Some of the best tracks I made was on a behringer ADA800, Crazy!! The talent, the room, and the mics make a huge difference. Then there is tape, pretty amazing, pull up the faders and there it is. Thanks Barry

I love my Antelope Audio Discrete 8 Synergy Core - it is a joy to work with and it sounds fantastic. I also love my D-Box+ - the summing mixer on that is fantastic as are the DA converters. It sounds amazing.

I upgrade to an Antelope Orion late last year and after using the Scarlett 18i20 for a few years and eventually the SSL 2+ (noticeably better preamps/conversion), the Orion was like night and day. Even on my crappy JBLs, the output conversion was like lifting a blanket off the speakers. That was the biggest thing I noticed.

Great topic, and YES, there most definitely is a difference in converters; dynamic range, detail in decays and timber, etc. I've been using the Lynx Hilo since it came out and LOVE it. My impression is that I can hear the guts of my outboard gear thanks to the great *math* of the Hilo.

Preach! Let the church say Amen.

Glad to hear you dote on RME a little Barry. I ran a gen 1 Fireface UFX for 6 yrs and it was amazing. After 18 months with an Apollo Twin X i just went back to RME, the UCX II that is. No lie i heard an instant improvement coming out my monitors. So good. Stable AF drivers too. Great video. You make some great points.

love your videos! i use the rev 17 by antelope and its unreal came highly recommended from professionals in my type of music - i really want u to test one for sure

I'm glad you briefly mentioned the MOTU interfaces. I agree. I have 2 MOTU 24 AI interfaces to connect all of my hardware and they are very good. I also like the AVB connectivity features as well as the onboard DSP mixer, which allows me to still make music without even booting up the computer until I'm ready to track into Protools. As far as the conversion quality goes, the MOTUs are just as good as the Tascam DM4800 I've upgraded from.

I remember when they used to call them sound cards. lol Technology has definitely leveled the playing field in many ways in audio recording. We really do have way more advanced recording capabilities at our disposal that are affordable. I have an Apogee Element 24 that sounds amazing in my opinion and it's basically an Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt with less IO. Cost me 600 bucks few years ago.

You are absolutely dead on when you said it was like pulling a blanket off your speakers when you upgraded your audio interface. I went from the digi 001 to apogee rosetta and it was night and day. I also had the lynx aurora and roland studio capture and I could tell no difference between the the two so I sold the lynx aurora and been using the studio capture for 5 years. The difference between high end converters and mid level are so close now you have to listen to music tracks 20 times before you can hear the difference. In my opinion it's not worth it to upgrade to very expensive converters. Thousands of songs were produced on apogee rosetta & lynx converters and $400. Interfaces produced in 2022 sound just as good or better than $1700. You had to spend 10 years ago. Great discussion Barry.

9:55 It’s so so sad to see how Avid is destroying their reputation and losing great customer like you sir 😞 Pro Tools as a DAW has a golden history, but I don’t understand why Avid is indirectly killing it! Why they’re not listening to their loyal customers? Why they’re not talking openly with people on KZfaq and discuss ideas, needs, pricing models, etc? It’s not hard to do!

I settled on a Audient ID14 MKII for my iMac, But what surprised me is adding eight channels of ADAT Sounded the same on the Behringer ADA 8200 as the Audient ASP 800 running line ins only. I am sure the asp800’s preamps are better than the Behringer, But again for running line level ins Absolutely no difference. Thanks for the video

Love my Aurora N Lynx...

Love the videos bud. Im gonna be upgrading to a dante system soon.. Need more I/O im thinking about getting the RME box that has Dante and Madi on it .. and then convert my studio live 32s with the converter box from Presonus to allow for dante on it..

The ssl 2 + is an amazing interface.

Agree: If the song is great, don't care about the interface. So, if I make it short, the most important points about an interface are: #1 the music #2 the music #3 the music If the music is bad it will be bad thru the greatest DA/DAs, if it's good it will be good thru a modest & decent interface.

Hi Barry, you seem to be the right person to answer my question: what can you say about the concerters in a 1st generation Apollo Twin? Can they compete with 2021 interfaces or are they totally outdated? Would you recoomend to buy one for a very good prize?

I love Affirm and American Musical Supply, however, never get caught in the free candy monthly payment plan.

Hi, Barry. Would love to see you create a future video with Merging Anubis.

Having made it up through Apogee, Focusrite, then jumped up to UAD high end and then everything changed w the Lynx Aurora(n). The headroom and transparency are really amazing….and I thought the UAD x8p was pretty amazing….

Im going to break this down for everyone for all the years ive been doing this n what i think his point hes trying to get across! As far as interfaces go there isnt to much of a difference between the converters and preamps in interfaces these days, you will notice a slight difference between a $400 interface and a $2k priced interface. It will be noticeable but can easily make great sounding tracks with both. Will be a little clearer making it slightly easier with a 2k price interface but is that worth it to you? Some people it is, some rather spend it else where. But from my experience…. Having separate high price preamps and definitely seperate high end converters around the 2k-4k price makes a big noticeable difference and makes things so much easier with less work n time getting the mix to sound good. I think what most people dont realize is that they upgrade their interface when instead of spending 2k on another interface, they should of used the 2k for separate highend converters and would of noticed a big leap in quality.

Thank you for this discussion!! I have an RME FF800 older interface. Was wanting to re place it with the focusrite 18i20. In your opinion is that a downgrade. I’m having issues with jittering during play back. I was going to try to get the PCM card RME sales to see if that would help but I’d I’m going to spend that type of money my thought is to completely upgrade to something newer.

