Well I got the Aurora installed, and up and running finally!!!
All I can say is "WOW"!!!
I had a short 3-hour vocal overdub session last night as my first test, so these results are VERY preliminary. The D/As got the most work last night since we were doing vocal overdubs...
(All tracks are at 24/88.2 using the internal Aurora clock for both the Aurora and the AES-16 card)
The D/As are so much more detailed than my old Motus, it was crazy, the stereo separation difference is just sick! Individual instruments just popped out of the mix, and the stereo spread was so cool! You can really hear subtle panning settings and all the subtle dynamics in the mix.
I was pretty blown away by the D/As (as you can tell), and these are tracks that were recorded through the Motu converters.
As far as the A/Ds go...also pretty stinking amazing!!!
We tracked some male lead vocal tracks using a BLUE Bottle (B6 capsule) and a Neumann U87ai through a few different pres, but ended up settling on the Great River in the end.
Without doubt, the best-sounding vocals I have ever tracked! Clear, full, bright, non-edgy, all the adjectives that you can think of, and MORE! Hehe...
I am very anxious to track a full project with these things to get a feel for some more sources and for how the tracks are going to stack. We should be done tracking the current session by Thrusday or Friday, and a new session starts next Tuesday (someday, I'll find the time to finish mixing the current project, but that is another story!).
My plan is to continue recording at 88.2K, but I am going to "sneak" in one song at 44.1K to compare the Aurora conversion at the lower rates.
I will post some drum samples comparing the Motu at 88.2 vs. the Aurora at 88.2 vs. the Aurora at 44.1 sometimes towards the end of next week. Remember, this will not be a *true* A/B comparison since they are different drummers, different kits, and possibly different mics/placements/mic pres, depending on what sounds good for this particular session, but it will be a start.
Just to put an end to this post (finally), I want to say that I honestly had no problems with my old Motu (24i/o), it has served me well for the last several months (it is pretty much brand new too), but the Aurora is just in another league imho.
The price difference is pretty crazy too however...I paid $1,500 for the Motu, and the Lynx was over $4,200 (Aurora 16 + AES-16 card + $600 of cables), and I went from 24 channels of i/o down to 16 channels. So almost 3X the price, with 2/3 the number of channels.
That's all for now...