On 3/23/2021 1:08 PM, Barry B wrote:
Curious about this. When I feed the 1010's spdif in w/ the Apogee,
and have the Apogee do the clocking, does the 1010 still have an effect
on the signal or does it just pass the digital data from the Apogee
untouched? The eight analog inputs are, as you say, definitely weak links.
You're getting into territory here where I don't have any experience
with the gear that you have. The thing to look for is in the 1010
manual. See if it has a setting for the clock source. If you can set it
to S/PDIF, then, yes, the 1010 would sync to the Apogee clock and that
might help a little. It depends on how the clocking is derived in the 1010.
My distaste for the Mackie pres is admittedly unreasonable for their
cost... for what they are (inexpensive preamps included on an
inexpensive board), they are pretty incredible. They just don't have a
lot of headroom and behave badly when pushed too hard so great care
needs to be taken in setting input levels.
I never understood why people have "headroom" problems like this. The
input gain is there for a reason. You set it so that the preamp doesn't
clip (or get too close to clipping) and you're good to go. Where the
Mackie mixers had a problem, which they finally solved with the VLZ3
version, was with the mix bus. When you had all the preamps running very
close to clipping, when they were summed on the bus, they produced
peaks, or sometimes even a near steady-state signal, that was greater
than the summing stage could handle, so that's where the headroom issue
came in. But if you used the Mackie preamps as preamps only, and took
their direct or insert outputs straight into your A/D converters, you'd
have a pretty decent system - as long as you watched the clipping level
of the preamps. But you need to do that with any preamp. And most
digital interfaces with the preamp and A/D converter in the same box are
calibrated so that you hit 0 dBFS at the same point that the preamp hits
clipping, or maybe just a tad sooner.
I agree that mics can sound different when working into different
preamps, and there are some mics that have a problem with a particular
preamp. You've just been lucky to find some of those, it seems.
...but I've heard from
a very reliable source that more than a smattering of people have been
having trouble with Scarletts, but he didn't tell me the nature of the
problems.
Is this a source you converse with regularly?
Yes, but since he does a lot of work for the manufacturers, he usually
doesn't like to talk about problems that he's heard about from others,
because he doesn't always track track them down himself. That's not his
gig. I can ask him what he's heard, but I might not get anything useful.
But if there's really a problem, Focusrite will either fix it or
discontinue the product. If you like everything else about a Focusrite
product except what you've heard about someone's unspecific problems,
I'd say go for it. They'll make good on it.
One piece of advice, though, is this: Don't buy it until you're ready to
start using it, at least until you're able to power it up and check it
out thoroughly. If you buy from a reputable dealer like Swee****er,
Compass Point, or B&H, you'll be able to return it (maybe even score
free return shipping) if you don't like it or encounter a problem that
the manufacturer can't address right away.
I've got one of the early ones, too... MP-2H with the unbalanced and
balanced outs, bought from Fletcher @ Mercenary way back when (like most
of the other stuff I've mentioned...)
By the way, the "H" is for Hank Alrich who used to frequent here. Hank
requested a before and after transformer output connector, so it became
a product.
Are the Claretts hard to get? They've been out for two years now.
It could be that this is where the mysterious problem is, and that it's
something that involves more than a simple fix. Just a possibility based
on an unfounded rumor about an unknown specific problem.
The primary goal was to get more channels of high quality mic pres,
with better (and USB) A/D converters as an added plus.
Well, then, that's what you should do. And consider a system approach
with separate preamps and A/D converters. Buy an assortment of preamps
that you like, buy one good converter (nobody ever got fired for buying
Apogee) and you'll have a more flexible system than if you bought an
interface with all those parts in the same box. As I think I wrote
before, RME is best known for their converters, so that might be a way
to get the best "known" and not worry about how the "unknown" compares
to other preamps.
..
Got it. I guess I should have asked a slightly more pointed
question. The OctoPre has an 8 channel ADAT optical out. Attaching that
to the PSX-100's adat optical in does.... what?
Not much, as far as I can see. You could use it as a sample rate converter,
The Apogee can only output two channels via spdif, AES/EBU, or analog,
or spread higher sample rates for two channels across four or eight via
it's ADAT output. Given my current equipment, an OctoPre could be used
as eight mic preamps, with it's eight analog outputs feeding the eight
analog inputs of my 1010... basically replacing the Mackie.. but the
OctoPre's ADAT output would not be usable. Is that correct?
Not with the PSX-100, at least not for anything particularly useful. But
the OctoPre is a good match for an interface of your choice that has
fewer mic inputs than you want, but has an ADAT optical input for
expansion. Those ADAT preamps show up as additional sources to your DAW.
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