I think you make some good points about this Barry. I just upgraded from the presonus vsl to the RME UCX ii and wow a massive difference in sound quality and conversion. I can hear things that were untenable previously and this made my monitors and headphones come alive with more precision and details. It even revealed some timing issues in previous tunes and some not so great mixing decisions. They were not bad, but had I been able to hear them, I would have made slightly different adjustments. From my experience, will a scarlet or presonus get you the sound quality of Burl, Apogee, Helio, RME and etc.? No, but can you still make good music? Yes, but keep in mind that same good song/music will indeed sound better out of higher quality gear, but the question becomes is that something you are willing to invest in. Nothing kills a good song like medicore or not so good gear just as higher end gear cannot fix a bad song.

Hi, Barry. I watch your video and I'm surprised that you haven't spoken about UA interfaces and converters., especially considering that probably the most of us are using it. Is there a specific reason why you didn't mention it? I would like to know you opinion about Apollo interfaces/converters, and how does it compare with others like RME or Motu. Thanks a lot for making this videos!

Can you make a video about the value of multiple digital product and the use of an external clock? Is it necessary to have a stand alone clock device to synchronize digital data between external devices?

My current setup wraps around a console, a couple of hardware compressors, (still developing the reverb hardware department tho). but my biggest griefs/areas to still improve are the interface (currently rocking an eraly 2010s M-Audio 8x8 interface, would really really enjoy extra outputs) and perhaps smth better than krk's. i wonder what to invest in first tho.

Barry, where can I hear your music?

hey nice jacket Mr Barry

Hi Barry great advice this is something that is usually left out of the conversationof AUDIO. What is you insight of Modded Interfaces ?

Tons of number 1 hits were made with old Digi blue converters. But newer ones sound tons better and I will never go back to the “blanket over the sound”. Even newer budget devices sound better than old dig blue. There is a distinct different between my Lavry Savitr and UA Apollo

Vivaciousness? LOL. Good word, Barry.

Yes, I hear a night and day difference just via playback from Studio One between the Clarett 4Pre ($699) and the Lyra 1 ($2200). I was going to keep the Clarett, but…. There is NO way I could ever go back to mixing on that device after experiencing the clarity of the Lyra. Just no way…

I’ve had the focusrite Scarlett 18i20 for probably 5-6 years now and it’s a workhorse of an interface. I see nothing wrong with it BUT then again I still don’t mix as a profession 🤣

Thanks, interesting topic. Just looking into getting more IO from my RME UFX+. Initially thought about some RME products but then found Ferrofish Pulse16 MX, which looks like a very good deal, even though the converters are somewhat worse than RME, which is probably negligible for my tasks (connecting all wet effect pedals via hardware inserts). If anybody had any experience with it please comment.

They(the manufacturer) don't make their own converter chips I thought? But it's more how the implementation and design around those converter chips were the big difference. So I thought?... from what I've read on forums.

I just sold my Apollo Twin X for the RME UCXII. I’m hoping off the UAD Bandwagon. The Twin X is a beautiful interface but one thing I didn’t like…You can’t bypass the preamps when using outboard gear.

I’m still on the Presonus fire studio project! FireWire… I do wanna upgrade but after just building a new PC and making sure it has thunderbolt 4 ports I wanna wait. Hoping they start coming out with interfaces using that. Does that actually help with latency? Firewires old it’s gotta.

It would be a very costly move to change my convertors at this point,using radar studio covers all the bases for me at this point,and is rock solid.,so untill it blows up ,i will stay put

Barry, to be honest with you, your studio is miles and miles and miles better than anything the Beatles ever recorded on both you and I know it but yet it’s highly unlikely that anything that will come out of either of our studios will have the sonic quality and brilliance and likability of the stuff they did and why is that? It’s because back then people had less distractions and more focus, we don’t have the time or desire to put in the time to become a great guitarist or a great vocalist or a great engineer we live in the time of instant gratification and have learned to settle for less most of the music that comes out now is done on a laptop and people don’t seem to care if the vocalist can sing or if there are any musicians on the song at all so what is all of that conversion fire power going to do if the audience is going to settle for anything that’s released but I am from the old school like you, and I remember when a recording studio had to have about $250,000 invested into it just to be a worthy place to record good music but now they have made everything so simple that one person with no schooling and no musical training with no vocal experience can write, record, produce, mix, and release song all by himself with little to no experience and have a good chance to have a hit on their hands I’m not saying this song will be good or great but in today’s environment let’s be honest it doesn’t have to be a great song to be number one does it 🧐

Did you mention uad Apollo

I went to RME from years of focusrite and behringer xr18 and I can't really tell. I keep telling myself I just don't have golden ears.

Is it going to be something that one can reliably and consistently tell the difference with a blind test? I doubt it. Psycho acoustics is an interesting phenomenon.

I used to think high end converters would give me a better conversion in audio but after upgrading the usb cable that comes with the audio interface to a more expensive usb cable it made a huge difference in sound and also if you don't have a good power conditioner you will introduce a lot of jitter in your sound also the USB cable's that comes with the audio interface is notorious for introducing jitter in the sound giving you harsh mix and we sometimes blame it on the audio interface having low quality converters when in fact is the cable that makes a difference to achieve a clean mix

Is it a shame that I sometimes mix in the box...literally out from my laptop's headphone output to my headphones? LOL I'm guessing I'm losing some quality in D to A conversion there huh? lol #justtryingtolearn

Antelope for way better with the drivers and there conversion to me are better than had. Not by far but a little bette to me.

Hilo. (He-Lo)