The Future of Microsound?

[geezer]

....There are a lot of A-D and D-A boxes out there now that "sound good", and you will find proponents for many of them, at all price levels. I think "sounds good", however, is a highly relative term, and any given system, sync method and upstream/downstream device setup will yield different sounding results....They may all still "sound good" but will sound different, in my experience.....

That being said, I don't think there is much doubt anywhere that nearly all converters these days that sample at 96k and up are usually supererior sounding to those of the era of the MTU boxes, when, that is, they are properly and well clocked.....MTUs converters, as far as I know, are limited to 16bits and 48k (+,- their syncing range). They were/are very good sounding within these limits, very good sounding, indeed.....Some of the best sounding for that era. I have noticed, however, that when I use newer, higher bandwidth converters, I tend to notice more detail and clarity (especially in the higher frequencies) than with the converters of the earlier era, depending on the material I am feeding in.

That, of course, is the bugaboo.....On one forum I used to participate in, someone was touting a new set of converters (AtoD, I think), and I asked this question: "What converters are you using to listen to your converters?"...Noone ever answered me, but that is the issue. The whole chain matters, and how you hear it at the end of the chain will color all opinions about any other part of the chain....

So, enough philosophical theory. As far as bang for the buck and great quality, I hear more and more about the Lynx Aurora 16 channel A-D and DA, which can be gotten for a street price of around $2500. Many people are foregoing the Apogees for these, especially since the Apogees cost at least twice as much (since you buy separate A-D and D-A).....Lynx also makes an 8 channel bi-directional version of the same box for, obviously, something like half the money.

As far as the new ProTools HD I/O, my only experience with this system was producing a recording at the NPR studios last year. NPR does not use the I/O boxes, but uses the conversion in their huge Studer digital console. I could not tell you whether that was a good decision or not, but I know they probably made the decision based on supposed technical and quality considerations from their point of view. Would I agree with those viewpoints? Would you? Who knows.

I personally will be taking a hard look at the Lynx box when I get some money, but my views may be different than others. I know Prism and Mytek have the votes of some of the high end guys and gals, but I like the converters on my DM2000 console for a lot of things, and I've been told they sound "gritty" by some of my trusted colleagues.....I also like the converters on my TC6000 because I can hit a button and change the way they sound! ("Vintage", "Bright", "Natural", etc.)

ProTools stuff is plain expensive, too, so that always colors my thinking about anything from them.

The other thing about the newer converters for me is that it has opened up a whole can of worms about digital stuff....When everything was limited to 48k, and you kept things in 16bit most of the time, the quality considerations were markedly fewer, to my way of thinking. I miss that sometimes. There are a bunch of my old 02R mixes to Medit at 16bit that still hold up really well....They may sound a tad band-limited to me compared to some of the newer stuff, but they still hold up.....When I made the change, it took me a long time to get things to settle down to where I understand what was needed to work with the new perception of greater bandwidth and detail. I don't really want to go back, but there are days when I miss the simplicity.

.....It is definitely confusing sometimes, too. I was just listening to one of my Blues Alley albums ('92 or so) yesterday, and much more pleased than I remembered. It was recorded to a 2" with Dolby SR through my Soundcraft 600B console (that printed eq to the tracks, which was a smarter decision on my part than I really understood at the time), then mixed back through the Soundcraft to DAT in sections, and edited on the Turtle Beach 56k editing system that I abandoned for MicroSound in '94.....It sounded better than I remembered. All the A-D conversion was solely at the input of the Panasonic 3700 DAT machines I was using.....In those days, there wasn't any real CD "mastering". People were just transferring to 3/4" video decks and inserting track IDs (PCM1630?).

So, all the stuff from those days sounds quieter, but the sonic characteristics seem to hold up. Pretty interesting.....There is one album from that era that I edited mosly on Medit (with a little bit of pop and click redrawing on Turtle Beach, which Medit never did, and which Turtle Beach did well) that received a loudness boost from an early TC box. The loudness change was astounding, and sounded pretty natural, but I can hear the compression now, at least compared to the newer software and hardware boxes.

I'm not sure what all this means except that I think the Lynx box is pretty spanky, and that the quality of the converters these days has a lot going on, but kind of increases our decision possibilities again, so doesn't exactly make our lives easier.

[Rich LePage]

Ya got me on Digi specs- not sure they would tell how they measure for that matter either.

