Are there any bad D/A converters on the market?

This years marks 15 that I've been doing music. Either as a artist, producer, or engineer. In the past decade I've got to use and hear many different pieces of gear. Last week I purchased an Antelope Orion 32. After being impressed by the d/a conversion I got to thinking..... When was the last time I heard a "bad" d/a converter? By bad I mean unpleasing to the ear. I feel that d/a converters in my opinion (like mics and mic pres) have very subtle differences once you reach a certain quality. Of course some d/a converters sound better than others, but all of the ones I've heard from low budget interfaces to high end converters hasn't been a mile difference between them. My first interface was a m-audio delta 1010LT. I'd love to hear how it compares to converters today. How much of a difference would I hear?

Over the years I've been impressed by d/a converters on inexpensive products. My cousin brought over his silver avid mbox and I remember thinking wow, this sounds pretty good. M-audio interfaces has been sub par in the past to me, but the converters on the profire 2626 sounded really good. Even my $300 monitor station V2 from Presonus has a damn good d/a in it for the money. Though it doesn't sound as good as my lynx Aurora (it is close though!) I would be perfectly fine doing a mix on it. Don't get me wrong, d/a is important, (if it wasn't I wouldn't of bought an Orion 32) but I think d/a converters have came to a point where they all sound good enough to work on. With being said I ask..... Are there any d/a converters that sound bad?

M-audio Profire 2626 review

When I first saw the m-audio Profire 2626 I thought this was one sexy interface! I loved the all black faceplate. This was a huge step up in design from the previous firewire interfaces. I owned the m-audio 1814 and 410. Not because if was the best firewire interface I could get, but because it worked with pro tools m-powered. While I felt they were far short of amazing, they got the job done. The Profire 2626 however, is miles closer to amazing from the previous line of m-audio interfaces. Like the FW1814 and 410, I was forced into buying another m-audio interface in order to work in pro tools at the time. Over the past year and a half with the Profire I have grown to love some things about it, and hate some things about it. Lets talk about the good things first.

First of all 99% of the work I do in my studio is mixing and mastering, so I have never once used the pre's. However, I have an engineer friend with one and he loves the pre's on guitar and vocals. Here is a quote from him on his thoughts on the pres.

“The pres are great. They are really clean for vocals and acoustic guitar and they seem to color the signal in a really unique way.

The 2626 itself is the perfect starter piece for a home recording rig and the Octane pres are just the icing on the cake.” - Trevin Tolbert

The first thing I noticed was the d/a conversion was very nice. A lot better than I expected. Black Lion Audio says the stock Profire 2626 sounds better than the Apogee Ensemble. I can’t cosign on that because I have never used an Ensemble, but compared to my Lynx Aurora the Profire wasn't as wide and had less depth, but certainly was able to hold its own. As far a/d converters once again the Profire preformed well. Not as good as the Aurora, but a very capable a/d conversion. For the price, features, and I/O count the Profire 2626 deserves a trophy for sound quality.

Now for the bad. In printing my mixes back in Pro Tools through the Profire I would sometimes get random clicks and pops. this wouldn’t happen often, but often enough that I had to be sure to check for them before sending a mix to a client. I blamed this on the Profire’s internal clock. After purchasing a Lynx Aurora I clocked the Profire to it. 8 months in and so far not a single click or pop in my mixes.

My second issue I believe is driver related. When I clock to the Aurora and open a pro tools session sometimes I get a “playback device does not support 48k”. (Or whatever sample rate I have the Aurora set to, which most of the time is the sample rate the session is set  to as well.) When this Pro Tools error occurs the clock on the Profire gets reset to spidf/coax. This has never happened opening Logic or Studio One sessions so as far as I can tell it is specific to Pro Tools. Which is pretty funny when you think about that the Profire and Pro Tools should play nicely together since they were made for each other. When this happens I have to go to Profire control setting, set the clock to internal, reopen the pro tools session, go back to the Profire control panel software, and reclock it to the Aurora. This became very annoying and was enough to make me think about parting with the Profire. Last month I got a RME Firerface 800 and it is now my main interface. I have the Profire connected to the RME by adat running in standalone mode. Since then I’ve had no problems opening Pro Tools sessions.

My third issue is the control panel software. You can save your configurations, which is pretty much standard for any interface control software, but I have no idea why the hell m-audio decided to not SHOW you what configuration you have loaded. This may seem minor but was a major FAIL to me. I have 3 different configurations saved. One for monitoring from the D-box d/a, one for monitoring from the Aurora d/a, and one to monitor from the Profire. Since I can’t see what setting I have loaded I have to just load up whatever setting I have saved, which is redundant if I was already in the setting. But to avoid wondering why my session isn’t playing back correctly from certain outputs this is how I had to do it. This is of course not an issue anymore since the RME is now my  interface, and yes, it does show you which setting you have loaded in total mix.

Another weird thing is once I installed the Aurora, I went in the profire control panel to reorder the inputs. I wanted to make the Aurora 1-8 and the profire 9-16. Reordering the inputs did nothing but route the signal out the Auroa into the profire. After a few days I gave up. This was very frustrating because whenever I played Itunes or anything other than my daw I would have to patch the profire outs 1-2 into my d-box. I have no idea why the reorder input wouldn’t simply just work.

So despite the internal clock, I have no problem with the units hardware. Since I don’t record in my studio I had no problem with all the pres being on the back. The line inputs bypass the pres which is something that can’t be said for most interfaces. Some people like full metering but I’m happy with the green signal lights (of course they show red when clipping) on the front of the unit. They let me know the Profire is getting signal, I can check metering in my DAW. This can be very helpful during troubleshooting because it allows you see if your getting signal from the source. I’ve always thought of M-audio as a consumer brand for pro audio, but the Profire 2626 moves them into pro-sumer bracket to me. The hardware design definitely gives it a pro look, and when I saw the new fast track interfaces recently announced it looks like they will continue to go in that direction. Though not mentioned in the conversations with other high end companies like  Apogee, Lynx, and RME, the Profire 2626 is as high end as you can get from M-audio right now.

