ProAudio Review - December 2008 - (Page 39)

“The converter is sort of an extension of my monitoring system and my speakers.”—Scott Hull, Masterdisk Dave McNair, a mastering engineer at Masterdisk who was previously a producer and recording engineer and continues to mix, feels that “when you get up in the region of the really high-end converters, they’re all pretty good; they just have minute differences. I’m really into the Lavry Gold AD122-96 MKIII, which is the A/D. Then I use the companion D/A, the DA924. I compared them to a lot of converters, and I just love the sound of them. I know that when I hear the Lavry stuff, everything is super effortless-sounding. That’s what I like about them. For the monitoring D/A,” McNair adds, “I use the current version of the Chris Muth D/A that is built into the Dangerous Monitor.” “When I have needs for another, alternate converter in our production rooms or other circumstances,” says Hull, “the Benchmark DAC1 also comes up fairly high.” An external clock can have a dramatic impact on a DAW-based recording system, audio professionals assert. “When a DAW is crunching numbers,” says New Yorkbased engineer Tim Hatfield, “a good clock keeps them more ‘in time.’ The clock is just much more rigid, it shouldn’t waver at all. If you think about it in terms of music, it’s right on the grid, not stuff with swing. In this case, you don’t want the clock to swing — it’s not a drummer! When it comes to a clock, you want your drummer right on the grid. “I just use the converters that are in my [Digidesign] 192s,” Hatfield explains. “But I do use the Apogee Big Ben, and I think it makes a ton of difference. When I first got it, I had the MOTU 24I/O — 24 ins and outs— and also my 192s. At the time, I had kept the MOTU rig, because I still had projects going on Digital Performer. But the clock, with that, made such a big difference, it was unbelievable.” In his home studio, Hatfield makes the A/D conversion in a Focusrite ISA430 MKII Producer Pack system “and go digitally into a Digi 002,” he says. “I use that digital input as the clock source. I don’t know if it makes that much difference — I never A/B’d it — though in my mind it does. Plugging in the Apogee clock to the Digi 002 makes a huge difference, too. When you have a really great clock it’s amazing, and I don’t think there’s a better one than the Apogee Big Ben.” “The Antelope Audio Isochrone 10M Atomic Clock is very expensive, but a really amazing box,” Hull offers. “It’s hard to not buy one once you’ve heard it. It really tightens everything up. It makes the converters generally sound a little bit better. It has its best, most profound effect — like any clock does — in a situation where a clock’s kind of unstable to begin with. When I’m distributing my Prism AD-2 clock around the room, that’s pretty damn stable, so the differences there are noticeable, but just; it’s noticeable by a mastering engineer’s standards. “It flies in the face of convention,” Hull adds, “but I would go as far as to say the Big Ben wasn’t better, [but] it was at least equivalent. Big Ben is good, and it’ll make a multitrack sound better instantly. But the Antelope atomic clock is really out at the extreme.” www.proaudioreview.com 39 http://www.d-mpro.com http://www.d-mpro.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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