RME converters

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by Brownsound

I've been using ADI-8 DS's in my home/portable rig for a few years now and am really happy with them.

I use Apogee/Prism etc in commercial studios and the RME's are certainly in the same league.

Oh my.


They most certainly are not in the same league. Prism are out there in crystal clear land - apogee are good for the price, same with RME. A man with your impressive credits should know better !! . Understood - in a good room wih good mics an playrs and technical know how they'll do the job fin. I wouldn want to track the LSO with em though!!

As an subjective overview RME are hard and thin sounding but definitely worth the money - cuz they're cheap!!. They are in no way comparable to Prism ADA. I have RMEs in our writing rooms and ADAs in one of the recording rooms. Use stock digi converters in the other recording room but am upgrading in he new year to lynx.

RME stuff is fine for he price but they are in no way great converters. They do the job but are not outstanding - especially as DA's.

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by Brownsound

Each to his own

absolutely !!

[tamasdragon]

Did not want to compare it to prism. But what about apogee and rme adi8? I would like to know that. Peel off the hype built around apogee please.
I need them for ad.
Tamas Dragon

[thermos]

I had 2 Fireface 800s for a while. They were fine, but I once tried running my summed (dangerous 2 bus mix) back in through the A/D in the RME (usually ran it back into a Jim Williams modified Lucid AD9624). I was not happy with what the RME did to my mix. In short, I wouldn't use them for anything super critical. An Apogee Rosetta on the other hand, I would have no problems with.
FWIW, I wouldn't describe the Firefaces as hard, but more just lacking clarity.

I now use a Lynx Aurora 16 and it is way superior.

[pete murray]

ADI-8 DS's were untill the lastest flagship the best converter they made .
far superior to the normal adi 8 .
you have to quote the model number otherwise you are going to get vastly different opinions on theses converters.

[tamasdragon]

Yes I need opinion on the adi8ds/qs which I have stated in my very first post. So please don't think about the old rme's, but I need info with these relatively new ones.
Tamas Dragon

[thermos]

Ah! Ok. I'll have to hear that model sometime, I though the FF800 were the same stuff.

[BrianT]

RME converters...... me no like-eee.

IMO, cold and digital sounding. Unflattering to anything attempting to sound warm and organic. Probably great for recording hardware synths for Techno, etc.

I love RME's audio cards, but am not at all into their converters.

[88fingerz]

The RME is fantastic!

[Unclenny]

I recently put RME ADI-2 in front of my MBox. Sounds fantastic.

Of course, it IS all relative, right?

[Don S]

Tamas,

My main converter is a mytek. One session it quit on me so I went directly into a FireFace800 analog using it's on-board AtoD. I didn't hear any difference worth mentioning. We had to do a hard splice in post, nobody but the engineers knew it!
I wish there had been a bigger difference. But Prism, wiess, dcs, and lavry gold ARE indeed in a different league.

[Vegasslut]

I just got a Fireface 800 and clocked it to my Rosetta 200. So far so good. More testing to be done to ensure its going to satify me

I do alot of electronic music so I really dont have the need that some cats do with more inputs than the 2 I have on the Rosetta.

Purchased the RME FF 800 as an AUX additional converter & Monitoring unit to replace my aging M audio Delta 1010 interface.

I dont know your Front end situation but im still trying to stock up with better pre's.
Once I am happy with stocking up on more front end gear and my improving my monitoring situation. then I will look into what I can do with my conversion. However everytime I want to look at a different set of converters... I find another pre, eq, or Compressor that helps me in more ways

[allencollins]

I have an rme adi-2 that I use just for headphone monitoring I also have an ad16x and an ua2192. The rme does not even come close to the apogee. And I think the ua is much better than the apogee

On a couple rare occasions I have had to track with the rme and It does not even come close I'm sorry to say.

If rme had the same quality as apogee wouldn't everyone just buy the RME? for less than half the price? People are always searching for the product at the lowest price but with converters (90% of the time) you get what you pay for.