Only Digi stuff we have is an 002rack, and I nearly never use it. I did run it briefly with Audition 1.5 (an old version) using Digi's WAV (not ASIO) driver because 1.5 did not talk ASIO. Audition 2 (and 3 soon) does though.
I might mess with it as an i/o again (but Digi is XP only right now, like Waves) when Audition 3 shows up, and try to compare it to other stuff, but it's Digi's lower end anyhow.

In general, I just never liked Digi much. We bought the 002rack to be compatible with others, but that has (surprisingly) turned out to not be that big a deal for most of what we do. It has nearly never come up. We do a lot of our stuff start to finish. But many times with other work people send us elements to build with, sweeten, mix and master.
I thought being compatible would be impt with that, but nope- they just usually send "selects" and I also try to get the out-takes in case we need to use bits of them here and there.

From various friends and friendly competitors though, apparently Pro Tools compatibility is a big deal at some levels of the NYC market. Many high end ad clients bring in drives with PT sessions on them, says one guy I know who does a lot of that work. He winds up needing to have just about everything out there in terms of plug ins, etc to handle what comes in. But in reality, he does a lot of his work by taking stuff off PT and using an old NE Digital (the Synclavier folks) system that he's used for years with great success- then putting back into PT. I wonder if the clients even notice or know....


I've also heard good things about the Lynx stuff from folks whose opinion I value locally, as I value Jim's views. I'll have to give that a try too at some point.

I see Jim's another vintage Soundcraft fan. I mixed for ages on an old 800A board we still have, much modified - some non-standard EQ, whole board was re-capped, mostly new op amps too, and we added a better grade of Penny+Giles faders than it shipped with (when the original ones got noisy!)

But all those Digi specs (and all their marketing) are probably meant to drive the endless upgrade (just send $) and demand from some types of clients that you just gotta have that.

I did quite a bit of that kind of work for a long time, at various NYC studios.

That kinda client will jump whenever the place down the block gets the next upgrade of newest/latest. A lot of studios in NYC tried to cater to that market-- and few managed to do it with much success, though some did ride the endless new/improved cycle for a while. (prob they had rich investors! - in fact I know some did.) To me that's more the hotel biz than the audio biz.

We try to attract clients where it's more about the end result, not how we got there. I'm sure that's true of most of us Medit folks.

[Gary Boggess]

is a talented user.

The end result IS what it's all about. All the AES hypesters and the MIX magazine advertisers can blab on endlessly about this spec and that spec.
I always say... it's NOT about what you have, it's what you can do with it.

I usually express it like this:
Go ahead... you can go buy Tiger Woods' clubs... but can you play HIS game with them? Sure enough, he could BEAT YOUR _SS WITH YOUR CRAPPY OLD SEARS CLUBS!!!! Even if with a significant handicap!

I've seen many great musicians play very well on standard instruments. It always kills me when some of these guys come in the studio with a ie: $3700 hand made bass... but can't play a decent bass line to save their life.

[Rich LePage]

Totally true, indeed. My original mentor in all things audio
was/is Les Paul, and he sure proved that well enough!
I've heard stuff he did in the late 30s, disc to disc to
disc (like 4th or 5th generation, adding more parts
each time- the hard way!!) and for their time, they
sound damned good. Of course he was using a recording
lathe he built -- using an old Cadillac flywheel!! (not kidding).


Just talked w/him yesterday, his "home studio" (probably the
ORIGINAL home studio!!) is near here. We go back a lotta
years, I grew up with one of his sons. And that's
where my audio fate was sealed early on...

He still plays in club in NYC one night a week when he's up to it,
at age 92+ -- and he packs the place, too. They did a nice
American Masters on him that was recently on PBS, catch
a re-run if you can.

[Gary Boggess]

Well... you can tell Les I said he was recording as good as 224-bit back in the 40's... because he actually HAD SOMETHING to record. What good is 24-bit in most sessions today? Might as well be at 0-bit because these so-called musicians today aren't 1-bit of good compared to the MAJORITY of the artists, writers and musicians in Les Paul's early years.

[geezer]

I agree totally with the concept that the operator is the key.

I have never like PT/digidesign much, period, but I thought the tracks I recorded at NPR (PT HD) sounded pretty good there, though maybe a little more suspect when I got home. Being HD, I could never use their session data (totally encrypted), but, also being HD, I can walk away with Broadcast Wave files wish plop down just fine in almost any other system.

Earlier (TDM) PT sessions can be readily translated by some EDL software I have, so there really is no longer a big compatability issue unless you are locked into plugins and mixes on an HD session that noone is willing to translate backwards for you (which is obviously what Avid/Digidesign is hoping for).

