Avid Blind Listening Event

So I received an email from Avid a few weeks back inviting me to a “Listening Event” at Studios 301 in Alexandria, Sydney. I thought it would be a good chance to check out the SSL control room over at 301 and listen to a few converters against each other. To be honest, I think this obsession with AD/DA and jitter and preamps is all quite unhealthy and detracts from much more important details like mic choice and placement and room acoustics, but sure, I’ll go along and have a listen.

Well. Damn them. They up-sold me. We had 4 converters, labelled A,B,C,D to evaluate on various tracks. The video below tells a bit more about how the rigs were technically setup to ensure a proper comparison. To my ears, straight away, A sounded lovely, big and wide with a really solid bottom end in the middle of the field. B was very nondescript by comparison, I couldn’t tell when Stuart was switching from the source to the B converter. C was brittle, harsh on vocals, the high mids were just boosted in a way that was unpleasant to the point where I couldnt feel objective about D after hearing C!

So the converters were:

a) Apogee Symphony

b) HD I/O

c) 192 io

d) RME fireface

I’m rather upset with my 192s now… To my ears the standouts were the Symphony and the HD IO but for completely different reasons – the Symphony sounded flattering, “enhanced” and easy to work with whereas the HD I/O was so transparent it didn’t seem to be there! Personally, I’m one of those guys who likes the idea of purist audio, a clean path, uncoloured, so I wont be rushing out to buy the Symphony any time soon, but I’m definitely budgeting for an upgrade on my I/O.

Damn them. Who’s going to explain this to my wife?!