High end interface

[bace]

If you are in to high end. At least check out prism.

[pianoman]

I'd be curious to learn from those who preferred their favorite pre to the ULN-2 pre but then preferred the ULN-8/LIO pre to their "favorite" pre. Any experiences out there?

(Of course I realize I need to listen for myself in my environment, etc.)

Originally Posted by edwinhurwitz

You have no idea how many people go into Metric Halo land saying the same thing and then end up selling their "favorite" pres after hearing the ULN-8/LIO pres!

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by SabreChris

Todays mid-level interface is probably equivalent to a high end one from five years ago. This is why making a choice on converters is difficult. Unless you are buying the absolute best at that time, it will likely be upstaged in short order.

And based on the specs of the mytek, I would think it is only a tiny improvement over the RME, but there is more than specs involved.

Originally Posted by Bill@WelcomeHome

What is often skipped in this converter conversation is the quality and design of all the supporting circuitry and the quality of the circuit boards themselves. It isn't like a $1,000 interface and a $5,000 interface cost the same to build and the $5,000 guys just take more profit.

But indeed, as the quality and costs increase, the improvement per dollar spent becomes much smaller.

+1.

Sonically, the above is probably true.

But I'd rather have an Apogee AD8000 from the late 90s than a Behringer ADA8000 from today.

And this is reflected in the 2nd hand prices.

[kalle789]

Originally Posted by voxhumana

I'm running W7 at home (after replacing my 5th Mac Pro motherboard in two years, I am NEVER buying another Mac, at home or in the commercial studio).

I can beat you on that. I had to replace 9 MacPro motherboards in three weeks. I run four commercial studios. Cost me thousands of dollars! Thousands! I´ll never buy a Mac again either

+1 ULN 8

[voxhumana]

Originally Posted by kalle789

I can beat you on that. I had to replace 9 MacPro motherboards in three weeks. I run four commercial studios. Cost me thousands of dollars! Thousands! I´ll never buy a Mac again either

+1 ULN 8

OUCH!!! Ouch ouch ouch.

Something has gone definitely wrong with Apple quality control. in the 90s I had a Mac IIFX that I hauled around the world in a road case and it never hiccuped, and I've got a G4 that still chugs along.

But ALL of my Macs in the last few years have had hardware problems - motherboards, bad memory, drive failures. As much as I love OSX, it don't work so good when the hardware fails.

[voxhumana]

Originally Posted by jwleeman

What's the budget?

Meh, I'm on a pro budget. If I don't have all the cash I need now, I can wait a month or two to get it together.

Having said that, I'm not interested in throwing money away (who is?).

[Masaaki]

I'm not sure you are using desktop or laptop, but the way Bill does is really 'modular' and less money is wasted, in my opinion, for this kind of high end setup.

RME PCI/PCIe cards such as HDSPe AES will give you super low latency (32 buffer, no problem) and flexible routing (you know Total Mix), plus you can interface with 2ch ADC, 2ch DAC from Lavry, Mytek, Benchmark, etc. If you need more channels, just buy another 2ch and stack them up, or upgrade with Lavry's unit with more I/O.

RME UCX is also pretty good low latency interface (in a sense to send/receive digital in/out), but AES in/out isn't there, so you need to find converters with ADAT in/out if you want to expand I/O later. So, if your choice of UCX is because of the laptop, then PCI/PCIe solution is not available, but if you use desktop, replacing UCX with PCI/PCIe AES card would give you more choices and better performance (hence less money wasted). I know your UCX is very new, so I'm pretty sure somebody will buy second hand quickly if priced reasonable.

[jwleeman]

Originally Posted by voxhumana

Meh, I'm on a pro budget. If I don't have all the cash I need now, I can wait a month or two to get it together.

Having said that, I'm not interested in throwing money away (who is?).

Well, it's always been my dream to own a Prism ADA-8XR at some point, but it's pretty extreme. Anyone have one of these babies?

[unseen hand]

Originally Posted by pianoman

I'd be curious to learn from those who preferred their favorite pre to the ULN-2 pre but then preferred the ULN-8/LIO pre to their "favorite" pre. Any experiences out there?

(Of course I realize I need to listen for myself in my environment, etc.)

I was using my using my uln-8 for the converters and had my two favorite pres going line in. I won't say the brands but i will say that one of the pres was a very popular classic solid state brand that people love on gearslutz and the other was a top end tube preamp.

For kicks i decided to bypass the pres and give the metric halo uln-8 pres a go and i was totally blown away how good they where. To be honest i was a little bummed out.

I use mostly ribbon mics and the pres just really opened them up to where i felt i was getting the most out of them. My recording actually sounded more "analog" or "vintage" due to the RCA ribbon mics really showing their colors.

with that said, i'd never rid myself of a variety of nice pres. right now I have 2 solid state pres, 2 tube pres and 4 metric halo pres running through the uln-8 instead of 4 solid state and 4 tube.

[rhizomeman]

Unseen,

Why not just tell us what the pres were? That's sort of the point of this forum .



-rhizomeman