Reply To: New Interface, ADAT, AES/EBU, Drum Recording

[Lem MeadorModerator]

Thanks for the response, Tobi. Good insights. The interesting thing about the Universal Audio system is that some of their plugins change some of the analogue circuits, prior to conversion. That system is called Unison. The primary thing that they change is the impedance of the mic circuit, and the gain structure, which is one of the interesting "behind the scenes" things that great mic pre makers discovered almost by accident some years ago. This is partly how they get those mic pre's to sound so great. The other thing that the folks at Universal Audio claim is that they can track through their interface with sub 2 ms latency, with some of their plugins in the chain. That's because the interfaces have DSP chips built in to the interface and the monitoring is all done through the interface. None of the actual audio is processed through the DAW or the computer. The computer just records the session, but all of the other processing is done through the onboard DSP, with the caveat that you can't exceed the DSP capability with the total requirements of the plugins.

I haven't ever considered building my own mic pre's or limiters, but in my early years, I was a telemetry technician for NASA so you'd think I could build a few circuits, especially if I had a kit to build on. But to even think about doing the same thing that Rupert Neve has done all his life is mind bending, to say the least.

You've definitely given me some food for thought. Thanks! And thanks for all that you do for the Academy. It is such an amazing and fun community. Cheers ....