The quality of converter unit is due many variables. Quality of the analog i/o componets the circuitry etc... But the quailty of the the converter chips themselves are one big reason why they can differ so much in price. Even if two companies like RME and Apogee used the same exact brand and model of a dac chip there can still be a large difference in price and quailty.

adc chips are semiconductors. The quailty of a semiconductor can vary from batch to batch, lot to lot. 2 single chips made on the same day in the same factory can differ(obviously). Do you realize that 2 chips made on the same silicon wafer can vary in quailty too?

When chips come off the line in a fab they go through a special process call metrology. Which is basically a testing/quailty phase. Even though two chips or a batch of chips were intended to be of the same quality they my not be to to inconsistencies in the semiconductor process. This is why completed lots go through a sort of grading process. Intel does this all the time. Do you know back in the day, an intel 'sx' chip and a 'dx' chip could have been made at the same time? one was ever so slightly flawed and relabled as an 'sx' and sold at a discount. Where the 'dx' met or exceded the standard of quailty and was sold at full price.

The same holds true with dac or any chip that requires high tolerances and quality. So just cuz two different converter mfg's use an 'ADCxxx' chip doesn't mean the two 'ADCxxx's are of the same quality. The low jitter clock everyone always talks about has to do with the quailty of components and their implementation. this all costs $$$$$ and you pay for it in the end. Nothing is free.

It's like when you hear Alesis hd24xr uses the same converter as radar nyquist.
why do the two units sound different then? Well the analog I/O is different
but maybe they are not really using the same quality of the same converter chips?

Companies like weiss and lavry dont' charge 5X more money than RME just to be greedy jerks.

you get what you pay for....

[living sounds]

Bullshit.

The converter chips come in one quality, and they're not the important bit anyway. You can use an ancient converter chip with a great analog frontend, low jitter clock and low noise power supply and get much better results than any of the midrange interfaces with some of the latest converters.

Why do most cheap and mid-priced converters sound less-than-ideal? It's the jittery clock, the cheap opamps, the noisy power supply, cheap filtering caps and probably bad implimentation.

[CKK]

Originally Posted by allencollins

Companies like weiss and lavry dont' charge 5X more money than RME just to be greedy jerks.

you get what you pay for....

Pretty naive statement!!!

[allencollins]

Originally Posted by living sounds

The converter chips come in one quality

duh!

[mdme_sadie]

The chips are fairly consistent these days, sure there's always some variation but i don't think that RME are using inferior grade AD chips. The real difference comes from the rest of the circuit which is largely analogue, and of course the general design and input flow. I only tried the FF800 versus the Ensemble, and I think the AD sounded damn close, the FF maybe was a little less defined and punchy and a bit muddier in the mids, but nothing major, it's DA was mainly what I didn't like (and it's pres, and UI).

I think there's a lot of snake oil in gear. RME make some great stuff, and they have excellent service and support. Apogee also make some very nice stuff, I do think what they make is probably better but it's a case of diminishing returns - it's certainly not 2x better than RME kit even when it costs 2x more. If you can't record and mix a good album with an RME then you can't with an Apogee, Prism or anything else either, I would consider though that most stuff below an RME might start to impart too much of it's own "tone" to give you total flexibility when recording (you'd have to start working more with it or heavily against it rather than just being able to do what you want).

[GretschHead]

Living Sounds,

You just cursed at a rock legend... go flog yourself and don't come back until your ears are ringing. tutt

[living sounds]

Get your facts right:

Allen Collins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[GretschHead]

LOL

I stand corrected... swing away Merrill

[allencollins]

Originally Posted by living sounds

Get your facts right:

Allen Collins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

OK Maybe you can too?

All I can say is Im sure you know way more than me about this shit. But I do know my rme sounds like crap compared to my 2192 and even my ad16x units.

And maybe todays adc's + dac's are all made equal. But back in the 90's I worked at a place that fabricated adc's dac's lasers and all sorts of shit. Every single component was tested and graded. I recall adc's etched and implanted on the same wafers having subtle variations and were tossed or sold at reduced cost
because they were not to spec.

These days I work at a co. that makes ion implanters and plasma doping tools.
I've seen from a lot of the projects Ive worked on that all chips are not created equal and it is virtually impossible to make 2 chips exactly the same. Today we want faster higher frequencies but yet the process in which chips are made really hasn't changed in 30+ years.

