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Old 10-31-2015, 01:31 PM   #41
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Aye it's not that any of the DIs are only capturing some of the frequency output of the guitar, it's that they're analogue devices so can differ in how they colour the sound
So get them all and treat them like crayons.
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Old 10-31-2015, 01:37 PM   #42
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Which differences are you guys looking for? Setting all this stuff up so exactly ruins many advantages one piece of gear has over the other unless one of them is complete crap. Anyone can pass 20-20k, for a total cost of a couple dollars, big deal. I can do that with 1 transistor, 3 resistors, 2 capacitors and a 9v battery. However, my simple circuit will behave badly under certain conditions although it would pass these clinical tests with flying colors.
Well a guitar doesn't have anything close to that range; as I said, it's not that any of them won't be transforming the full frequency output.

In that test they do sound different though, have a listen.
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Old 10-31-2015, 01:39 PM   #43
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So get them all and treat them like crayons.
Even if I had the cash for that I wouldn't have the patience lol
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Old 10-31-2015, 02:03 PM   #44
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Well a guitar doesn't have anything close to that range; as I said, it's not that any of them won't be transforming the full frequency output.
7k is about where most have lost all meaningful content with the exception of extremely clean chimey sounds.

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In that test they do sound different though, have a listen.
You are right, I listened before I posted. Passive DIs with transformers are not a good device to compare based on price, .... I take that back.... actually they are! meaning the more expensive one has a much higher chance of having more fidelity. Transformers which pass the full range and don't hum are plain and simple expensive to manufacture. There isn't a cheap way that I know of to accomplish that and cover all the bases. That's why Jensen transformers cost so much for example, they simply make them to certain specs and let the price fall where it falls instead of the other way around.

All that being said, unless you need transformer isolation, we could DIY an active DI that fixes all these problems and is as high a quality as most anything else in existence. That's sort of what I did.
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Old 10-31-2015, 02:12 PM   #45
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You are right, I listened before I posted. Passive DIs with transformers are not a good device to compare based on price, .... I take that back.... actually they are! meaning the more expensive one has a much higher chance of having more fidelity. Transformers which pass the full range and don't hum are plain and simple expensive to manufacture. There isn't a cheap way that I know of to accomplish that and cover all the bases. That's why Jensen transformers cost so much for example, they simply make them to certain specs and let the price fall where it falls instead of the other way around.

All that being said, unless you need transformer isolation, we could DIY an active DI that fixes all these problems and is as high a quality as most anything else in existence. That's sort of what I did.
So why would an interface's DI not be just as good? Or do you disagree with the idea that it isn't?
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Old 10-31-2015, 02:16 PM   #46
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To the OP: if you care about sound quality of your recordings, forget about plugging you instrument into the hi-Z inputs of any low-end interface, as well as most high-end units.
Hi-z is exactly what a guitar needs so you should explain. Usually the higher the better but once we get to 1 or 2 meg we've covered pretty much everything except for possibly piezo pickups. Remember, the rule is the destination impedance should be at least 10 times higher than the source, 100 is even better but likely insignificant at this point.

Just what about hi-z are you scared of here since it is the proper match for a guitar?
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Old 10-31-2015, 02:16 PM   #47
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Listened to them all again a couple of times, think I was maybe being a bit overly critical of the playing (though it is bad at the lead bit lol)

I think I'm being resistant to accepting how big a difference there is in the boxes and I really shouldn't. Also kind of annoyed that the one I liked best was the most expensive one when I checked the thread for the answers :P
Cool, one converted :-P

Just in case you missed the edit, please note this:
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On a side note, the differences in this shootout might be quite large due to the units tested being passive. In this situation, the higher-end units perform significantly better because they are more versatile. It might be that with active DIs where versatility would not be the test, the difference would be less pronounced.
That said, I am pretty sure that comparing to the built-in input on the interface, you will see a large difference regardless of the DI design.

Speaking of audio interfaces, DI's etc, in the bottom line what matters is the innards of those boxes, which is electronics. If put aside circuit design which is one major difference between different products, another major difference is elements quality and quality control.

Now consumer electronics got much better in the past few decades, so what a $500 audio interface can record these days is better than what a $10000 tape machine could record in the 40's. However the standards also got much higher, so if you want to produce anything comparable to professional recordings, you will need a box packed with electronics of comparable quality. Why? Because there is nothing else inside those boxes, the electronics is what makes these things tick. And good electronics and good quality control costs $$.

