best recommandation for a very good stereo DA after summing

[andrea19837]

PCM4222

[VT-MHE]

man there are way too many good ones out there. idk know where to start
i guess the best is if u want to save you money ross martin has a top o the line dac for 179 that is as good or better than all the super named dac's. but if you want to go name brand idk get your hands on some and see how you like them they are all good but range a great deal in cost. lynx hilo, apogee (mini dac, rosetta 200), antelope DA, burl dac, mytek 192 dac, lavry blue/black dac, forssell dac, bricasti dac, the list goes on....... these are all great DA converters. pick anyone and you'll be happy.

[cornwall6000]

Originally Posted by VT-MHE

man there are way too many good ones out there. idk know where to start
i guess the best is if u want to save you money ross martin has a top o the line dac for 179 that is as good or better than all the super named dac's. but if you want to go name brand idk get your hands on some and see how you like them they are all good but range a great deal in cost. lynx hilo, apogee (mini dac, rosetta 200), antelope DA, burl dac, mytek 192 dac, lavry blue/black dac, forssell dac, bricasti dac, the list goes on....... these are all great DA converters. pick anyone and you'll be happy.

i'm kinda in the same boat as o.p. and very interested to hear more.
have been looking for (or at least thinking about looking for) a good set of stereo d/a conversion. mostly for printing my 2-mixes back in, but of course tracking as well.

wondering how much i'd have to spend to improve - and by improve i mean make a "real, noticeable difference to my ears" - on the aurora 16 i currently use for this purpose (and all my conversion). clearly, this is a debated-to-death topic likely to glean all sorts of heated answers.

but interested, nonetheless......

[VT-MHE]

Originally Posted by cornwall6000

i'm kinda in the same boat as o.p. and very interested to hear more.
have been looking for (or at least thinking about looking for) a good set of stereo d/a conversion. mostly for printing my 2-mixes back in, but of course tracking as well.

wondering how much i'd have to spend to improve - and by improve i mean make a "real, noticeable difference to my ears" - on the aurora 16 i currently use for this purpose (and all my conversion). clearly, this is a debated-to-death topic likely to glean all sorts of heated answers.

but interested, nonetheless......

it becomes a game of inches at a certain point. and you have to figure out if your going to play that game. that game can get very expensive lol. i think the aurora converters can do the job but it your looking for a bit more you might wanna check out lavry, prism, forssell, weiss, bricasti, cranesong for that extra detail. i have the forssel mada and i can definitely tell the difference. the definition is more solid and defined than the auroras. both in the ad and da. but its not by this gigantic landslide margin. they lynx sound very very good and have great detail. personally im going to switch to the symphony io because i fell in love with it and i perfer it over the lynx. the key is perfer. they all get the job done.

i do feel that the symphony sounds better than the lynx though. if i had gobs of money i might use all forssell for DA. do your best to listen to these units if you can. sometimes it takes your ears a few days to really adjust to the full scale of what the difference really is in the different converters.

[ISedlacek]

I tried and used many DA, but none sounded as full and natural as Forssell DA. I use it all the time (there is one rather cheap in second hand section now)

[Sensorychaos]

Thank's for your replies...I will try to investigate more in that direction too.

[Myles83]

Forssell

I have the MADA-2 and it is excellent

[cornwall6000]

rats. that's bad news for me. because the forssell is more money than i was hoping to spend, if and when i DO undertake my little 2-channel a/d upgrade.....

(and it's only "bad news" because i love fred's mic pres so effing much - i'm going to have to give his converters a serious, hard look. oy.)

the ross martin obviously intrigues as well, via JW's and others' recos. hard to beat that price. lack of wordclock sync may be an issue. and i know i shouldn't be, but i'm a little trepidatious based on the....um...slightly scattered nature of the ross martin website.....

[Runnytofu]

I ordered a 4222 myself just a week or so ago for exactly the same purpose, so if you can afford to wait a few weeks, ask me when I get it and I'll let you know how it goes.

