Re: upgrade preamp for home recording

lustrousnerd@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Ethan, can do his own tests, and answer my questions before he wastes
any more of my time.

Why should Ethan waste his time to avoid you wasting your time?

If their sound blaster or whatever crap they claim they use is
good enough for them, then why do they have a Lynx? Why didn't they
return the Lynx if the sound blaster, Tascam, M-audio, or whatever was
just as good?

Sound isn't everything. Maybe it is to you, but not to me. It's important, sure.
No reason to buy something that sounds worse than what you have unless
overall it's better for you.

I never had a SoundBlaster. For a long time, I thought that tape recorders were
for recording and computers were for doing my writing and book keeping. Oh,
and working with MIDI sequencers talking to real hardware synthesizers. My
first MIDI interface was a Music Quest MQX-32M. It had two ports and supported
SMPTE time code, which was important since that's what my tape recorders
recorded. I could sync audio to MIDI.

When I decided that it was time to learn about using a computer for audio applications,
I bought a Turtle Beach Tahiti sound card. At the time, it was the best quality short of
the much more expensive Digital Audio Labs card. I knew engineering folks from the
company, had confidence that they knew what they were doing, and took it on faith
that it was worth the $100 or so more than what a SoundBlaster would cost me.

But once I graduated from my TASCAM Model 5 console to a Soundcraft 600 (which
I still had) I had a problem with the Turtle Beach card. First off, the Soundcraft was
enough quieter than the TASCAM console so that I could hear the Turtle Beach hum.
Also, the Turtle Beach's nominal -10 dBV operating level wasn't a good match for the
Soundcraft's +4 dBu operating level. It was time to upgrade the sound card.

I had reviewed a couple of Echo products and they worked nicely with the console and
the computer. I was thinking of buying a Mia since I only was interested only in a 2-channel
card, not a multichannel one. I was (and I'm still not) not comfortable in using my computer
as a multitrack workstation. But while I was contemplating what to buy, Lynx appeared
on the market. I met their engineers, they had some good ideas and understood how to
properly test their products. Being a man-about-town whose opinions SOME people
respect (whether they agree or not) and also being someone who can write a coherent
sentence and explain how something works, Lynx offered me a LynxONE at a price not
enough more than the Echo Mia to worry about, so I bought it.

The first and second things that I noticed about it when I switched out the Turtle Beach
card was (1) no hum, and (2) better signal-to-noise ratio because of the better match of
operating levels. Now you can argue "that's better sound" and I wouldn't disagree, but
I don't think that's the sort of issue the original poster was concerned with. Anyway, when
playing some music through it, it sounded nice and clean. I didn't turn cartwheels having
discovered what I had been missing for the six or seven years I was using the Tahiti. I
expect that it sounded quite a bit better, but it took a while to grow into it.

Note that the LynxTWO was out before I got my ONE, but it was significantly more expensive
and while it had slightly better specs, and was more expandable, I decided that I didn't need it.
But when the L22 came along, Lynx was eager to get the word out about "the Lynx you can
afford" and offered to trade me an L22 for my ONE. I took them up on it, and again, I didn't
flip over better sound, but it was an advantage to have the digital as well as analog I/O (though
I had to buy a USB MIDI interface because the ONE had MIDI and the L22 doesn't. So again,
to me, the advantage of the L22 was first a matter of interfacing, and the potential for better
sound when I was ready for it.

So that's why I have an L22. If Lynx hadn't come along, I'd probably have bought the Echo Mia
and I'd probably still be using it. For me, "good enough" is good enough.

I have some other audio interfaces now. I have a Mackie 1200F, Satellite, and Onxy mixer
Firewire card. They all sound good and I use each one (as well as the Lynx) for what it's best
at. I don't have to worry about which one sounds best - they're all good enough for the purpose.
I also have a Behringer UCA-202, a $30 USB audio interface that I use with an old laptop
computer on my test bench. It works with the RightMark Audio Analyzer program and I use it
to make measurements on analog gear that I review. It works just fine for that even though it
only costs thirty bucks.

So all of these things have their purpose, and one size doesn't necessarily fit all
applications and all users. If someone asks me for a recommendation for a 2-channel
PCI sound card for a PC and they were willing to spend $700, I'd recommend the L22.
If they had only $200 to spend, I might recommend an M-Audio or Echo. If they had a
laptop, I'd certainly not recommend a PCI card. If someone wanted an 8-channel I/O
box with the best converters at any cost, I'd probably recommend the Prism Orpheus
or a Lynx Aurora 8 with the Firewire option. But if they insisted on at least some mic
preamps integrated, the Lynx has none (the Prism has four). If money was an object,
Focusrite makes some good units.

So that's sort of how I go about recommending things. I try to study out the problem
and recommend a solution. Your suggestion of working on improving the OP's room was
valid and you could have left it there. But you continued to argue with people who
didn't understand why you recommended the hardware that you did.

And here we are. I don't expect you to care very much, but maybe you can go away
understanding that there's more than sound to consider when it comes to selecting
or recommending equipment.


--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach me here:
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers (mriv...@xxxxxxxxxxx)
.

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