There is absolutely no way around this. This is not acoustics where you can "fix in the mix" frequency response of some mic or problematic instrument. Here we're talking about transients response, noise, distortion, crosstalk. Stuff that you can't fix in the mix. If it sounds cheap in the input, it sounds cheap in the output.

And then take longevity into consideration. You buy some product today, but for how long can you use it? If the electronics are cheap and there is no quality control in the manufacturing, chances are that for not so long.

Then take drivers/software quality. To develop decent drivers, you need to pay for research, then pay to coders, then pay to testers, and then pay for maintenance for the life of the product. This is far from cheap.

In the bottom line, sorry Karbo, but there is a rule of thumb in the audio electronics world. If it's cheap, it sounds cheap, and then in the average it has functional defects and won't last for long. I'm not adding my usual "IMHO" because I believe that this is not a subjective thing.
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Old 10-31-2015, 02:36 PM   #48
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Hi-z is exactly what a guitar needs so you should explain. Usually the higher the better but once we get to 1 or 2 meg we've covered pretty much everything except for possibly piezo pickups. Remember, the rule is the destination impedance should be at least 10 times higher than the source, 100 is even better but likely insignificant at this point.

Just what about hi-z are you scared of here since it is the proper match for a guitar?
Probably I didn't put it clearly enough. The high-z is not the problem, you absolutely require a high-z (high impedance) input to convert a high-impedance signal to low-impedance. Standard audio electronics work internally at low impedance, so this conversion is absolutely mandatory, there is no argument about this. I mentioned the high-z input of the interface simply to be specific.

Now I don't know enough electronics to tell exactly which way audio interfaces make this conversion from high-z to low-z. What I can tell is that most/all of them do not include those large and heavy transformers that perform this duty in the DI boxes. Perhaps that is due to costs, weight and space considerations, and because manufacturers realize that anyway the standard professional practice is to use external DI boxes.
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Old 10-31-2015, 03:14 PM   #49
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Now I don't know enough electronics to tell exactly which way audio interfaces make this conversion from high-z to low-z. What I can tell is that most/all of them do not include those large and heavy transformers that perform this duty in the DI boxes. Perhaps that is due to costs, weight and space considerations, and because manufacturers realize that anyway the standard professional practice is to use external DI boxes.
They aren't the same thing, that's what I mean. The transformer is good for isolation and balanced signals etc. But to simply handle a guitar signal, we just present a high-z to the guitar and the impedance conversion is by virtue of what the buffer/amp circuit does and is for the most part extremely simple to do. We can achieve that, with very high quality for a couple dollars. Here is what it might look like.. I grabbed screenshot from an example circuit of mine just to show how easy it is.

For our purposes, our hi-z that the guitar wants is mostly set by R3 and the output impedance is near zero until we add the R4 at the end. I actually added R4 to help protect against ultrasonic oscillations which can occur in some cases based on what the next device is, which I won't always know. That problem is called capacitive loading IIRC but is irrelevant to this discussion, just explaining why it is there:



We don't need a transformer to accomplish the above; it isn't a balanced circuit, the next item in the chain is millimeters away so we don't need a transformer.
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Old 10-31-2015, 03:25 PM   #50
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They aren't the same thing, that's what I mean. The transformer is good for isolation and balanced signals etc. But to simply handle a guitar signal, we just present a high-z to the guitar and the impedance conversion is by virtue of what the buffer/amp circuit does and is for the most part extremely simple to do. We can achieve that, with very high quality for a couple dollars. Here is what it might look like.. I grabbed screenshot from an example circuit of mine just to show how easy it is.

For our purposes, our hi-z that the guitar wants is mostly set by R3 and the output impedance is near zero until we add the R4 at the end. I actually added R4 to help protect against ultrasonic oscillations which can occur in some cases based on what the next device is, which I won't always know. That problem is called capacitive loading IIRC but is irrelevant to this discussion, just explaining why it is there:

We don't need a transformer to accomplish the above; it isn't a balanced circuit, the next item in the chain is millimeters away so we don't need a transformer.
That's too technical for me but you clearly know what you're talking about.

