clocking / ad conversion

[hazelmossobrien]

Originally Posted by gyemusic

what is the best solution for the lightpipe 8 outs on the 003? i currently use a presonus digimax LT and am told I can do way better.
is it the clock i need to improve? or just the analog in's? or both?

should i really splurge and get a rosetta 800? or will it sound the same as my presonus?

i think i need a better understanding of clocking and a/d conversion. if some one could shed some light i would greatly appreciate it!

when you sync your 003 via lightpipe it syncs to the lightpipe source, in your case the presonus. the presonus is a budget piece there for it has a budget clock, probably crappier than your 003's clock. also the preamps are junk on the low end presonus pieces. the clock in a rosetta 800 will be AWESOME, meaning less jitter (digital distortion) plus the rosetta will also have better head room to avoid digital clipping. the thing is you will need to buy 8 outboard pre's to go with your rosetta 800, and since you'd probably want nice ones to go with the apogee this will get expensive fast. if you are just doing small time recording you're probably fine with the presonus as spill over channels, i'd just get 4 real nice mic pre's for your 003's line ins.

...but....you WILL notice a fairly drastic difference in sound quality with the rosetta 800.

.

[gyemusic]

thx for the reply. I record around 16 tracks at a time. Doesnt the rosetta have 8 ins already, are the pre's 100% needed?

maybe some one can point me in the direction of something that functions the same as digimaxLT but is way better quality?

thx again

[hazelmossobrien]

the rosetta is ONLY conversion. there are no pre's on it. generally in pro audio, the more functions a given piece of gear performs, the crappier the components are on each function. great converters will only offer analog line inputs where you would line your outboard pre into.

for what you want the focusrite platinum octopre might be better than your presonus, but not by much...

...some higher end pre's will have converter options, focusrite ISA has an optional ADAT card i think. all in all there is no cheap way to get 8 channels of pimp ass converters with 8 channels of pimp ass mic pre's....

[gyemusic]

could I just run direct line into it? its for keyboards / drum machines. do I need the pre?

[hazelmossobrien]

what on earth do you need 16 channels of keyboards for!?

mic preamps are for low impedance signals, like microphones, they boost the signal to line level.

line inputs take line level signals, like from keyboards, or samplers and shit

instrument inputs are for high impedance signals, like guitars.

...to answer your question, yes, you can line directly into it from a line level source. but judging by your lack of understanding of how this all works, i'd hold off on dropping $2500 on conversion. wait until you really know what you need.

unless you're rich! then buy a rosetta 800, and get an api lunchbox and fill er up with 8 sick pre's!!

[gyemusic]

8 channels of mpc drums + 4 keyboards = 16 channels at once.

i just want things to sound better. if i can drop 2500 and get a better clock and inputs, i will.

[hazelmossobrien]

if you're not playing with a bunch of other dudes live, you could print midi info in pro tools, then trigger all those keyboards and drum machines separately. this way you could get a 2 channel converter and save some cash.