Re: [ARSCLIST] Sound card recommendations

[Goran Finnberg <mastering@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tom Fine:

> All or most of the first-gen professional converters
> were in-board cards, and they worked fine. 

Huh?

So called sound cards are a late entry on the scene, Tom.

External professional converters were first and have always been the
professionals choice.

I would never use any internal soundcard containing A/D or D/As whatever
their paper claims.

When I started doing mastering in 1987 I used the Sony PCM 1630
converter at 16 bits using 44056 and 44100 sampling ONLY, with a Sony
DMR2000 U-Matic recorder for storing the digital signal.

Price for these two boxes at that time approx $40.000 USD here in Sweden
at that time.

Also needed was the Digital editor DAE1100 with the DMR4000 Digital
Master recorder using U-matic for an additional hefty sum of $$$s

> Also, think of all the albums mastered on Macs with
> in-board cards and Sonic Solutions, 

I started using the Sonic Solutions SSP2 DAW in 1991.

I have used both SSP2, SSP3 and USP systems and I own 4 SSP and 3 USP
systems at the present time.

NONE of them have never ever used any A/D or D/As in the computer.

The stated reason have always been that for the very best A/D and D/A
conversion possible then external converters should always be used.

So called soundcards were at the beginning of dubious cheap quality to
put it mildly and were frowned upon by professionals.

Sonic Solutions is a hardware based system under control by software
keyed to the serial numbers of the hardware cards.

The hardware cards, SSP3, have only toslink for 4 channels digital
in/out directly on the hardware card(s)

The USP uses an 50 pin SCSI2 connector on the hardware card to connect
to various external interface boxes using 68 pin SCSI3 connectors.

The following boxes can/could be had:

1/ DI/O4 4 channel digital in/out only 44 & 48 kHz sampling
2  DI/O8 8 channel digital in/out only  44 & 48 khz sampling
3/ High density I/O 4 channels in/out only 88 & 96 kHz sampling
4/ A/D8 8 channel A/D 44 & 48 kHz sampling
5/ D/A8 8 channels D/A 44 & 48 kHz sampling
6/ DI/O HD3 8 channels in/out sampling up to 192 kHz for use by the
Sonic Studio HD system that came after the USP system but USP can use
this up to 96 kHz sampling.

> although many places also used external converters 
> and just brought digital into the box.

This is what old school professionals always did/does.

http://www.weiss.ch/core.html
http://lavryengineering.com/
http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/

Are the top 3 when it comes to digital conversion that are as good as it
gets in my opinon.

I´ve never heard any analogue A/DD/A conversion in a soundcard stuck
into a computer that sounds even close to any of the three above in my
experience.

YMMV indeed.

-- 
Best regards,

Goran Finnberg
The Mastering Room AB
Goteborg
Sweden

E-mail: mastering@xxxxxxxxx

Learn from the mistakes of others, you can never live long enough to
make them all yourself.    -   John Luther