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Re: [ARSCLIST] AD converter vs. Outboard Digital recorders
Hello, Peter,
Workflow is a very subjective issue. For the first several years of
my work (1998-2003) I ingested audio to a pair of Panasonic SV-3800
DAT machines and later to a pair of Sony CDR-W33 CD writers, using
the good-sounding internal A-Ds in the machines. I didn't trust a 333
MHz Windows 95 upgraded to 98 SE PC even though it had the Zefiro
Acoustics digital audio card in it.
I don't know what people think of the PMD 670's converters. I have no opinion.
When I got a competent Windows XP machine and an RME Multiface, I
started ingesting everything into the PC directly. I now routinely do
music as 88.2/24 or 96/24 via the (now pair for 16 channels) of RME Multifaces.
The aux computer in the studio also has a MOTU 828 MK II connected to
it -- I bought that initially to use with my laptop, but now I can
run a second background transfer with that. This works via a firewire
interface while the RME Multifaces require a dedicated host card. If
I had started fresh today, I might consider an all-FW solution such
as RME's FireFace 800.
I think it's important to be able to monitor your main audio
workstation on your main monitors. In fact, the monitors (5.1)
controlled through a Blue Sky Bass Management Controller are normally
fed from outputs 1-6 of the first RME. I've already done enough A/B
tests to know that I can't really hear the RME's footprint, so I
don't worry about A-Bing analog to digital unless I hear something I
don't like, and then I patch.
There is nothing wrong with your solution if you like the PMD's A-D
converters and you can monitor what you do on the computer properly.
I especially enjoyed -- and it eased the transition for me -- of
digitizing to DAT as I could back up and restart a section of
transfer more easily than in the early software. It was intuitive as
DAT worked more or less the same as analog tape from a functional perspective.
No matter what you use (within reason) it's important that we all do
our part to chip away at the 50 Mh of recordings out there that need
to be digitized. There's no right or wrong answer IMHO, just what
works for you.
Cheers,
Richard
At 02:48 PM 11/4/2006, Peter Hirsch wrote:
I have been following the discussion of the advantage AD converters
have over PC sound cards and get the gist of what it is about,
albeit from my non-audio-engineer background. Due to issues more
related to the layout of my apartment than anything else, I have
been recording from analog tapes and discs to a Marantz PMD 670 and
then plugging the memory card into a USB reader attached to my PC
where I listen to and/or edit the files.
I have now shifted things around so that it would be possible to
record directly on the PC and eliminate the Marantz, but I am not
sure that this would be an improvement over my current arrangement.
Is there anyone that would like to comment on what might be the pros
and cons of this approach vis a vis connecting the playback to a
decent AD converter and on to the PC?
Regards,
Peter Hirsch
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.