Karloff meet Doug, the user who coordinated the test files I analyzed. Perhaps you might be a little more respectful? Is that too much to ask? I'm not sure what part of recording a loopback you find reason to worry about competence, but with my test experience I spot errors easily and request them to be redone. We get it, you don't understand the depth of what testing can fully show and as such do not believe them to be useful compared to your golden ears and infallible perception

You're welcome to your opinion, but don't expect others to conform to it or you'll just be wasting our time.

@Hardtoe: Phenomenal is a Hilo

That said, I still think you have some weak links needing attention in your environment (acoustic issues, speakers, spk decoupling, KRK Ergo) that should be dealt with to get a more reliable reference. It's also good to remember that distortion can make some areas more present. There were a few people who thought Hilo was bass-light and returned it due to how clean it is as they were not used to that sound at all. Cleanest most certainly does not mean "sounds best". It's subjective ultimately and different people will perceive things in their own way.

Is there room to improve the clock of these AVB units? There definitely could be. I'll be running mine off the Hilo clock, but won't be on board til after taking care of some more important purchases.

Whatever slant you want to put on it, when you HEAR the thing it sounds milky and washed out in the mid definition at the moment. Seems both Hardtoe's and my 'golden ears' hear this without any issue whatsoever. Your test says it sounds like a Symphony. Well it doesn't. It has quite a few likenesses in sound, but the Symphony does not give you washed out mids like that. And if your test can't pick that up it isn't worth shite, sorry.

I wish Jules would put a rule on this forum where it is not allowed to comment on gear you have not used. In fact I might just start a thread about it right now. Now, THAT might stop lots of people wasting our time.

So let's say a project is recorded by someone else and handed to a mix engineer. The mix engineer didn't do the recording so I guess it doesn't count for him to present the mix he did on that model of converters? lol.
Sorry, but Doug didn't do anything magical to alter the test files he sent me. They are the same as if I would have taken them myself.

As for your golden ears, I'd take it more seriously from someone who hasn't been putting up with Alphalink conversion for so long. I have a similar reluctance when it comes to Hardtoe listening in a poorly treated room with a KRK Ergo on KRK VXT8's coupled to his desk. No offense man. Just relevant factors in a critical reference environment.

You just said yourself (even) your final evaluation after tests is to listen to the thing in determining what it sounds like. You haven't even been in the same room with one. Case closed. Golden ears and Alphalinks have nothing to do with it.

Dude - take yourself down a notch - my room is not poorly treated, and I realize my monitoring setup is not droolworthy by gearslutz lust standards, but you are just plain insulting here. I deleted my posts earlier in this thread in an attempt to keep bickering posts like these out of it, but you wont let it rest - please drop the ego for a moment and consider that you are part of a community here....

BTW - A song I produced, mixed and recorded is currently #1 on the Indie Charts on CBC radio (our national broadcaster) in Canada:

Artist - Library Voices - song "Windsor Hum"

CBC Music

As well, I produced, mixed and recorded the #1 song of the summer last year as voted on by CBC listeners:

Artist - Indigo Joseph - song "Others"

CBC Music

As well, I have produced, mixed and recorded 3 of the 4 albums in the running for my city's "Best Album Of 2014" yearly awards in our arts paper, and I mastered the 4th.

So I clearly am getting ok results and my opinions/experiences may be worth considering, if you like, you know, making music that touches and connects with people.

This is the same way I judge my gear - does it connect with me and get me where I need to go? Not some abstract quest for perfection.

BTW - my regular mastering engineer does have a Hilo and he always remarks how easy it is to master my mixes as they are very close to where they need to be when I send them off to him - strange that he has never commented on my dac and speakers / room if they are such an issue...

This is really a fight over finely sliced C-hairs. I am sure what I said was that it sounded obviously better than any other conversion I've ever owned, in 20 years of making records, a few of which charted and have loyal followings. I know I've usually owned better conversion than the majority of my local competitors. I'm not sure how much more the average reader wants to know or can know, that could be learned any other way than personal experience. 'Milky and washed out in the mid definition' compared to what? That might also be one persons vintage nirvana recipe in another context. The test data is relevant, and my perception has been nms said "should be/sound as good or on par with". That is heavy on qualifiers, far from a definitive statement. That's very different from the suggestion that nms had said anything of an ignorant fanboy nature, such as would merit removal. If commentary on test data disqualifies, we are choosing a path of at least partial ignorance. If you look back, I took the path of running a lot of operational and measurement tests before I put it into session use. That's pretty much what any real studio did back in the early days when studios had staff techs, before putting anything on the line with a paying client. At any rate, the sonic comments suggest another round of closer tests that might be done, not that tests should be tossed as useless.

