Black Lion Audio 2 channel A/D coming very soon!

[The dman]

Originally Posted by BorrelNote

Nothing personal about that. I simply want great conversion dude, forget about a sexual relationship with it.

LOL

[zkaudio]

can't argue with the paper specs though, thing looks very promising on paper.

[living sounds]

As far as converters are concerned, the usual specs are worthless. A converter may look great on paper and still sound mediocre. Try the Emu audio cards for this.

The Sparrow however is a great sounding converter. I had a unit here for testing, sounded very much alive. It wasn't working properly though (got damaged shipping), so I'm waiting for the replacement now. I'll put it up against a Lynx Aurora when I've got it.

From my experience BLA definitely is no cult, but a company dedicated to great sounding affordable gear.

Originally Posted by zkaudio

can't argue with the paper specs though, thing looks very promising on paper.

[NathanEldred]

Originally Posted by rkwyent

Where did the manufacturer and the dealer go???

I'm right here. If you'd like to give me a call to discuss it, we're open 84 hours per week by phone, and I answer emails usually until 2-3 am East coast time which adds another 20 hours of communication.

[peeder]

Originally Posted by zkaudio

can't argue with the paper specs though, thing looks very promising on paper.

Black Lion Audio Micro ADC

Dynamic range, Converter: 120dB
Dynamic range, Analog: 33dB
SNR: -110dB
Slew rate, Analog: approx 6000v/us, depending upon input signal strength
Max analog input before digital clipping: +10dBu
Min analog input necessary for digital output: -20dBu
Inputs: Balanced, TRS
Outputs: SPDIF, AES-EBU
Sampling rates: 44.1kHz-192kHz
Bit rate: 24 bit

Yeah the specs look "promising"...as in...what?

I have no idea what they are getting at. Most converter specs tell you the dynamic range and the THD+N of the converter, plus any weighting used on that. I have no idea what the "Analog" dynamic range is...is that some measure of distortion performance? Is the dynamic range really only 33db Analog? You know that an ordinary cassette tape has over 50db of dynamic range? A dithered CD has over 93db of dynamic range? Is that just the range of the attenuation knob on the front?

No metering. No rack-mount. Connectors on both ends. Build quality that doesn't survive shipping.

Notice how in typical modder fashion they talk about slew rate. Modders are all about transient response. Transient response is not what you want at all costs, although it can make you say things like "this converter sounds alive dooood." Much of the analog and vintage obsession is about slower, not faster, transient response.

Note also how in the photo there is a connector that looks like a BNC connector but it actually is labeled S/PDIF. Was that a photo of a prototype? We can't even see the actual unit.

Note how this is a company that sells external clocks with the typical horseshit about external sync improving converter performance, but their own converter apparently cannot be externally synced.

The only reason I'm going on about it is that so many of the BLA Borg pile into these online forums and go on about it in the other direction. In a completely evidence-free, full-risk manner. Someone has to stand up to this nonsense if the online forums are to have any integrity.

[peeder]

Originally Posted by NathanEldred

I'm right here. If you'd like to give me a call to discuss it, we're open 84 hours per week by phone, and I answer emails usually until 2-3 am East coast time which adds another 20 hours of communication.

I CANNOT TALK ABOUT THINGS IN WRITING IN AN OPEN FORUM.

[NathanEldred]

Originally Posted by peeder

I CANNOT TALK ABOUT THINGS IN WRITING.

Then I guess you should call me, Mr. Peeder, I usually pick up the phone directly 80% of the time.

[Jules]

Peeder, we get the point! - No returns policy = something you don't like.

Can we move on now please?

Talk about flogging a dead horse...

[burilius]

"All peeder is saying is that testing out BLA products would be easier with a money-back guarantee. Manufacturers routinely put their money where their mouth is. BLA doesn't do this, and as a consumer, it irks peeder. He gets on these threads 'cause if BLA did offer a money back guarantee, he'd be first in line to try out their products. Why BLA just doesn't do that for p, i don't know. might be the easiest way to get him to pipe down. He tends to be very vocal about products he likes."

Peeder mostly sounds like he likes to complain about small businesses without even knowing how to read a spec sheet. Personally, I have a full-time job which keeps me from neurotic posting and half-informed rants. But I like to log in every once and a while to read this kind of stuff. But really, this kind of only-child style whining is rarely remedied by giving the child the lollypop they were crying about. I would kinda question BLA's judgement trying to shut someone up who isn't gonna be happy anyway. This is why I don't go on forums. Not any real commenting on the products. Just nit-picking photos and making hilarious accusations. Go Peeder! Someone give him a stick, I think I saw the horse's leg twitch.

[peeder]

OK please go to town on me, I'm clearly the one trying to take money away from you guys.

I'll just post this link without comment and drop the issue:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/advertisements/

[burilius]

Hey Peeder. I'm still pretty green here. Don't tuck your tail and run just because some people looked you in the eye and asked you to back up your claims. Maybe it is better that manufacturers and dealers DO stay off these forums so Peeder can feel strong again. Okay, okay, I'll go look at Peeder's little link.