So do you think that the DI input on an audio interface is going to be very high quality since it can be done for a few dollars?
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Old 10-31-2015, 03:45 PM   #51
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The support side of the matter actually doesn't concern me that much. I mean, these devices are conceived so simply that they should just work fine or not work at all, so what's the point of having support?
Returning is not an option, either, especially since I'm from Italy and I might has well buy something else instead of shipping who knows where a faulty product, most probably in vain.
The support part you should still be concerned about: drivers. Let's say during an update to your OS, a problem happens that affects how your interface works. (In Windows 10, updates are forced too, so that makes this sort of thing less avoidable.) Or you change to an updated OS (at a time when the interface has been discontinued and possibly abandoned for driver support, which does happen). Or, you want to use a different OS on a different computer (bring your interface to a friend's house and use his Mac for a weekend). Or there's just some bug that you don't notice until you use the interface a certain way or with certain software. Who's more likely to provide updated drivers. If you pick a company that has been good in this regard, it's a bit of insurance.

About reviews: yes most of them are crap. One needs to learn to read between the lines. A review that's nothing but positive especially in the extreme is probably not worth taking seriously. A review that's especially negative (without the problems being articulated clearly!) should also be ignored. Only read reviews from people who are articulate about what they like or dislike, how they tried to work out problems, and especially when the reviewer can state positive and negative things (even if one outweighs the other). And you can read about certain aspects which are widely liked or disliked by skimming reviews. So reviews are still useful...but only if you read them while trying to imagine how people's biases affect them.

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Same issue also on UR242 / UR 44?
Sorry, I can't say since I haven't tested them. I only tested the UR22 that I own since I was curious about its hi z input; it's not an issue that affects me since I use a separate DI if I need to.

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The best way to go is dismiss outright the hi-Z inputs and use a DI. ...Even a Behringer DI will produce a better sound than the built-in hi-Z input.
Agreed. However I'm quite picky about the sound of guitar, so I can see how others wouldn't care as much as I do.

I disagree about a good DI requiring a transformer or that it has to be large. I'd even say you could use passive guitars with passive DIs and vice versa. And I'm sure there's some interface out there with a good hi z input...but I haven't heard one within the sub $500 range yet.

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Originally Posted by innuendo View Post
Now I don't know enough electronics to tell exactly which way audio interfaces make this conversion from high-z to low-z. What I can tell is that most/all of them do not include those large and heavy transformers that perform this duty in the DI boxes. Perhaps that is due to costs, weight and space considerations, and because manufacturers realize that anyway the standard professional practice is to use external DI boxes.
Overall, yes. Most won't want to buy an interface that costs 2x more and weighs 2x more just for that feature. Plus the added room for a separate DI input that's not just a padded-down mic preamp fed a bit differently.

Most inexpensive/small interfaces are just reusing the mic preamp in a simple way as the instrument DI, taking the easy way out. They also usually have their "line input" signals passing through the mic preamps (although that's arguably not a big deal as long as you're using the mic preamp in its linear range when doing that, and some interfaces' "line inputs" like this sound quite good). The devil is in the details.

The same could be said for having a nice DI. It doesn't need to be big, complicated or expensive. Some cheap solid-state DIs sound great to me. But then they don't sound great to someone else, possibly because of some nuance they feel is lost in translation (possibly when playing bass guitar compared to playing guitar, for instance). Like anything else that adds a color to the sound (intentional or otherwise), it is a matter of taste.

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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
So get them all and treat them like crayons.
The good thing about this approach is that DIs generally don't cost a lot, with some exceptions. So you can get a few different cheapos and a couple "better" ones, and compare.

I still use external mic preamps too, for the same reason.

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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
...a skilled player can make about anything sound good and the mind has quite a hard time separating nuance of great playing and gear fidelity. Additionally, as I've stated before, these days most gear can capture the entire range of hearing, that's not the problem, it's how it handles the wide range of conditions that matters and as a whole I'm not seeing the majority of people very tuned in to that yet; everyone seems to be stuck on frequency response under ideal conditions. Seems to still be escaping people; not necessarily related to this thread, just in general.
Agreed! And this is where some inexpensive units can shine: if used with respect to their limits. Thankfully a lot of inexpensive units will work well if you don't push the signal too hot on the inputs. So if you don't expect extra warmth/punch/saturation from the preamps, you have a pretty good selection of inexpensive preamps you can use these days. I think it's a lot more important to record the sound of a good source relatively "cleanly", being more particular about your mic choice (and mic technique), than being picky about the preamp and how it can color things. Mic choice is another subject. So many people get stuck on certain "industry standard" mics that they won't let themselves try others which might sound better for their uses (including how some newer inexpensive mics may sound better with common/inexpensive preamps than some "industry standard" mics). Mic selection has come a long way in the last 20 years; we have so many inexpensive mics now that sound nice.