Newer Doesn't Always Mean Better

In the audio world, newer doesn't always mean better, though in most cases it does. In electronic products such as smartphones, TV's, video game consoles, and computers, are contanstly being replaced by newer models with more impressive specs and performance. In audio however, this isn't the case. Lets take the Empirical Labs Distressor for example. The Distressor had its 15th year old birthday last year. The Avalon 737 channel strip is also more than a decade old. The RME Fireface series is coming up on a decade. The Lynx Aurora converters are now over 5 years old. Yet these products are still popular and selling well today. If you notice, most of the new gear today is made to sound like the old gear of the past. The Vintech series is made to recreate the classic Neve sound, and the Daking mic pre and eq is modeled after the Trident console. I'm not saying go buy the oldest gear you can afford, but I am saying if your looking at gear and one was built in 07, and one 05, don't expect the one built in 07 to sound better because its "newer". 


Because audio gear made over a decade ago can still be relevant today is actually a good thing. I don't think anyone will reinvent the microphone anytime soon. What I mean by this is you have condenser, ribbon, and dynamic mics. Will there be an awesome new technology to come out that will replace these types of mics making them obsolete? Not likely. So its a good thing because the same mic, mic pre, eq, and compressor you use today will still be able to function 20 years from now. This means you can buy gear and use it for the rest of your career. How many other industries can say that? Another good thing is that after a decade of production there are plenty of used ones available for cheaper. The bad thing about old gear still being relevant is that prices aren't likely to drop because of a products age, which makes sense. It something has been selling well for over a decade then why drop the price? If anything prices go up. An engineer I know was telling me the other day how his friend bought a tubetech CL1B for around $1800 brand new years ago. Now the price is almost doubled at $3500. So don't let the age of a product discourage you from purchasing it. (Unless its truly vintage and may be in need of constant repair.) Who knows, that gear you may end up buying that's a few years old may end up being a classic. Then you can be the one saying you bought it at lower price 10 years later when the price is doubled.

Lynx Aurora review

Got my new Lynx Aurora 8 added to my setup and here is my review. First of all I’ve heard great things about Lynx customer service, unfortunately I haven’t experienced that. I emailed them three times over the last few months with product questions and received no reply at all. Instead my Sweetwater rep was able to answer all my questions. First thing I did was install the lt-adat card I purchased with it. This required removing the top of the unit. Between watching the NBA Allstar weekend and installing the card the process took me about 20 minutes. I could probably do it 10 minutes now that I’m familiar with the process.

I connected it to my M-audio profire 2626 by adat and fired it up for a listen. I played one of my recent mixes and well as some music in my Itunes. I was impressed by what I heard, but switching over to my Dangerous D-box d/a conversion I was blown away at the difference. The D-box was most noticeably louder. Since it was louder it felt like it was a little brighter and little more low end, which now leads to believe that Dangerous D/A is not as transparent as I thought, but I still love the sound of it.

I clocked my Profire to the lynx by adat and opened up some pro tools sessions. I was greeted with a “playback device does not support 48k”. I changed to 44.1k and got the error message for that sample rate as well. I then booted up Logic and tried to play some sessions from it. Logic gave an error message saying “sample rate 40500 recognized”. 40500??? Thats not even close to 44.1k! After calling up one of teachers It was clear that something was going on with the Lynx when it was being clocked by adat. When I switch the Profire to clock internally everything would be fine. I noticed when clocked by adat changing the sample rate on the lynx would not change the sample on the profire. So something was definitely off. I ended up running to Sam Ash to get a BNC wordclock cable. Since clocking to word clock everything is fine. I posted on Lynx support forum my issue but have yet to receive feedback.

I then proceeded to a/b the lynx and my Profire going through the inputs of the d-box. I was in awe at how close the Profire sounded to the Aurora to my ears. The Lynx sounded slighter better to me, but I could see the Profire winning in a blind test. In case your wondering I’m monitoring on my Focal CMS65.

Now to the a/d conversion. I haven’t had time to directly compare the profire to the lynx as far as a/d conversion, but I can say I have been pleased with the Lynx’s conversion from the few mixes I’ve printed through them so far. Not all the time, but often enough, the profire would give me digital clicks and pops on its a/d conversion which I feel was being caused by the clock in the Profire. For this reason clocking the Profire to the Lynx was a no brainer for me. So far I am yet to experience these clicks on pops with the Lynx.

In the search for converters I really wanted to go Apogee because of their reputation but Apogee ended up just being to expensive. The Lynx Aurora 8 feels like a steal at $1,995. You get 8 channels a/d, d/a, and a very nice clock. You would spend twice as much or more to get the same with Apogee. The Profire control panel software made routing to the Lynx very frustrating, to the point I was thinking of getting a new interface, but I’ll go more into that later. Focusing on the Lynx I highly recommend this product for the quality and cost. Now owning the Lynx has also made me appreciate the Profire d/a more now. Black Lion Audio posted on their Facebook page in some comments that they thought the Profire sounded better the Apogee ensemble. At first reading that I thought that was BS giving the reputation of M-audio and Apogee, but now I’m starting to believe it.

Also I’ve noticed people complain of the lack of metering on the Aurora. Downloading the remote control software give you full metering for inputs and outputs and you can control things such as clock source and sample rate from the software.