[willsing]

Originally Posted by Jules

Peeder, we get the point! - No returns policy = something you don't like.

Can we move on now please?

Talk about flogging a dead horse...

LOL!! Exactly. Bit peculiar that one should put so much energy into flogging these guys. Sounds like a vendetta (or maybe he just has too much time to post). Look, I am not getting paid by these guys or a member of some strange cult. Yeah, I did plunk down the money and buy one of these pups. And you know what....I am totally satisfied and have kept it. And I am the kind of guy this is meant for. A home studio guy with a picky ear.

Peeder, you should really apply a little self-discipline here. Your point of view is far from balanced as it usually seems to be. Have a little dignity man. You are jumping to some wild conclusions and assuming quite a bit.

My take is that these guys are really into the development of their product and are in fact dedicated and straight forward. At least they have been with me. That's why your posts seem even more offensive. Your contention that they are like Scientologists is simply bizarre. They may not have a slick marketing strategy and experience like some of the larger manufacturers do. Give them time. But your ripping into them with these wild and rabid comments is the kind of behavior that should be checked in at the door when you come here. Some times we have got to keep our egos in check and have a little humility. I guess what I am trying to say is that if you have actually been done wrong by these guys with this product, we would all listen. But all this comes from you imagining you know what you are talking about, so again, you should probably hold onto your cannons until there is an actual offense. Remember the golden rule, eh.

I know one thing for sure, when and if you do ever give your opinion on this product, I sure as heck would not put a lot of stock in your unbiased opinion.

[deuc647]

I am in between converters right now and the sparrow looks very promising, but if they claim to hol dwater, why not get a unit to peeder to eval? Im sure BLA isnt gonna miss a single unit for that long. Ill probably shell out and buy one pretty soon to use, ive spent more on beer in a month, also Peeder, i say speak ur mind, and also props to jules for keeping it open, i know some other forums where if the mod doesnt like what u say, he will close it

[Duardo]

I am in between converters right now and the sparrow looks very promising, but if they claim to hol dwater, why not get a unit to peeder to eval?

Why Peeder, of all people?

[rkwyent]

Originally Posted by Duardo

Why Peeder, of all people?

Many people on this board know peeder and value his opinion.

He is in no way affiliated with BLA.

Also, if they manage to covince a nay sayer then the product must be great.

Even better lets have Jim Williams evaluate it or Bob Ohlsson. That should be interesting.

Shipping out one unit as a loaner for testing should'nt be that bad. Especially if it is as god as it is said to be.

[rkwyent]

bump

[liazord]

Well I just placed an order for one with Atlas which means I have just made a commitment to upgrading my conversion path... If the Sparrow doesn't do it for me then it's on to Mytek or Lavry...

Seems like a fairly slutzy thing to do.

Lia

[zkaudio]

Mine is sitting at my house,

I will take close up pics and post them up later... As for samples, I just sold my daw so i will have to wait until I can find my old mbox to do an A/B test for yall.

ZK

[peeder]

I would test the unit in good faith...I'd shoot it out against the RME ADI-2 on my typical set of tests: noise floor level and smoothness, distortion including THD and IMD, sine sweeps looking at frequency response, filter steepness and resonance, aliasing, studies of calibration, headroom and clipping behavior, plus plenty of subjective listening on pre-recorded and live material.

But even without a competent shootout, please compare, for similar dollars, what the RME ADI-2 gives you vs. this: a DAC, many more connectivity options including ADAT and XLR i/o, external sync (with reclocking jitter suppression), metering, rackmountability, clearly written, standard specs, fine build quality, an experienced company with many units in the field, brand recognition for resale value, etc. Oh yeah, plus a money-back satisfaction guarantee.

[BorrelNote]

but the BLA sounds better

[Duardo]

Many people on this board know peeder and value his opinion.

He is in no way affiliated with BLA.

Also, if they manage to covince a nay sayer then the product must be great.

Even better lets have Jim Williams evaluate it or Bob Ohlsson. That should be interesting.

Shipping out one unit as a loaner for testing should'nt be that bad. Especially if it is as god as it is said to be.

BLA appear to be in the position where they can't keep up with the demand for the product as it is, which is why they only have two dealers at this time...

There are already quite a few people on the boards who have the converter and reported on their experiences with them, and some of them have been around for longer than Peeder...

After everything he's said on this thread I would not consider him to be at all unbiased...like this:

But even without a competent shootout, please compare, for similar dollars, what the RME ADI-2 gives you vs. this: a DAC, many more connectivity options including ADAT and XLR i/o, external sync (with reclocking jitter suppression), metering, rackmountability, clearly written, standard specs, fine build quality, an experienced company with many units in the field, brand recognition for resale value, etc. Oh yeah, plus a money-back satisfaction guarantee.

I would rather hear from someone who was able to approach the product with a clean slate. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not saying that I don't think that Peeder would be able to give the converter a fair shake...but if I were a small company like BLA and was at the point where I was ready to send a few eval units out I don't think someone who was already so predisposed against my product would be my first choice.