Just being honest. You didn't need to take that with such offense. I never said you're bad at your job did I? I just commented on the issues I spotted with your monitoring environment. That was just based on what I saw in your studio pics, which was a very poorly treated control room and a particular piece of gear known among acousticians for its problems (KRK Ergo). If you're being smart about things, those are factors anyone should consider when weighing the comments a person makes.

Occasionally I put up the odd blind listening test with a set of files, but always screen the participants and keep it to people (usually mastering forum guys) whose monitoring environment is at a particular level. The outcomes end up being much more consistent than you'd normally find here on the forum.

Everyone has their own subjective experiences to draw from based on their circumstances and what gear they've used/owned/work on. As such, opinions will always vary widely.

End of the day it's still just gear though. It can be returned, sold, bought, or traded as needed. Remember that.

And some people have a way of insulting without even knowing it - maybe reflect a bit on how you interact with others - the insult is implied as someone who cant set up an accurate monitoring environment, is not some one to trust with engineering a record, now are they? And you also dismissed my speakers BTW.

How can you possibly know without hearing my setup in action, what kind of accuracy I am getting out of my monitoring SYSTEM?

Simple - you can't - you can guess, and make assumptions based on experience, but you cant know - but I can as I work here every day.

Please respect that, and I think we can post more civilly with one another...

I'm in the market for some new conversion (coming from an original Ensemble). Was thinking of going either the Ensemble 2 or Symphony route, but man these Motu boxes are looking REAL good. If their conversion holds-up with the Apogee stuff I will proudly grab one of these, especially given the Motu price point.

Would love to hear some more user opinions regarding the conversion as well as preamps... not a ton out there just yet.

....and they just added 24Ai and 24Ao units to the line. I don't see prices anywhere yet.

24Ai and 24Ao are 995

YES! I'l get the 24 outs as soon as they're available!

Nice! 24 outs plus adat for other AD sounds good..

Nice! Can someone share a link?

The 24ai and 24oi are usb2.0 and avb only tho, so you would still need to get one of the main motu interfaces with thunderbolt if you want low latency.

Interesting new additions. I suppose the lack of TB puts them more in the expansion category for a lot of people. If MOTU expands AVB accessibility to include audio connection to computer via Ethernet then these might fit in a lot of other places, especially if latency is lower than USB.

Can these new units function standalone in a professional studio running Ethernet as the main connection to the computer? I'm definitely interested in this. Mrmiller if love to hear from you!

Since you can use any AVB Stream as an routable Input - I would say yes!

I'm also in the run for a new audio device. I kinda wanted to get the Apollo Quad as I also want some extra UAD power, and getting a PCIe UAD card again will be kind of a waist if I upgrade my MacPro in the future. Though at the moment I do not have thunderbolt available, and my experiences with FireWire devices on OSX are not very well.

At the moment I have a PCIe 424 card with a MOTU 2408 and an HD192 connected and someone in another thread pointed me to the new MOTU devices. This new 1248 really looks interesting, but again, I do not have thunderbolt, which makes me wonder.

Now I can easily track 16 tracks at 128 bytes buffer size. Will this be possible with the 1248 used on USB2 ?
And are the converters noticeable better than the HD192's ?

Just want to mention that I really value NMs's opinions even though he may have not personally tested the unit, and I feel both sides of the discussion have valid points.

In regards to using an Ethernet connection I'd really like to hear from mrmiller in regards to using just an Ethernet connection and its performance with regards to layency etc as the one connection to computer for tracking - at $995 for the two newer units if the Ethernet connection will work I'll pull the trigger and have a great IO setup

You can connect the units together with Ethernet but you will need to use the usb port of one to hook up to your computer. Is that what you meant?

Thanks for clarifying :-)

Keyword in my post was 'if'. mrmiller theorized ethernet audio to computer might happen, no promises. USB or TB is what you get definitively. Ethernet audio between AVB devices in a linked system.

Hey everyone! Just got back from vacation and I'm catching up on the posts. Hopefully I didn't miss anything. Feel free to ask again if I did, though.

