Cranesong Spider and Aurora 16 latencies?

[Jack Ruston]

Hi

Does anyone happen to know what the AD conversion latencies are for the Lynx Aurora 16 vs the Cranesong Spider's AD.

I understand that the Lynx is the same as the 192...anyone know offhand how many samples?

Reason I ask is because I'm planning a system using both but I would have to split drums across them. I guess I would have to use time adjusters at tracking on one interface or the other. Just trying to get my head around it all!

Thanks

Jack

[Jack Ruston]

Er...Do you record drums?

J

[Jack Ruston]

OK...so when you have several mics up at once, thier relevant timing relationships must be preserved otherwise it all goes very very wrong...you get comb filtering and phasing etc.

I expect what you meant in your first post was that it would not matter if say a vocal was a few samples ahead of a guitar part or something...and I completely agree, but when it comes to multi-mic'd stuff, one sample of delay is one sample too many.

J

[Jack Ruston]

The speed of sound varies according to temperature and the medium through which it's travelling. For our purposes in the studio it is close to 1 foot per millisecond...As you suggest the 'latency' incurred by moving a mic back a few feet will be much greater than the few samples of conversion latency that we're talking about in this case.

HOWEVER the art of multi mic techniques is to position the mics so that a pleasant positive reinforcement occurs, and unpleasant cancellations and comb filtering are minimised. What we're usually talking about here is low end reinforcement. We're looking to make sure that the larger peaks and troughs in the waves arriving at the room mics are more or less aligned with those of the close mics. As you move from very close to the spot mics to positions further away this becomes less of a problem as the waveforms get increasingly less similar. However you should still be looking for pleasing positions. In the case of all close mics and overheads the reinforcement is crucial to getting a great sound. Small mic movements can yield huge changes particularly in the case of very close spots like snare top and bottom. Finding these positions is the art of engineering.

Delays to certain mics can even be an advantage...for example a good trick is to delay the room mics by a few milliseconds if they're not doing a nice thing for you.

But splitting mics across converters with different sample delays would be a nightmare without compensating for it somehow. In theory I suppose you could put room pairs on a different AD latency and then position them so that they sound right with that delay included, but its a minefield that's likely to end in tears. Imagine if you needed to swap some inputs around for some reason..the mics would then be out of position. It would be completely impractical for close mics which need to be 'in phase' rather than 'reinforcing' where they would line up with a decay cycle of the waveform rather than the initial transient peak.

J

[Jack Ruston]

Sorry to bump this but can anyone help?

Thanks

Jack

[Steamy Williams]

Why don't you just contact Lynx and Crane Song? I'm sure they'll both be able to tell you the answer. I called tech support at Lynx and got an answer to the same question about year ago. Unfortunately I don't recall what it was, and have lost my notes from the conversation, otherwise I'd tell you.

[Jack Ruston]

Well I've done that but the guy at Cranesong didn't know and Dave is away until next week apparently.

J

[jslevin]

Originally Posted by Jack Ruston

Reason I ask is because I'm planning a system using both but I would have to split drums across them. I guess I would have to use time adjusters at tracking on one interface or the other. Just trying to get my head around it all!

You "have to" split drums across them? Why? Are you using more than 16 drum mics?

JSL

[Sui_City]

I would assume that he is wanting to use the 8 channels on the Spider (which has got AD built in), and then fill in the balance on the Aurora.

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by Sui_City

I would assume that he is wanting to use the 8 channels on the Spider (which has got AD built in), and then fill in the balance ...

I'm in this situation often. Luckily, I usually only see 4 piece drum kits so I'm able to cover that with the Spider A/Ds. It would be cool if Dave Hill made a simple 8 channel A/D unit for Spider owners that need more inputs and have other mic pres in the rack. It could be powered from the Spider power supply. I think he'd sell a lot of those. Not sure how practical it would be though. He's changed the converters of the Spider along the way and the different versions may have different latencies. This is purely speculation on my part, however.

[jslevin]

Originally Posted by Sui_City

I would assume that he is wanting to use the 8 channels on the Spider (which has got AD built in), and then fill in the balance on the Aurora.

Well, I just figure there's a lot more than one way to skin this particular cat, and a guy with a Crane Song Spider and an Aurora 16 is not exactly lacking in options. If this issue is a big deal for him, either accepting it or correcting it, he can just set up his inputs differently. Certainly drums can be recorded exceptionally well using only the Spider, or using other preamps with only the Aurora.

If he has a few extra overall channels, he could even use a few Spider pres into Aurora converters to make it all work. As I've often observed, other than live recordings of large touring acts, a good engineer should be able to do great work while limited to just 18 inputs for pretty much his/her entire career.

JSL

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by jslevin

Certainly drums can be recorded exceptionally well using ... other preamps with only the Aurora.

If he has a few extra overall channels, he could even use a few Spider pres into Aurora converters to make it all work.

That's what I would do also. 16 channels should be enough for drums, if not, it's definitely better than 10. The difference in converter quality between the Aurora and Spider probably isn't worth sweating. Better to keep the drums all on the same converter(s). And the Spider pre's can still be used in that scenario by tapping the insert, but not the "Tape," unfortunately.

Micing a drum kit with different latencies for some of the mics sounds like a horror show to me. Maybe in a pinch putting ambient mics on a different converter than the close mics could work, but if they were on a converter with less latency than the close mics that could be interesting.

As I recall the Spider has more latency than the Mytek, Apogee and Digi converters I've used it alongside.