[Henke]

+1 for the PCM4222.
Check out Ross Martin Audio

[nms]

Just to clarify since there's boat loads of hype and (curiously) not a single person with any sort of measured analysis of the units.. the 4222's tested worse than every unit listed in the ultimate converter thread. Noise floor issues, disrtortion, low end rolloff that fluctuates according to how hard it's hit, more gain drift than I've ever seen in a unit, etc. He believes some of it was due to the opa1632 op amps running too hot and has since changed that.. but until someone competent gives one of the new revisions a thorough checkup and finds massive improvements.. it's very safe to say that this won't be your shortcut to buying a high end converter.

To the OP.. pick up a Hilo for $2k man. That way you have some of the best conversion around for both monitoring as well as recording your mix.

I definitely prefer Lavry to Mytek though if you want to go that route. Lavry AD10 is a good choice.

[natpub]

You will be perfectly happy and worry free with the Mytek. Go ahead and listen to your friends.

[Abbas Alshafai]

If I were you, I wouldnt go for another convertor at this point.

Using Y cables, I would take the output from the 8816, and send a copy to the monitoring system, and the other copy to the AD converter. Of course, this setup will be efficient if the signal degradation of the used Y cables is not noticeable.

Working with this setup, you can use the $3000 on other outboard gears. (IMHO, I dont believe that doing two levels of conversion just for the summing is worth it.)

[NathanEldred]

Originally Posted by natpub

You will be perfectly happy and worry free with the Mytek. Go ahead and listen to your friends.

+1 on the new Mytek DSD 192 DAC They are excellent sounding.

Edit: OP said "DA" so that's what I recommended. If he meant an A/D then check out the Mytek stereo 192 ADC.

[nms]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

The PCM4222 tests very good here. Nothing wrong with that chipset. Now, who is "he"? Did "he" test a RMA unit? Or a Burrbrown EVM? Clarification is needed here.

Hey Jim. I messaged you a while ago with the full report on what I found. This was a RMA unit so by "he" I meant Ross. He said he believes the opamps were prone to thermal issues causing the high levels of distortion and poor noise floor. Do you have one of his ADCs? Have you tried recording a bit of silence then closely examining the noise floor in a wave editor?

I measured a noise floor of -94dbfs RMS, a large low freq response roll off of -0.2db @50hz, and RMAA revealed high amounts of IMD and THD. The IMD & THD more than doubled between the -1dbfs and -13dbfs input level range.

[Mgr]

Very interested too but kind of worried that there won't be any shortcut to have an excellent AD with a low price tag...

Have anyone compared the Weiss adc2 to the prism dream ? (and yes I know its completely out of OP price range, but just wanted to ask...)

[Slikjmuzik]

Originally Posted by nms

Just to clarify since there's boat loads of hype and (curiously) not a single person with any sort of measured analysis of the units.. the 4222's tested worse than every unit listed in the ultimate converter thread. Noise floor issues, disrtortion, low end rolloff that fluctuates according to how hard it's hit, more gain drift than I've ever seen in a unit, etc. He believes some of it was due to the opa1632 op amps running too hot and has since changed that.. but until someone competent gives one of the new revisions a thorough checkup and finds massive improvements.. it's very safe to say that this won't be your shortcut to buying a high end converter.

To the OP.. pick up a Hilo for $2k man. That way you have some of the best conversion around for both monitoring as well as recording your mix.

I definitely prefer Lavry to Mytek though if you want to go that route. Lavry AD10 is a good choice.

I've never captured better sounds that when I finally got the RMA in here. Vocals took a dramatic leap forward with all my mics and not only sound better raw, but take to plug-ins in a much more pleasing way. I also feel my Aurora also took a step forward.

[nms]

Could you run a loopback with your unit using the Right Mark Audio Analyzer test file? I'd like to see if it suffers from the symptoms I found. If you PM me with a download link I'll go over it.