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Originally Posted by innuendo View Post
And then take longevity into consideration. You buy some product today, but for how long can you use it? If the electronics are cheap and there is no quality control in the manufacturing, chances are that for not so long.

Then take drivers/software quality. To develop decent drivers, you need to pay for research, then pay to coders, then pay to testers, and then pay for maintenance for the life of the product. This is far from cheap.

In the bottom line, sorry Karbo, but there is a rule of thumb in the audio electronics world. If it's cheap, it sounds cheap, and then in the average it has functional defects and won't last for long. I'm not adding my usual "IMHO" because I believe that this is not a subjective thing.
I agree overall except that there are exceptions. Finding those exceptions is difficult though because generally speaking it comes down to the other things you said. Something like the UR22 is quite good but it's not perfect. Its drivers and converters benefit from the higher end products made by the same company, and although they did "cheap out" on a few things on the box at least it does sound good and work really well (for sample rates up to 48KHz anyway).

So there's no harm in poking around for this sort of advice. I don't want to spend a grand on a USB interface with 2 inputs and a headphone amp, which is all I need. If I cared about high sample rates, "amazing sounding" preamps and DIs, etc.--I'd be paying more for the interface than my current one plus my outboard DIs and preamps. So I don't advocate "going cheap" in particular, but there are some worthwhile exceptions if the devices are used within their (realistic) limits.

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Originally Posted by Stews View Post
That's too technical for me but you clearly know what you're talking about.

So do you think that the DI input on an audio interface is going to be very high quality since it can be done for a few dollars?
Well...it can...but consider:

-parts cost increases "dramatically" by adding good opamps and other discrete components (by "dramatically" even if the unit costs another $4, it might eat into the margin the manufacturer planned into the product),

-the amount of space required to have separate inputs for this purpose (not just the circuitry but the connectors, the internal routing)

-how it works with its drivers/software by having more inputs, and

-if, in the end, the less expensive product with a good DI is now basically in the same league as the same company's more expensive product (but with a reduced number of preamps etc.), which affects their bottom line.

I imagine this is why some interfaces do have good DIs...but the ones in the >$200 range have obvious limits.
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Old 10-31-2015, 03:51 PM   #52
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So do you think that the DI input on an audio interface is going to be very high quality since it can be done for a few dollars?
Yes since it is one of the easiest things to get right IMHO, but I imagine there is always going to be a bottom line someone crosses somewhere; and I can't really tell you where that line is. However I was answering more about how what we need to do to get a guitar into the interface properly, doesn't require a transformer or mojo.

Back to DIs, I think different uses of the term are being intermingled. It sometimes means inserting a DI unit between the guitar and an amp allowing us to siphon off an additional BALANCED/low-z signal + isolation, that can be sent to a console (for example) without really affecting the player and his amp. That is all about getting something like a hi-z guitar signal conditioned and injected into a low-z balanced microphone input; that job is often performed by a transformer. That however, has nothing to do with plugging a guitar DIrectly into a hi-z input (device or amp) all by itself. The former is correcting a mismatch, the latter is already a match.

In context of this discussion, we only care about the guitar going into the amp part and that isn't expensive to do. There is no magic transformer going into the guitar amp for example and the guitar sounds just dandy; it's a buffer or similar just like we are building into the audio interface (or a stomp box, or a line6 POD). It's a hi-z guitar signal, going into a proper higher-z input, why the heck do we need to complicate things by adding transformers to that simple equation?

When I spoke above about building my own DI, I'm speaking of basically building the same circuit (buffer/preamp) that is in the real guitar amp or audio interface. I'm just rolling my own version of the same thing in an external box that I can tweak myself, add features to like selectable impedance and polarity switches etc. which makes it really, really handy.