We're using Cirrus Logic for the ADC, specifically their top-of-the-line CS5381 in the 16A and 1248.

The gain difference does in fact have to do with V-Limit. As well, the dynamic range difference is because the 8M uses a slightly different Cirrus Logic ADC (CS5368) for engineering reasons.

Whoops—fixed now. Thanks for the heads up!

Not quite. Yes, you'll want to send a float to the address "mix/main/0/matrix/fader". That said, that number's units aren't in decibels. The units are linear in the range from 0 to 4. That means 0 is the bottom of the fader and 4 is the top, as seen in the mixer. As you'll note, the fader's dB range is nonlinear so that can be a little confusing if you're trying to use OSC to push it to a specific dB value. It might take some experimentation in that case to determine which linear value maps to which dB. If you're using something like TouchOSC, though, and want to add your own fader element, that should map easily and give you a non-linear fader just like in the web mixer.

We're still working on connecting to the Mac using AVB directly. Yosemite is a big step forward for the AVB driver, though. As of now, we still don't recommend using it that way and are actively ironing out some kinks. I'll definitely let you all know as soon as that changes. Regardless, if you wanted to connect two units over AVB, you'd need an AVB-capable switch, either ours or someone else's.

mrmiller,

as mentioned we are considering replacing our daisy chained Prism Orpheus units for main monitoring with an 16A and 1248 combination. We work on PC only so there is no way of actually benchmarking it against the Prism yet. Please let me repeat a few questions we have:

1) We want to "directly drive amps/active monitors" (without any additional preamps/volume controls in between) with the 16A/1248 combo. Is this kind of main monitoring an application which has been a design priority for the 16A/1248 and would you recommend it as such?

2) Are you also looking into "AVB direct connect" for PC (e.g. using Intel LAN interface chips) or is this only a potential upcoming MAC feature?

3) THE feature which would immediately have us buy into your AVB lineup would be native DSD monitoring (1x to 4xDSD streams directly per ASIO). The Sabre DAC supports this. Is this a feature that you consider and see value in? Having this supported by the upcoming PC ASIO driver would be a huge benefit!

4) Speaking of which: Any update on the PC driver front? ;-)

Thank you kindly!

Interesting. So the Symphony & 1248/16A both use the Sabre 32 DACs and 5381 ADC's, both have DC coupled outputs, both test extremely clean, and audio files passed through them phase cancel against each other to a level of -77dB as a few users have noted.

Given the above and all the functionality of them, these units appear to be untouchable anywhere near their price range. This is a higher grade of build/components than used in the new Ensemble.

Yes but with some caveats that depend on your specific use case. There's no quick way to A/B different output pairs and no talkback support. Channels in the mixer are mono or stereo only, so if you have a surround setup, you'll have to do some extra work. What features are you wondering about specifically?

At the moment, it is Mac only. Just like the switches, you need an AVB-capable ethernet card. Unlike recent Macs, your PC isn't guaranteed to have a compatible card. After that, we'd need to write an audio driver that talks over AVB through that card. If someone has a generic AVB audio driver and you have a capable card, though, it should work with our devices. Echo's ethernet card looks like it may fit the bill (Streamware NIC-1 | Echo Digital Audio) though we have not tested it.

It's definitely something to consider. Let me ask the team about it and I'll get back to you. Out of curiosity, what is your setup such that you need DSD-based monitoring? Pyramix?

Things are moving along! I can't say much more concretely, unfortunately, but there's definitely been a bunch of progress.

I've been through some converter woes recently and decided to take a chance on the 16A (the last MOTU unit I used was an original 896 for some remote work over a dozen years ago - it sounded...well, less than awesome). Installed it yesterday on my aging Mac Pro 4,1 via USB (new Mac soon...), and aside from some needing to jigger things around after a restart to get the unit to be recognized by the browser-based console, it's been a painless install.

The converters sound EXCELLENT; I couldn't care less about the numbers if things sound good. I've had Apogee Symphony, Apollo 16, SSL AlphaLink and SPL Madison units in my room recently; I would have no issue putting these converters up against any of them. They blow the Apollo and SSL away, and I'd have no problems putting them against the Apogee or SPL.

I'm looking forward to getting it connected via Thunderbolt in the near future, but for now, I'm more than happy with my decision.

That's exactly the kind of feedback we are looking for. Thank you!