Holy Shit. I am not kidding. This thing is the bomb. It gets all those mid tones right, and now the attack sounds perfect, you get that growl, you get that thubby attack of a real tube amp. This is a hybrid amp, It has the line 6 digital amp emulations, and a Reinhold Bogner tube pre amp to get the best of both worlds. I recommend this for metal chords, chug, and rythm. For leads, it still lacks that super resonance of an all analog amp. And the clean channel is kind of dull and doesn’t have enough chime for me. But for metal, and power chords, it is amazing. It has a lot of great emulations in it. I can get that rectumfrier tone out of this thing, no problem. The a30 emu is not that great, but ok on somethings. The verbs sound kind of weak, as do most of hte fx, the delay is ok, as is the phaser and flanger. Chorus is a but weak too. I still think the clean sound is weak, you will need something else to do clean with. Pair this with a fender or an old roland amp.
I pair this up with a les paul and a flying V. Great results for metal, and death metal type of guitar which i am now experimenting with. By no way am I saying that this is as good as an old marshal, or an engle powerball or something like that. But to fit this style of playing into a VAC mix with electronics, it works really well if I mic it up and do my mixing tricks. I am able to get the kinds of sounds I want, really mean rhythms. For the price, you simply cannot beat this amp. To get better, you will have to spend thousands more, No joke. This is a huge step up from the POD xt I was using. I mean the it sounds a lot more analog, but not pure, and like I said, some of the high notes don’t resonate and cut as good as real analog amps do. The digital still gets in the way of the high end. But in the middle it’s fine, and that is where I play most of the time anyway so i get great results with this amp so far. I give it a 4 out of 5.
Updated, high res hifi divx version of the sh2 futile demo..
Ok, i made a video of the sh-2 using the riffs from futile to show off the sh2., i love this synth! I don’t need a moog, when you have a sh-2, you will never need one. Rolands are the heart and soul of VAC. I HEART ROLAND! well, old roland..
By far my favorite AD and DA convertor. Is it the best sounding? No. I think the best sounding is still the Lavry Blue or the prism high end converters. But I prefer the RME fireface 800 to the apogee DA16 AD16, because the apogee colors the mid range in a way that really does not compliment electronic music that well. What makes this the best in my opinion? The drivers, and how it works amazingly perfect with the PC and the MAC. The built in mixer and control panel in the os are simply amazing and very useful for metering and making sure levels are good. This is a solid stable product. So many devices out there have crappy drivers, tc electronics is horrid. This is the best best buy. You get a ton of ins and outs. And kick ass sound quality. I shot it out with the lynx two cards, and my kurzweil AD DA. I would say the the rme had better bass than all the other converters I tested. But the high end seemed a little pinched and not as open as either the lynxtwo or the kurzweil. But mastering can usually help that enough. The lynxtwo and the Kurzweil both cannot touch the low end of the RME FireFace 800. So for bass, stability, drivers, and utilities the rme fireface 800 won me over hands down.. And don’t think the fireface 400 is the same thing, that thing is over priced garbage. Don’t even bother with the fireface 400. If you look around and hagle on price, you can get the fireface 800 for about 1150 new.
Input AD: 8 x 1/4″ TRS, 4 x XLR Mic, 1/4″ TRS Line, all servo-balanced. 1 x 1/4″ TS unbalanced
Output DA: 8 x 1/4″ TRS, servo-balanced, DC-coupled signal path. 1 x 1/4″ TRS unbalanced
Input Digital: 2 x ADAT optical or SPDIF optical, SPDIF coaxial (AES/EBU compatible)
Output Digital: 2 x ADAT optical or SPDIF optical, SPDIF coaxial (AES/EBU compatible)
MIDI: 1 x MIDI I/O via 5-pin DIN jacks, for 16 channels low jitter hi-speed MIDI
Dynamic range AD: 109 dB RMS unweighted, 112 dBA
THD AD: < -110 dB (< 0.00032 %)
THD+N AD: < -104 dB (< 0.00063 %)
Crosstalk AD: > 110 dB
Dynamic range DA: 116 dB RMS unweighted, 119 dBA (unmuted)
THD DA: < -103 dB (< 0.0007 %)
THD+N DA: < -100 dB (< 0.001 %)
Crosstalk DA: > 110 dB
I have used a lot of headphones, jvc marshmellows, sony, bose, sure. And in the sub 500 dollar range, nothing can touch these ultimate ear’s. dual drivers. great bass, great mid range and awesome high range. Very detalied and a good stereo image. They get plenty loud and punch perfectly. They come with a lot of different sized ends to fit all kinds of ears. these fit great in my ears. I cannot live with out these, i use them to check my mixes, work out at the gym with them, and i have even done live sound with them. they are perfect for everything. I would never let someone borrow these, you would have to pry these out of my dead cold hands. I cannot live with out these. I highly recomend these. perfect for ipods and mp3 players too. Sure they cost a tad more than regular headphones, but they are so worth it, they make music listening about 100% better than average headphones.
I hook up a drum machine or synth. in this case the boss dr-880 drum machine. sent 16th notes at 140 bpm to it from logic out one of the channels. recorded about 3 bars worth in. then i would load the wav file i loaded into wavelab, then i would get rid of the space at the begining put the begining of the first sample at 0.
Now, simply write down where each sample begins super zoomed in.
here is what i got on my test:
0, 108, 215, 322, 429, 537, 644, 751, 858, 956 etc etc etc… each number is the beginning of a sample.
Now, subtract like this. 215 subtracted by 108 = 107, 322 subtracted by 215 = 107, 429 subtracted by 322 = 107. etc etc.
no you see how its the same number, later on i get an 108, but thats it, i only got 107 and 108. a 1ms difference in time between each on average. That is how i did this test. Thanks to mr Todd Loomis for devising the test…
So if you want to test your midi, do so.
With my macbook pr, logic 8 express, amt8, fireface 800, i get 1ms of midi jitter on this test.
It’s amazing the difference i first time plugged these in. I was working on the MSI remix, i was using cheaper rapco cable. I bought all new cables in the middle of the mix, and i had to remix the track after i started using the mogami cables. The high end opened up, there was more low mid presence, and the sound was less smeared, plus the stereo image was a tad better. I could not believe that cables could make this big of a difference. It’s a huge difference. for me it was night and day. For any serious studio, or musician who cares about sound quality. Mogami is a must. And oh, I bought all my custom made mogami cables from Psyonic Labs. Chris Kutz does an amazing job and has great customer support, he will do installs and everything. Amazing. I cannot recommend him enough. And please mention that you read about him on my site.
Wow, i shot out the onyx with my chandler tg 2, and an api 512. I picked the onyx. punchier, and had a better sound for synths and drums machines. Super high fi and clean. But analog, the eqs are amazing. i mean as good as the neve on my neve clone for the work i do. This is amazing. and for the money, the best mixer out there, i like it more than the midas stuff too. Better than any software, better than saw, better than samplitude, cubase, logic or any of them. If you want stuff to sound good, get out of the box. digital summing is the pits. and with these onyx boards, wow, you can get a bigger sound that is musical, not crunchy and ear screeching like digital, that usually kills your high end and punch. Don’t listen to the idiots on gear sluts. Also, as to where the old vlz pro mixers has this aggressive mid range, the onyx is more hi fi and open and huge and less pinched sounding. They compliment each other amazingly well, and is why i own and use both now.
March 6th, 2008 by Hexfix93
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