Opinion(s) required...

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

In terms of audio quality does the RME piss on a Delta 10/10? Just wondering...

DS

[Timo]

Yes, I think so. The 10/10 is getting on a bit now so it's obviously going to be lesser featured/spec'd than a new RME card. The 10/10's still a very nice card, though. Amongst the best of its class at the time. Bet you'd be able to get quite a good deal on them now second hand or the like.

[Timo]

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan0...idiman1010.htm

Got a good review at the time (Jan' 2000).

From remembering a MASSIVE thread on the SoS forums a couple of years ago, I think that using multiple 1010s on a single computer using Windows XP was very buggy. Wonder if they ever got that fixed. But otherwise it'd probably still be a good choice if you're sticking with PCI for a while are are just using 1 x 1010 card. On the other hand, I think the review mentions the lowest latency to be 8ms @ 44.1KHz, which may or may not affect you. If you ramp up the recording freq to 96KHz your latency can be as low as 5ms, it says, but then that'll increase the CPU resources used (and HD space) if you're doing stuff in realtime.

[MonkeyMan]

DS - totally agree with Timo. The 10/10 was a fantastic card when it first arrived. I think that the RME range is audibly superior - and the build quality will be hard to beat at any price.

If I could not stretch my budget to the Apogee range - I would most definitely go for the RME range.

Just remember... one of the most overlooked and critical components of any DAW is the quality of the A/D D/A convertors. You will need to spend cash to get a "high end" dynamic sound quality - do not cut corners as you really do get what you pay for.

As Tripitaka from Monkey once said, "You cannot polish a turd."

[Wandering Kid]

surely the turd polishing reference means: throwing 10s of thousands of dollars at something wont make it better. you have to do that yourself.

it is odd, coming from a painting background that such weight is given to the importance of the tools of the trade in music production, as opposed to the skill of the artist at making the most of those tools. When i was painting, a brush was a brush was a brush. and a graphics tablet was a graphics tablet. it didnt really matter what you used, so long as you were comfortable with using it. having thousands of dollars worth of airbrushes and a wacom tablet the size of a pool table didnt make you good at painting, only you yourself could do that.

perhaps this is just me?

[MonkeyMan]

WK. Quite simply rubbish in = rubbish out. There is no question in that.

But as previously mentioned one area that should not be overlooked is the quality of your A/D D/A conversion. With the wrong choice of converters no matter how excellent or well played the input sound may be it can sound bloody awful once your creative masterpiece is dithered down to 44.1 kHz 16bit CD. This was one of the key issues with the first generation of audio CD's and CD players - the sound was very harsh due to poor conversion. So in this case yes your reasoning is flawed. Decent conversion does cost decent money.

But I do see the angle you are coming from. More kit is not always best - as there can be an emphasis on tools rather than creative flow and output. Liam Howlett from the Prodigy is the best example I can give - after having a modest personal studio and producing some of the most influential and best selling dance music of the 90's, his studio went into overdrive on getting kit. In his own words he totally lost the plot and his output was killed due to overdosing on too much kit and not getting the best out of it. He was only saved when a learned studio engineer told him to get back to basics. So he binned his kit - bought a laptop and a copy of Reason and never looked back.

My old trusted Atari ST running Creator was a fantastically stable rock solid piece of kit (I produced my first white label records on this) - but to suggest not to progress and move to an Apple Mac G5 running Logic 7 is sheer madness.

Onwards and upwards - never backwards.

[Timo]

Originally Posted by MonkeyMan

But I do see the angle you are coming from. More kit is not always best - as there can be an emphasis on tools rather than creative flow and output. Liam Howlett from the Prodigy is the best example I can give - after having a modest personal studio and producing some of the most influential and best selling dance music of the 90's, his studio went into overdrive on getting kit. In his own words he totally lost the plot and his output was killed due to overdosing on too much kit and not getting the best out of it. He was only saved when a learned studio engineer told him to get back to basics. So he binned his kit - bought a laptop and a copy of Reason and never looked back.

And I, albeit personally, happen to believe that was Howlett's worst album yet (regards production/recording quality).

However, absolutely fantastic tunes/albums were made in the 90's using gear that, strangely enough, weren't made this side of the millennium! But inbuilt human psychology is led to believe newer/expensive is better. Often, yes, but not always, imho.
I'd say there's a certain threshold (price-wise) that, when you pass it, exponentially incremental cash injections aren't necessarily going to give you exponential differences.

Obviously, though, a ?100,000+ Neve or SSL console is always going to sound massively better than your average Mackie 8-buss, but you'd need to amass the huge wealth of knowledge needed in order to fully take advantage of the extra specs. Crappy example, but it's no good having something like a lovely top-end soundcard or console if you have a ground loop elsewhere in the chain simply because you don't know how to fix it!

It's better to spend that extra cash on something that's going to make the largest difference to your end result (ie. the finished audio), admittedly while giving a nod towards allowing for room for experimentation and growing into it (as opposed to growing out of it too quickly). As one different example, getting a mixer with more channels than you currently need.... blah blah...

I've prob'ly gone off on a tangent here, thus... nuff splother from me i'm off to make some choonz.

[Hollowcell]

Originally Posted by MonkeyMan

Liam Howlett from the Prodigy is the best example I can give - after having a modest personal studio and producing some of the most influential and best selling dance music of the 90's, his studio went into overdrive on getting kit. In his own words he totally lost the plot and his output was killed due to overdosing on too much kit and not getting the best out of it. He was only saved when a learned studio engineer told him to get back to basics. So he binned his kit - bought a laptop and a copy of Reason and never looked back.

I have to back up Timo in his answer to this. I'm a huge Howlett fan, and there is no doubt that FOTL is the best produced album he has released.

I do think there is a need for better quality conversion, specially when recording accoustic/real instruments, but the 'spec emphisis' is getting out of control with dance music.

There is a reason that software manufactures are trying to obtain that still elusive old school sound. For example Roland with it's D-50 Vcard even emulates the old DA conversion for it's appeal. Some software samplers even have options to mimick 12bit too.

Now I'm not saying that having shitty sound card converters is a good thing. I'm just saying there are certain characturistics of the older, "shity" gear which is appealing.

[MonkeyMan]

Totally agree. Mixing up classic 8-bit drum samples on 24-bit recording can sound fantastic - if the sonic pilot knows what he is doing...

But to record solely in classic 8-bit well... horses for courses I suppose! (think boards of canada) Having just recently got into listening to Sigur Ros (great experimental band) - these guys are the perfect advocate for this point. There was a recent magazine interview in which they stress the point of mixing up high end bit rates and lo rates - it's one of the reasons which gives them their unique sound, almost beauty and the beast.

Yep. With the exception of 3 tracks the last Prodigy Album was below par - but when you realise the immense production problems Liam Howlett got himself into it's amazing he got through it and completed it. In one article he was quoted as saying that he had spent the best part of 3 months just trying to get the drum loops for 1 track sorted!!

But anyhoo... Has anyone done a direct comparison between a RME Fireface 800 and an Apogee Rosetta 800 96k? As always everyones valuable opinions are very useful.