People do say that HD sounds better than TDM, and I usually was able to hear problems with TDM mixes I heard.....However, one of my longest friends and musical colleagues who mixed his last couple of albums at home (stellar sounding) and mixed his daughter's hit album in Canada (she's like no. 2 there) makes his TDM system sound just fine. Really sweet, really pro......It should be noted, however, that he is not using the mix buss in PT world, but bringing stems out to a Mackie D8b. That still seems to be the key: summing it externally......Anyway, the Canadian branch of Universal that his daughter is on was pretty freaked out by how good it sounded. I was thoroughly impressed myself.

Soundcraft: That mixer (a 600B I bought in 1985) probably only has a market value of $500. or most likely less. Amazing. I sold it with all the patchbays and direct out mods for $1,100. around 1999 or 2000, then bought all the patchbays, cabling and external direct out amps back for something like $500-$600........I have an open search function on ebay for Soundcraft stuff, and am always anguishing about whether I should buy one of the boards that comes up, but haven't gotten the courage to do it yet.....Listening to that old Stanley Turrentine album of mine that I was talking about in the earlier post has really gotten me thinking.....plus I did a little acoustic, non digital sound job about a month ago that reawakened something in me......I don't know........I can't give up the automation, and my DM2000 sounds great and is capable of a bigger sound than that 600B, but I am definitely thinking things through yet again...

My fond remembrances are always chastened by the looming maintenance issues with analogue consoles....aargh!

[Gary Boggess]

Without going into here too deep... I was utterly shocked at what happened to my old TASCAM Model 5A mixing console here. Mixing... err... I use it more for monitoring... although the keyboards and mics go through it to the MicroSound via a APHEX 124A -10 to +4 box.

Yeah I know... your probably saying TEAC??? GEESH!!!!

Well... I was in a decision last year to replace it or improve it. After reading... studying and really tearing into what mods could do, I chose to mod it.
I rebuilt the power supply, better caps, all new regulators, external transformer... and better grounding internally... w/12ga stranded throughout.

Then I removed all of the op-amps, and used a mix of 5532's, TLO72's and Burr Brown 2604's. Why three types? Sound. They all have a sound.
It's not an EQ difference in sound... it's more how they handle complex
waveforms. Tones all passed the same way... but with music, each chip
responded differently. My thought was, since they all do have a sound, it doesn't makes good sense to USE ALL OF THE SAME op-amps.
I figured, if I had a lense filter that was very slightly pink, 15 of them
would be RED! And so, I thought mixing op-amps was similar. I chose these
three chips because I took consenus on the web by designers... about which
chips they preferred. The TLO72's were chosen because they had a overall
brittle sound... and were easy on the power supply. The 5532's were popular peformers, stable, handle wide variety of input impedences and sounded tube like and low noise footprints. The OP2604's for their high output peak safety, low noise, and warm low end friendly sound. Together... they sound awesome!
For the short story, I tested each... and ended up putting the 5532's on the inputs, the TLO72's in the middle ciruits and the 2604's on all of the outputs.
I also replaces all of the signal path caps with Panasonic FC series audio caps.
And then replaced all of the audio path resistors with metal film resistors.

The end result? Incredible. It was like a veil dropped. It was a lot of work, but a fraction of the cost of replacing the board, and rewiring the harness and patchbays. Noise dropped significantly, and the sound is (to my ears) very warm, defined and clean.

Yup... I've used Neve consoles, SSL, Euphonix... and Soundcraft... but after this experience... I wonder why most boards use all of the same op-amps???
They clearly HAVE a sound... and if you pass your audio through 30 of the SAME op-amps... you've got a very COLORED end result. I would same my approach appears to blend and balance it all out some. At least, it makes some logical sense.

[Gary Boggess]

Without going into this too deep here... I was utterly shocked at the improvement mods made to my old TASCAM Model 5A mixing console. Mixing... err... I use it more for monitoring... although the keyboards and mics go through it to the MicroSound via a APHEX 124A -10 to +4 box.

Yeah I know... your probably saying TEAC??? GEESH!!!!

Well... I was in a decision last year to replace it or improve it. After reading... studying and really tearing into what mods could do, I chose to mod it. I rebuilt the power supply, better caps, all new regulators, external transformer... and better grounding internally... w/12ga stranded throughout.

Then I removed all of the op-amps, installed sockets, and used a mix of 5532's, TLO72's and Burr Brown 2604's. Why three types? Sound. They all have a sound. It's not an EQ difference in sound... it's more how they handle complex waveforms. Tones all passed the same way... but with music, each chip responded differently. My thought was, since they all do have a sound, it doesn't makes good sense to USE ALL OF THE SAME op-amps.

