ProAudio Review - December 2008 - (Page 36)

T i m H at f i e l d ( l e ft , p i c t u r e d w i t h a rt i st R o b A rt h u r ) s ay s u s i n g t h e A p o g e e B i g B e n c l o c k w i t h D i g i d e s i g n 19 2 s m a ke s “ s u c h a b i g d i ff e r e n c e , i t ’ s u n b e l i ev a b l e . ” CONVERTERS Needless to say, A-to-D and D-to-A converters run the gamut from budget to stratospherically expensive. Not surprisingly, the quality of a particular converter runs a corresponding path, though personal taste and other criteria are part of the equation as well. Equally critical in any digital recording system is the master clock, or synchronizer. Stable and consistent sampling is essential to avoid jitter and allow an accurate A-to-D conversion, from which all subsequent work — processing, editing, mixing, and mastering — follows. A sampling of audio professionals is likely to produce multiple references to the same handful of products; unlike, say, mixers or microphones, there aren’t too many players in the converter and clock categories, and an even smaller number reside at the pinnacle, as measured by popular opinion. Though the ears have it, many professionals also use the mostbang-for-the-buck yardstick. Converters can be very expensive; for the home studio owner, a DAW rig’s onboard converters and internal clock may be adequate. But if the highest-possible sound quality is your goal, can you afford not to consider external converters and clocking? “We’ve put half of our money into speakers and the other half into converters,” says Scott Hull of New York-based mastering facility Masterdisk. “Nine or 10 years ago I came to find the top-of-the-line &CLOCKS What Do You Use? In the workstation world, the point at which an analog signal is converted to digital is a critically important link in the signal chain. by Christopher Walsh Prism converters. When I moved to Classic Sound, I went from dCS to Prisms and just loved them. I can’t master without them. “If I had to work off the dCS’s,” Hull adds, “I would be able to. But the Prisms have a slightly more neutral, slightly more interesting bottom end. I’m really kind of stretching for differences, because it’s somewhat program-dependent. I could find another set of speakers that might sound better, but I know these so well; that’s why I use them. I feel the same way about the converter.” Familiarity, for Hull, is most important, neutrality a close second. The Prism AD-2 and DA-2, he explains, “tend to be a tiny bit more neutral, in that they don’t feel hyped in the top end, they don’t feel hyped in the bottom end, and that gives me a lot of latitude. I work on everything from extreme avant-garde to classical, and death metal in between. It needs to be very versatile, but unlike some of my contemporaries, I get very used to a particular sound of converters and don’t change it very often. I don’t try to match up the converter with the music as much as some people do. It’s sort of an extension of my monitoring system and my speakers; I know how the other things that I put in the chain are going to interact with the converter. I feel like I’ve learned the converter so well that when I put something else in, I find myself just EQ’ing around it, EQ’ing to compensate for it.” Paul Antonell, owner and engineer at the Clubhouse Studio in Christopher Walsh is the recording editor for Pro Sound News and the associate editor of Pro Audio Review. 36 ProAudioReview | December 2008 www.proaudioreview.com http://www.proaudioreview.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ProAudio Review - December 2008

ProAudio Review - December 2008 Contents Technically Speaking New Studio Products Opinion: Mastering Matters Review: BIAS Peak Pro XT 6 Review: Zaxcom Fusion ENG Mixer and Multitrack Recorder Review: Sound Devices 788T 8-Track Digital Audio Recorder Review: Universal Audio UAD-2 Solo DSP Accelerator Review: Chandler Limited Germanium Compressor Review: RME ADI-8 QS A/D-D/A Converter Feature: Converters and Clocks: Engineers on Their Choices New Live Products Opinion: From the Road Review: Yamaha IM8 Series Mixing Consoles Review: NTI Digirator DR2 Digital Audio Signal Generator Review: Sencore SoundPro SP495 Audio Consultant Test Set Single Slice

ProAudio Review - December 2008

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