IOW when I plug in and use a SIM, I plug directly into a Hi-z input via interface... /done.
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Old 10-31-2015, 06:39 PM   #53
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Even a cellphone quality video can demonstrate what we care about. The tiny battery powered amp (top in the video) has had it's input section bypassed meaning it has no 'instrument' input. The silver box is a DIY active 'DI' stepping in to do that job.

What this simple circuit does, is essentially the same thing in a stomp box, an amp or an audio interface **with a hi-z or instrument input**. This unit also has a selectable impedance that allows shifting the 'z' up an down; I changed those around some so we can hear the effect for fun.

Excuse the volume jumps -- some of those are the camera's ALC circuit. There is also a tiny bit of the guitar itself getting to the camera mic but we can still hear what we need to hear.

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Old 11-01-2015, 12:00 AM   #54
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They aren't the same thing, that's what I mean. The transformer is good for isolation and balanced signals etc. But to simply handle a guitar signal, we just present a high-z to the guitar and the impedance conversion is by virtue of what the buffer/amp circuit does and is for the most part extremely simple to do. We can achieve that, with very high quality for a couple dollars. Here is what it might look like.. I grabbed screenshot from an example circuit of mine just to show how easy it is.

For our purposes, our hi-z that the guitar wants is mostly set by R3 and the output impedance is near zero until we add the R4 at the end. I actually added R4 to help protect against ultrasonic oscillations which can occur in some cases based on what the next device is, which I won't always know. That problem is called capacitive loading IIRC but is irrelevant to this discussion, just explaining why it is there:



We don't need a transformer to accomplish the above; it isn't a balanced circuit, the next item in the chain is millimeters away so we don't need a transformer.
Actually this sounds quite persuasive. However since I don't understand enough of the technical stuff here, I am not crossing the lines until I have heard the results in a comparative way. I mean, comparing a cheap active circuit sound to an expensive active circuit sound.

Additionally, as JamesPeters noted, components come in different quality, so the question is, where does the law of diminishing returns kick in to make additional quality improvement unworthy, and how much does the circuit cost at that point.

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Old 11-01-2015, 01:31 AM   #55
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Dont pet the sweaty stuff. Once you are my age you will be o deaf you wont hear the difference any more.



P.S. But I do like a little iron in the circuit wherever possible....
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Old 11-01-2015, 08:02 AM   #56
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I mean, comparing a cheap active circuit sound to an expensive active circuit sound.
I worry far less about someone getting that part right (after building them for a couple years). However, I think it is a great idea to have some type of buffer lying around because it'll solve lots of problems IF you have them. My RME UFX is pretty damn expensive, but I'm confident the Hi-z input isn't where the money went.

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where does the law of diminishing returns kick in to make additional quality improvement unworthy, and how much does the circuit cost at that point.
IMHO, pretty quickly because it is so darn easy to capture a guitar signal and just making the basic guitar signal happy is easy peasy and usually easily solved if it wasn't done right. Let me iterate, if I had to use my M-Track instead of my RME, I'd want to blow my brains out but that isn't because plugging a guitar directly into the hi-z input is substandard. Plenty of other things to worry about.
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Old 11-01-2015, 10:50 AM   #57
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Nothing better to do on a rainy Sunday morning than ramble so I did another demonstration of presenting a guitar a hi-z input although a little hastily.

Setup:

- Strat w/passive PUs
- An overdrive of mine akin to a tube screamer. It also has a clean boost channel which is what I use for the main demo.
- Sound card.

All the way up until the last 15 seconds is me simply bringing a hi-z input in and out of the circuit; since this plugs into the sound card which also has an hi-z input, there should ideally be no significant differences. I think some would agree this can be considered pretty damn transparent and should be very similar to what you see in a normal soundcard interface (meaning you'll likely not need a box like this in front, just use the sound card's instrument input). There are a couple of differences (one was an oversight I just caught and can't go back now) I'll explain later if you hear them and want to know but I don't think these ruin the point.

The last 15 seconds is mostly but not completely off topic. I decided to bring in the OD side of the pedal. I also added some compression and a cabinet impulse (Marshall JMP + U87) to that last few seconds. That is no award-winning tone but I could use that if I needed to within my genre. This should be 1080P if you select HD.

