Lynx vs RME

[oreille]

Hi everybody!

I am searching for advice concerning those two devices i already tested the 9652 and the 9632 and i am not so impressed (apart for the latency). Has anyone dealt with the Lynx either the Lynx 2 or the AES models? as i am looking for the best sonic performance in a pci card.

Thanks for your time!

Jean-pierre Brie
http://loreille.com

[edyer]

What about the 9652 were you not impressed with?
I'm curious if it's an issue with the card doing something it shouldn't or an issue with something else in the chain?
I use one myself. I found the card to be great with the exception of the latest updates to the mac os9 software. The midi doesn't work correctly with my setup for some reason so I stick with the older drivers and have no troubles. The card as I understand it is nothing more than a connection/patchbay for converters and midi connections. So I would be interested in what it is doing to the sound. I haven't used the included monitoring software at all I believe it's a dumbed down copy of cubase.
The setup I have is mac os9 on a g4 733 to rme 9652 out to 3 lucid 8824s and midi out/in to a mackie universal control used as a transport controller. I'm using DP 3.11 which is very stable running under the asio driver. From there everything is mixed through a console. The computer is essentially a tape machine. This is a vast improvement over the Digi 002 and Digi 001 that I used previously. The sound is great, the flexibility is great and it's stable. I am going to invest in some 96k converters at some point but I wouldn't give up the 9652 since it has worked so well for me.
Hope that's helpful

[fifthcircle]

I use both Lynx and RME products here and I must say that I'm very impressed with the Lynx stuff- both from driver stability/ease of use as well as sonic quality. I think RME probably has a bit of an edge in drivers, but the Lynx just sounds great. The converters on the Lynx2 are first rate.

--Ben

[oreille]

Thanks for your replies!

Edyer you are probably right as i am too going in thru apogee rosetta 800 converters in the HDSP9652 and back to the apogee.
But still i was wondering if this "connection patchbay for converters" could be better sonically speaking.
Ben do you use any converters in your set-up?

Thanks!

Jean-pierre Brie
http://loreille.com

[edyer]

Jean-pierre, ( cool name )
I don't really know if it has any effect on the sound. That is a good question though. You might try asking rme directly on that to see what they say. My feeling is that there is no effect on the sound since there is no conversion taking place on the card but I could be wrong. I am going to add that I use the rme to clock the converters and it seems to work very well for that purpose.
Eric

[Ruphus]

I used to think that cards engaged without conversion couldn´t do anything to the signal. Until I tried to listen to fellows mp3s through the cheapo sound card in my internet computer. Nothing but crackles and noise, you couldn´t judge the material at all.

Also I have a friend who used to reflect weird things on sonic material I send to him. After a while I found out he was listening through a soundblaster which was heavily screwing up the signal.

There are certainly many other points that make a difference on the part of a card after the convertors, but one relevant thing alone which I think of from the top of my head is the shielding alone.

Guess if Jim Williams was around he could point out to more points than that.

Ruphus

[edyer]

As Arte Johnson would say
" very interesting"
Someone in the know please illuminate this issue.
I'm guessing in the case of the soundblaster that the card was doing the conversion so it could be heard through the speakers ?

[OzNimbus]

Originally posted by fifthcircle
I use both Lynx and RME products here and I must say that I'm very impressed with the Lynx stuff- both from driver stability/ease of use as well as sonic quality. I think RME probably has a bit of an edge in drivers, but the Lynx just sounds great. The converters on the Lynx2 are first rate.

--Ben

What kind of performance are you getting from the Lynx drivers? How powerful is your machine/how low can you set the latency and still retain stability?

-0z-

[Teacher]

Originally posted by OzNimbus
What kind of performance are you getting from the Lynx drivers? How powerful is your machine/how low can you set the latency and still retain stability?

-0z-

thats relative to your system and program you use the drivers are rock solid with my set up anyway Dual Athlon MP1900+ AMD chipset MSI MOBO

[Jim Williams]

Originally posted by Ruphus
I used to think that cards engaged without conversion couldn´t do anything to the signal. Until I tried to listen to fellows mp3s through the cheapo sound card in my internet computer. Nothing but crackles and noise, you couldn´t judge the material at all.

Also I have a friend who used to reflect weird things on sonic material I send to him. After a while I found out he was listening through a soundblaster which was heavily screwing up the signal.

There are certainly many other points that make a difference on the part of a card after the convertors, but one relevant thing alone which I think of from the top of my head is the shielding alone.

Guess if Jim Williams was around he could point out to more points than that.

Ruphus

I use the 9632 and find it's a sample accurate interface which works as good as my best converters. Great converters = great sound. Lesser converters = lesser sound. It all follows this way.
The pc is a noisy place that most analog stages should be kept away from. Just plug in a Fender guitar and walk over to the pc and listen...

The reason the lynx 2 card can get decent specs in a computer card is the way they do the inputs, grounding and bandwidth restrictions. Inputs are INA BurrBrown instumentation input amps with very good noise imunity. The opamps are BB 2227's with 2 mhz bandwidth and low noise. The penalty is a slow slew rate of 2.8 v/us and a somewhat dark top end especially with transient waveforms. The pcb is a four layer design with seperate ground and power planes for more noise imunity.
Sonic benefits are achieved with faster opamps, (with a small amount of radiated noise), a better dac like the cs43122, and better coupling caps. Are you listening, Lynx???

BTW, I just got the new Crystal CS 5381 ADC eval board in. It's a new top end ADC chip with -120 db dynamic range and -110 db thd with 192k sampling, but no dsd. I'll report how it does once I fix up the board. Can you believe they ship this top-o-line converter with 5532 opamps on it! "Digital smart, analog stupid" as we analog dinosaurs like to say.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[Ruphus]

Originally posted by edyer
As Arte Johnson would say
" very interesting"
Someone in the know please illuminate this issue.
I'm guessing in the case of the soundblaster that the card was doing the conversion so it could be heard through the speakers ?

You´re so right, stupido mio didn´t consider the D/A part of the story.
Probably, because I had concluded about PCI card differences before when I thought internal use without conversion ( at occassions when used second card for sampler playing and listened to the result through other convertors inside PT ) would give differing results, compared to listening to samples directly through PT alone. ( But pleas don´t quote me on that one, all too vague and never cared to check out thoroughly.)


Ruphus

[fifthcircle]

Originally posted by OzNimbus
What kind of performance are you getting from the Lynx drivers? How powerful is your machine/how low can you set the latency and still retain stability?

-0z-

Performance is fine. My Lynx card is in my location machine- Sequoia and Samplitude, P4 2.8 GHz, 1Gig Ram... I don't know where my latency is set because I don't do overdubs with it- just tracking concerts. I have a Lynx2 with the AES L-Stream and I do 16 channels of 24/96 without issues...

--Ben

[OzNimbus]

Originally posted by Teacher
thats relative to your system and program you use the drivers are rock solid with my set up anyway Dual Athlon MP1900+ AMD chipset MSI MOBO

Ok, Teacher... let me rephrase that: What kind of latency are YOU getting at your best settings?

-0z-

[Teacher]

that depends on how many plug-ins and track etc. if i'm running a few audio tracks i can get all the way down to 1.5 @44.1 but 256~ 5.8 ms is fine and 512~11.6 is even better..this is all@ 44.1