Quote:
Originally Posted by Wheelomatic  Thanks Bristol for breaking me off some knowledge. I'm glad to hear from someone with the same interface as me. I may do a more "real world" test per your recommendation with an old Mackie 1402 mixer a friend has. And see what I hear. You're also right, there's no reason for me to be a namby pamby. Experiment. It ain't like I haven't experimented before (recording strikes to a crinkled paper bag over a couch pillow to "fill" out a snare -- spent days lining that one up to the original snare and it sounded ********. Of course I left it in for the ******** vibe that my songs invariably generate).
Thanks again for the insight.
Wheels |
Yep, you shouldn't take my word for it any more than you should take an opposing opinion posters word for it. Test your gear and know for sure.
I tested just the conversion first, profire out straight to profire in, to prove to myself that what I accademically believed (ie 1 round trip of the signal was not a problem for the converters) was in fact true in my situation on my equipment
Then add the outboard and see what is different and know for sure that it is because of the mackie or whatever it may be, and not the conversion (assuming the converters pass muster on the first test)
There are so many opinions on so many forums that seem to say nothing but the preverbial "64 thousand dollar" converters are good enough for round tripping a signal it got me scratching my head and thinking, but if that is the case how can anyone possibly record and mix a record on anything but this "perfect gear". if the conversion were really that bad on anything else, it would have to show up immediately in anything you recorded or listened back to. After all listening to a recorded track is a round trip of A/D to D/A if you think about it.
Once I realized how easy it is to set up these kind of tests, 30 seconds to plug 2 TRS calbles from 2 line outs to 2 line ins. hit record, Record 30 seconds of material. zoom in and ensure the two files line up, make sure the levels match, phase invert one track hit play and see if there is any audible variance or if they simply null so far down into the noise floor that they are to all practical purposes, essentially the same, I test all kinds of stuff on these boards that peak my interest that may or may not impact my sound.
Total time taken 5 minutes which is less time than it takes to log on to a forum, do a search for converters, find a relevant thread and read the first couple of posts.
Now instead of a bunch of strangers opinions of generalities I have specific knowledge of the only thing that is really important to me: MY GEAR
I'm always amazed that more newbs like me aren't prepared to do this for themselves but will run out spend hard earned cash on stuff because of what some guy on the web said. Strange world we live in!