no reason to change since I run a private studio and own a small indie label...I'm really my own boss anyways.
For technical gigs like MyStudio...doing this test inspired a lot of things...and more tests...and more questions...and so on.