I figured, if I had a lense filter that was very slightly pink, 15 of them would be RED! And so, I thought mixing op-amps was similar. I chose these three chips because I took consensus on the web by designers... about which chips they preferred. The TLO72's were chosen because they had a overall brittle or digital/edgy sound... and were easy on the power supply. The 5532's were popular performers, stable, handle a wide variety of input impedances and sounded warm or tube like and had a low noise footprint. The OP2604's for their high output peak headroom, low noise, and warm low end friendly sound. Together... they sound awesome!

For the short story, I tested each... and ended up putting the 5532's on the inputs, the TLO72's in the middle circuits and the 2604's on all of the outputs. (I did use two 2604's on two inputs for variety). I also replaced all of the signal path caps with Panasonic FC series audio caps. And then replaced all of the audio path resistors with metal film resistors.

The end result? Incredible. It was like a veil dropped. It was a lot of work, but a fraction of the cost of replacing the board, and rewiring the harness and patchbays. Noise dropped significantly, and the sound is (to my ears) very warm, defined and clean.

Yup... I've used Neve consoles, SSL, Euphonix... and Soundcraft... but after this experience... I wonder why most boards use all of the same op-amps??? They clearly HAVE a sound... and if you pass your audio through 30 of the SAME op-amps... you've got a very COLORED end result. I would say my approach appears to blend and balance it all out some. At least, it makes some logical sense. Would I like to own a Neve or similar console? Sure.
But mine has paid for itself over and over again since 1977!!!!!!!

[Rich LePage]

You're right of course about the op amps and the rest.

Amazed though you'd mod a Tascam Model 5 in terms
of the cost of the mods versus the rest of the parts, like
faders, switches, and so much else. But if it works for you,
that's great.

Your logic about diff coloration seems sound to me.
I know several folks who have done diff channels of
a board set up completely diff. in terms of channel
strips, op amps, EQs, pres, and so on. One guy managed
to build a board with Neve, Trident, API and several other
modules in the thing- in blocks of 8 channels I think.

I still have a real ancient Model 5 somewhere in storage, from
way back when I used it sometimes with a Teac 1/2" 8 track
and DBX. I did some location jazz albums in clubs that way, but
the stuff wasn't exactly built for the road and could get pretty dodgy.

I viewed that stuff mostly as "acquisition devices" for work like that.
You could do those jobs taking up only one or two tables in a jazz
club-- which was a big deal to the club owner too...

Big studio boards suffered from the same "go through so much stuff"
you mention. Examples include MCI boards (and mult passes through
the VCAs especially), and Audio Designs, which were real popular
around NYC for a while. With Audio Designs you were also going
through a zillion transformers. Every stage of the board was
boosted up to +4 or +8 and balanced- then passed on to the next
stage and done all over again, whether it was needed or not.

Result was a TON of coloration. I'm sure not against
transformers (many folks were/are)-- but that many-- geez-
between that and the early op amps it was a battle every time.
Phase shift, and the slewing problems of the early op amps--
you could def. hear all that stuff big time- not to mention
noise buildup from all those gain stages.

Luckily that vintage usually had a lot of patching and so you
could bypass some stages of the board if you had a zillion
patchcords and got there plenty early before the session start!
I used to carry around a bag of extra patch cords back then...

With the MCI's (later Sony) a lot of people modded them,
I know a few who still use 'em. One in particular is still used
for a lot of high-profile acoustic jazz work and sounds very
good -- but HEAVY mods.

Neve did things differently. You sure can't say Rupert's
stuff didn't color things, but a lot of folks still prize that
partic. coloration. A lot of those boards were parted out
because the modules etc became worth more $ individually
than as an entire console.

Cleanest (in terms of coloration) preamp we have is an
early one by John La Grou (Millennia) who was an Medit
user as you likely know. Probably a result of his extensive
classical recording work.

I like the old Soundcraft, we still run it in one mostly analog
production/mix room which also has 2 old Medit systems
with Microsync (486 CPUs, m/boards with an ISA slot!!-gosh..)
At some point that room will get repurposed probably,
but we still do some restore-from-tape work and other things
that it's useful for, though less every year. Oh yeah, a convection
OVEN is also a feature of that room! (for shake and bake that tape!)

And like Geezer noted, every time you use that stuff, you are
SO reminded of all the alignment and tweaking issues that used
to be part of every day work. Often hard to just sit down and mix
without first having to put on the tech hat for a while.