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Old 11-01-2015, 03:23 PM   #58
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Hey, if you're looking for a good inexpensive interface (with cheaper converters) the Profire 2626 (firewire) 8 channel is fine. The software is a little glitchy on Mac, but less than it used to be. I use a Lynx Aurora 16 now (about 2 years) and find it to have better transient response at all frequencies, and it's smoother on the high end than the Profire. It's also a very solid software platform-not one single Lynx issue. Recently I put them together in reaper and A/B'd a snare and the attack through the Lynx was punchier, naturally, not hard to tell. Using the Aurora clock I believe the 2626 better than stock. But, I've made several recordings with the Profire alone and the overall differences are not that great as you might believe at mixdown (the musical performance is much more influential). There is an opening of space around the instruments and level of punch now that the 2626 couldn't quite readily deliver. But as you mix, you find ways around the limitations of your gear, and to some extent make up for it. So the overall older mixes still sound good-open. Just not like the Lynx. But that's really the art of mixing I think, getting over the limitations of your rig and making the most of everything, right? Any less expensive interface can be useful in a musical respect. You might find your mixes have to be worked a little more to get what you want, but without having a better interface to compare it to, you might not miss it. And with the current used prices on these being $300 max (2626) vs a few thousand, well, it's not a bad deal.
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Old 11-01-2015, 04:58 PM   #59
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I have the 2626. The drivers were never stable enough for me on Windows, and then at some point the clock (or something related to it) became insanely glitchy, so basically now I can only use the analog part of the thing. As far as my local statistics go, out of 2 m-audio units I own, 100% had bad drivers and died a premature and ugly death.
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Old 11-01-2015, 05:05 PM   #60
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Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
Thanks for that! In fact there is quite a noticeable difference. If that LED turning on means that the circuit is engaged, then I like the sound better with your unit than without it. The high end is more pronounced and overall it seems a bit more focused.
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Old 11-01-2015, 05:34 PM   #61
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Originally Posted by innuendo View Post
Thanks for that! In fact there is quite a noticeable difference. If that LED turning on means that the circuit is engaged, then I like the sound better with your unit than without it. The high end is more pronounced and overall it seems a bit more focused.
That's one of the differences I hinted at. That is usually what happens when we raise the impedance even higher which is letting even more of the original guitar tone through. I think I used about 2 mega ohms for it's input impedance, which is going to be higher than the RME.

However, that isn't always desired and isn't necessarily reflective of the history of guitar recording so it's subjective. It depends on the player and the tone they like. Many times I would want those extra highs but just as many times I do not want them (clean or otherwise) and when I don't want them, I want them gone as close to the source as possible. I know quite a few guitarists who like long curly guitar chords which probably roll off some of the extreme highs and sounds more natural and good for mix fitting. Those extreme highs are treading in cymbal sibilance territory as well.

There are two other relevant differences.

1) I have that circuit rolling off the extreme low end but not usually audible unless the lowest notes are being used.

2) Around 26 seconds my foot accidently moves the blend knob allowing a little bit of the overdrive channel to leak through which is giving a tiny amount of 'hair'. You can pick it out easily if you listen to that first little arpeggio. Listen to the lowest frequency and you'll hear this low end growl pretty much exactly between 51 and 53 seconds. oops. Anyway, I added that clean boosted channel to the unit so I could blend clean with OD or vice versa.
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Last edited by karbomusic; 11-01-2015 at 05:41 PM.
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Old 11-01-2015, 06:20 PM   #62
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I'm going to echo what a few have said here and a priority concern should be the drivers, and then the drivers, and after that, the drivers and how well updated the company keeps them.

I'm a bit horrified to see all the Apogee recommendations, though maybe they've gotten better in recent years, but they were horrid out of the gate. Apogee made a name for themselves with converters, but they were a massive fail in the modern era when it came to drivers and support. Again though, maybe they have gotten better or maybe the lower channel count units like the Duet don't make it as much of an issue, I don't know.

I meant to do something with Jim Roseberry to see if this was still kind of a two horse race of MOTU and RME, but haven't had the chance yet.

Regarding the DI thing, I know my Focusrite units (Octopre and Liquid 56) don't have enough padding to not clip decently hot guitar pickups, but for those signals that make it thru, I don't bother plugging in any of my other DI's.
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