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32ch DAC? Best bang for buck in the top tier?

As others ITT have noted, DACs and ADCs have been pretty transparent for years now... the past 10 years have not really advanced the state of the art AFAIK.

Also, maybe you just don't have the right analog-style saturator plugin on your master channel. Much easier and cheaper than doing it this way. ;)

If that's the tool that gets you the result you want with a little extra saturation, go for it, but personally I would find it way too much hassle. I once bought an R2R tape machine to do this kind of thing but never ended up actually using it on a track. So at least I applaud your appetite for inconvenience in pursuit of a good mix.
yeah i'd never in a million years want to handle a full blown tape machine. to my ears there are a lot of very good distortion emulations but they all suffer from some degree of unavoidable aliasing (especially when i have a lot of tracks running at 44.1 or 48k) which, when my hyperacusis and tinnitus act up, definitely contributes to fatigue. i see my studio gear like an instrument--having it "feel good" definitely helps me work better even if the sound improvement is negligible.

and i really like to abuse my gear, drive things right short of the 0db red. one of my friends who's a mixing engineer calls it the "dirty secret of modern music." it's fun to replicate, and while something like decapitator or taupe or ozone can get close, I am convinced there is some dimensionality lost that analog preserves or somehow recreates. That same friend who is loads smarter than me suspects it has to do with analog equipment mimicking the time domain distortion imparted by air... pretty kooky stuff haha
 
that box seems a little long in the tooth--the output count is perfect but I want to take full advantage of today's tech. I'm looking into whether RME does a newer version of this box. thank you!
The RME M-32 Pro II and Pro II-D came out in 2023. I've had the AVB version and now am using the Dante version and may be getting a couple more for customers (I'm an RME/Ferrofish dealer). I use these with a StormAudio ISP Evo with AES67 output. These are basically a 32 channel version of the ADI-2 FS.

I've had M-Audio, MOTU, Lynx, Steinberg, Tascam, and Solid State Logic DACs in the past in my theater. With the MOTU AVB products, you can aggregate them for more channels and one becomes the master clock. Two MOTU 16A's will give you 32 analog channels.
 
one of my friends who's a mixing engineer calls it the "dirty secret of modern music."
It's not that new. Listen to any late 60s early 70s "heavy" bands and they had the needle in the red to get their sound. Steven Wilson commented on how Eddie Offord pushed the tape on the Yes albums.
I am convinced there is some dimensionality lost that analog preserves or somehow recreates
I worked on 1/4" and 2" professional analogue tape at the same time as digital recording becoming a standard tool. If you deliberately avoid pushing either technology into the red, they are pretty good at accurately capturing exactly what was being created. It's not that analogue is "preserving" something that digital can't. Quite the opposite - digital with enough bits and a high-enough sample rate coupled with dither can capture everything; much better than tape - which can't go down near DC and has noise limits). So what you are experiencing is analogue electronics creating harmonic and anharmonic distortion and/or noise through being driven outside its clean operating range.
 
The RME M-32 Pro II and Pro II-D came out in 2023. I've had the AVB version and now am using the Dante version and may be getting a couple more for customers (I'm an RME/Ferrofish dealer). I use these with a StormAudio ISP Evo with AES67 output. These are basically a 32 channel version of the ADI-2 FS.

I've had M-Audio, MOTU, Lynx, Steinberg, Tascam, and Solid State Logic DACs in the past in my theater. With the MOTU AVB products, you can aggregate them for more channels and one becomes the master clock. Two MOTU 16A's will give you 32 analog channels.
Apologies I was checking out the m-32 original not the II. I think you just found my solution! Thank you

One thing I wasn’t sure about with MOTUs is how AVB works when you’re putting tons of channels through. The manual says the channel outs are limited by DSP, and I was wondering whether that meant that it wasn’t actually possible to have all of its analog outs working while also putting through another 16ch of 96khz audio through avb to the downstream unit?
 
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Recently tried "analog summing" where one converts all their individual tracks into the analog domain, puts it through an analog box that sums them into a stereo signal and puts them through a transformer based output stage, which is converted back to A/D. Holy balls does it make a difference and I have no idea why
it's when I'm pushing the track into the orange where analog and digital begin to behave very differently
Sum with transformers.
So you're looking or low frequency distortion.

You know you may add the same effect with plug-ins ?
By the way, it's strange to be concerned with SINAD if your goal is to add distortion.
Good SNR, sure. But THD you don't care, do you ?
 
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Any of the ’higher end’ interfaces will sound good, just s bit different with different features. Take your pick from Burl, Lynx, Apogee, Prism, DAD, Merging. There are a million more important factors to consider than differences in this level of interface AD quality when it comes to mixing outside the box.
 
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