And this horse has been beaten already, but...RME doesn't offer a money-back guarantee. BLA doesn't not offer a money-back guarantee. It's their dealers. Atlas is an RME dealer, so if you bought your fully-featured ADI-2 from them you wouldn't be able to return it for a refund either.

I don't disagree that it would be wise for BLA to seek out at least one dealer who does offer a money-back guarantee, but they're not the ones who don't offer it.

[peeder]

As recently as last week Full Compass told me they would be able to provide a money-back guarantee if the manufacturer (of another product, not BLA) would take the unit back. So yes in practice the manufacturer's policy does indeed affect whether an MBG is offered.

Just FYI.

[Duardo]

As recently as last week Full Compass told me they would be able to provide a money-back guarantee if the manufacturer would take the unit back. So yes in practice the manufacturer's policy does indeed affect whether an MBG is offered.

Unless the manufacturer stipulates that a dealer cannot take a return on a product...which BLA has already stated they haven't...then it's up to the dealer whether they can take a return. And it's not even that Atlas doesn't take returns...it's just that they don't offer money back for returns, only exchanges. It has nothing to do with the manufacturer in their case...that's the way it is for all of the product they sell, right?

As for your Full Compass example, if they were a stocking dealer I'm sure they'd be willing to offer a money-back guarantee on it as they would simply take the product back and sell it to someone else. The manufacturer wouldn't be involved at all. If they were referring specifically to BLA's A/D I'm fairly certain that what they were saying was that if they were able to special order one in for you (can they? I was under the impression that they weren't a dealer) they would be able to offer a money-back guarantee only if the manufacturer would take it back, which is common practice for special orders with most dealers, even those that do offer money-back guarantees.

[living sounds]

Since when is RME known to build good sounding converters? Compare the Sparrow to Prism, Lavry, Mytek, Lynx, Benchmark, Apogee, that would make sense, but RME is not on the same level.

[ddageek]

Originally Posted by peeder

As recently as last week Full Compass told me they would be able to provide a money-back guarantee if the manufacturer (of another product, not BLA) would take the unit back. So yes in practice the manufacturer's policy does indeed affect whether an MBG is offered.

Just FYI.

OK Peeder since you used my old emploer as your example I'm going to make a couple of points!

1 It is the dealer you the customer are agreeing to purchase terms with so in most cases it is the dealer who sets return policy (read fullco's stated policy all sales are final)
2 Yes some manufactures will make accommodations but often this is a pain in the rear for the manufacture, dealer and the buyer!
3 at this price point I expect some risk
4 after hearing a tweekhead 002r nets to a stock 002r I became a BLA fan didnt join a cult just felt like I heard a drastic improvement on price point piece!

[finukes1]

hello from a newbie-just purchased a sparrow DAC from atlas audio- first, i am not an audio freek-lol. i ran the sparrow into the spdif in of a delta 1010lt pci card and did some vocal, acoustic & electric guitar, and room mic drum tracks all at 96 (the delta 1010lt is maxed at 96)using a rode NT2-A. i only modeled the electric guitar (digitech rp150). IMHO the results are much better, cleaner and uncolored the way i like it. i used a low end behringer mic200 pre for phantom just to warm a touch. i recorded on a dell p4 2.8 3 gigs ram using-electric guitar (gibson les paul studio with rp150), acoustic guitar-(epiphone rp2000 made in korea 1992) and drum tracks using low end acoustic yamaha toms (evans pinstripe clear heads) with mid range gretsch new classic snare(g1 head), and pulse lacquer 22" bass drum with aquarian super kick2 head, yamaha reso head. acoustic and electric guitar strings dAddario XL115's. to my ears the sound is a jump of 50% better from the analog delta1010lt input. no i do not have measurement tools . just my ear lol ,but i can tell that the audio input looks much cleaner going in and that i have to hardly push the crappy berhringer200 pre for a decent drum room mic track, so much so that for my use- decent demo tracks -i will probably be able to just room mic the drums from here on out! oh thank you lord lol i can only imagine what this converter would sound like with a good discrete preamp like a grace101. i will be posting some simple one track samples soon as time permits. Thank you to BLA and Atlas Audio (Matt) for getting this thing to me quick.

[deuc647]

LOL now send it to peeder for further analysis, he said he will pay for shipping JK

[zkaudio]

I have a sparrow in the LA area... if anyone has a studio with more gear than myself, capable of doing a controlled A/B test with level matching and what not, I will bring it over tonight so we can settle this quibble. I know if I do the AB test I'll not level match or something and the test will be null.

[zkaudio]

would be nice if whoever does the test also has a few nice converters, lavry, mytek, prism, apogee. Then we could post blind A/B clips.

[adamlloyd83]

I recently got a Sparrow, but for some reason I'm not getting any sound through it...I have it going SPDIF to the in of an MBox1, 48k session, the Sparrow is set to 48k, and in pro tools I set the hardware to Spdif in Setup>Hardware. Does anyone know what the problem is?

Thanks.