Many of the problems are with The way that the gases like arsenic, phosphourus and xeon are imbedded to make the gates, transistors resistor networks etc. Alot of the problems with jitter come from noise caused by poorly implanted wafers or poor quality wafers.

I may be wrong maybe all adc dac's are the same but that's not what Ive seen or been told.

Whatever, RME still sucks no matter what I think or say.

[Eigenwert]

The 2192 uses the same converter chips that others use too. But no other converter box uses their special differential op amp design (that they build of discrete components)

Other converters use large amounts of negative feedback because the impedance of out-of-the-mill-opamps is larger than needed.

RME designs offer low distortion specs, running relatively abrupt into distortion with a lot of unharmonic distortion involved. UA have a different approach: Their design runs smoothly into saturation (so there´s a bit more distortion overall) and the harmonic distortion drowns the unharmonic distortion.

It was discussed on GS if the UA approach is good or not. I personally prefer it by far when it comes to modern music (not tested on other music so far). The 2192 was one of the best purchases I ever made. The only better thing was to build a good bed

[Audio_Vault]

no one who spent the money on apogees or prisms etc. are gonna want to compare them to the RME's for under half the price. Really its prefference but ****....the RME's are badass.

[peeder]

The ADI8-QS I haven't heard (it's their new converter design, far better specs), but I've tested the ADI-2 quite extensively and am very impressed with the ADC. The DAC on the other hand is not competitive with more expensive models. I use a Lavry DA10 for monitoring DAC, although I will use the RME DAC for hardware inserts at times.

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by Audio_Vault

no one who spent the money on apogees or prisms etc. are gonna want to compare them to the RME's for under half the price. Really its prefference but ****....the RME's are badass.

Well, ive got RME's in the composition roms here. I DID have RME's years ago in the main studio. I changed them for Lynx and Prism (cost stopped us from all prism !!). The RME's in the composition rooms are good for what they are. They are NOT great amazing wow badass. I doubt even RME would, in all honesty, claim that. They are in no way in the same league as high end converters. I'm not sore from having bought other items in the main studio - but I wont stand for people spouting advice from a perspective of proving themselves right either. RME is definitely worth the money and you can totally do a good job with them.

BUT

They are NOT high end converters at all.

I will agree that converters improvement is only noticed with great mics, great rooms and great pres etc - but to claim they are up their with the top end is just mis-information. I will buy more RME converters for two new rooms here - they again will be edit and composition rooms. I would happily endorse them at the appropriate point in the market for which they exist. They are good project/home/budget converters. Really good.

However....

They are not Prism or 2192 - or even Lynx or Apogee. I will not use them in the main studio. This is not preference - this is professional consideration and appropriate choice of gear. I'm not prepared to risk a million dollar turnover on budget equipment.

[allencollins]

Originally Posted by peeder

The ADI8-QS I haven't heard (it's their new converter design, far better specs), but I've tested the ADI-2 quite extensively and am very impressed with the ADC. The DAC on the other hand is not competitive with more expensive models. I use a Lavry DA10 for monitoring DAC, although I will use the RME DAC for hardware inserts at times.

I'm sure the converters are the same. Even though this unit uses Cirrus Logic
'living sounds' told me all adc chip quality is the same. He is the authority.......

[Sacalait]

Do you have any credits? Could you expound upon your credits? If you do, you have my respect.

...otherwise, you're a freakin' nitwit

[steveschizoid]

I have few credits, but a band I recorded (The Nerd Table) managed to get one of our recordings played on WWCD here in Columbus Ohio.
It was tracked mostly into an Aardvark Q10. It takes either a true nitwit
(or someone who hasn't made enough money recently) to still own one of those. I also used a Mytek stereo ADC for what I could, and I am finally nearing the point where I get to take a sledgehammer to the Q10. Which brings me to my question: anyone have any good comparisons of Mytek to Lynx? This is my first post; please don't hurt me.

[Animus]

I have a ADI8 DS and I think its great. What we are seeing here is pure gear snobbery and subjective "expectations". Saying one is "cold and digital" and the other "warm and analog" is the biggest crock I have ever heard. Is this the 90's? The difference between "good" converters and the really expensive ones is less that one would think imo. I've heard the shootouts. You just have to spend that extra money to go the last inch.