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A blast from the past: What 400 moneys got you 20-25 years ago

Ropeburn

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Excuse me for having an acute case of technical nostalgia, but let me rant about what kind of performance you could get 20 years ago for very affordable money (400-500€/$). TLDR: it's so good, it still holds up today - or would, if hardware and software interfaces hadn't made it obsolete.

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M-Audio Delta 1010 Digital Recording System -intended for and marketed towards the "semi professional" sector, that is home and small professional music studios

PCI card with S/PDIF in/out. Breakout box with external power supply (9V AC), BNC wordclock in/out, MIDI in/out, and 8ch in/out via balanced TRS, each switchable between -10/+4 levels. In total, 10ch in/out, hence the model name.

PCI card and breakout box (steel with aluminium front plate) connected by standard DB25 cable. Nice: widely available, nothing proprietary.

A look inside the breakout box with converters and connectors:
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What we see here is eight input channels buffered by 2x NE5532 each (presumably for desymetrisation and level switching), and 4x 2ch AKM AK5383 ADC chips.

Removing the ADC board, we have this:

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Basically the same story: eight output channels, again using 16x NE5532 buffers, and this time 4x 2ch AKM AK4393 DAC chips.

The whole system is 24/96, with a 36bit DSP for routing and mixing. Those AK4393 were called "wonder DAC" at the time, because their performance was exceptionally good, without being prohibitively expensive. It were exactly those days when 24/96 finally became mainstream, and affordable in really good quality.

PCI card:

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These DAC chips had a manufacturer rated SNR of 120bB, the ADCs only marginally less. The whole M-Audio implementation was rated 109 (ADC) and 108 (DAC) dB by the manufacturer, at a distortion of <0.0015%. Personally I only measured noise, round-trip (output to input, thus both combined) revealed 105dB, and frequency response was super flat (+-0.1dB) from 20 to some 30 or 35 kHz. It's long ago and I forgot the exact numbers, but back then it was stellar. It easily doubled as a makeshift amateur measurement device for older gear, as long as you regarded its own limitations - which frankly were much better than most musical gear you could buy back then. Mixers, synthesizers, fx boxes, etc. - infact you'd have been hard pressed to find any professional electronic instrument or other gear with a lower noise floor than this.

This system was utterly and thoroughly audibly transparent, and would comfortably land in the "good" category of ASR measurements today, 25 years later. All that for 400 euromoneys from 2003 or so. Plus super stable system performance too: even a moldy Intel Core2Duo PC could do 128 samples buffer size with this interface, stable with no audio dropouts until full CPU load. That's 2.6ms latency at 48kHz. Later quad core CPUs allowed 64 samples or 1.3ms latency. Half that at 96kHz. Stable. For all practical musical purposes, may it be recording or live performance or any combination, that's true realtime. Even the MIDI standard is much slower than that. Add flexible routing and zero-latency 36-bit mixing and monitoring via onboard DSP, comfortably handled by software driver control panel, and you got a winner in terms of practicality too. Those 5.1 and 7.1 multichannel surround output modes supported by the driver seem like free gimmicks at this point.

In that light, I wonder where all the technical progress went since then. 8ch AD and DA i/o for that price at that quality, plus extra features, 15+ years of driver support (this 1999 model got drivers up to and including Windows 7, plus updates), great audio and mechanical quality that even surpasses the "semi professional" target market, for this little money? Even after inflation, where do you get that today?
 
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Delta 1010 does not hold up at all, recorded many records on one and am certainly glad at the options today at every price point vs 20 years ago.
 
Well in todays dollars you are talking $700-750 depending on the year picked. Maybe not much progress in that same price range.
That's exactly my point. Maybe you'll find an 8ch i/o audio interface for 700 moneys with comparable features (personally I couldn't find one), but it's 110 or 120dB SINAD instead of the Delta1010's estimated 100. Marginal improvement and hardly relevant in practice. It would seem that in this particular case, inflation and technical improvement combined do not work in our (consumer) favour even over a timespan of 20 years.
 
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It may be worth checking what shape the electrolytic caps are in and what brands / series they are, this one was made in Taiwan in the middle of the capacitor plague after all. I know the 1010LT has a bit of a problem with those.

For some insight on the capabilities and limits of such hardware, this thread about the Echo Mona with the same converter complement may be insightful:

Putting the clock generation on a PCI card and the actual converters on a breakout box always is a slightly risky proposition in terms of jitter.
 
The M-audio PCI cards were excellent for their time. I've got probably about 5 here (deltas and audiophiles up to the AP24/192) in my stash of old bits and pieces. Great cards.
 
Delta 1010 does not hold up at all, recorded many records on one and am certainly glad at the options today at every price point vs 20 years ago.
I'd be happy to hear any audibly significant comparison of your music then vs now. Personally I can't hear a difference to a modern DAC with, say, 120db SINAD.

But then I and my ears can't tell a difference between 224kbps MP3 and upwards vs. lossless 16/44 FLAC, despite decades of hobby producing and very critical listening. Maybe you can provide the proper material so I can?

I know the limits of my ears, by thorough testing. Can you honestly say the same? :p
 
A little correction.
The one called "wonder DAC" back then was the AK4396,not the AK4393.

Mainly due to the entirely new modulator,no need for coupling caps,etc (apart for its H2 to H5 is effectively clean of harmonics up the spectrum),
And of course AK4396 can do 192kHz,DSD,etc where the AK4393 can only do 96kHz.

Edit:Have a look at it (AK4396) at 0dB and -15dB input gain with lots of averages to dig into noise and show harmonics:

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0dB

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-15dB

As clean as it gets (20yo,lets not forget! )
 
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That's exactly my point. Maybe you'll find an 8ch i/o audio interface for 700 moneys with comparable features (personally I couldn't find one)

what about Audient Evo 16 - 460€ USB-C interface, 24 in/out (8 mic preamplifiers, 8 analog outs, 16 optical in/out) and 2 headphone amplifiers? Or Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Presonus Studio 1824c, Steinberg UR816C? All of them around 400€ and much more features. BTW inflation in EU from 1999 to now is about 60%, but 1010 was introduced at a $599, so this would make it $1000 interface now. Still pretty good price, but lack of mobility, headphone outs, lack of ADATs or microphone preamplifiers is the biggest difference between those old interfaces and current ones. One had to buy all of these separately, or at least get some mixer and there weren't any cheap ones yet
 
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The one called "wonder DAC" back then was the AK4396,not the AK4393.

Mainly due to the entirely new modulator,no need for coupling caps,etc (apart for its H2 to H5 is effectively clean of harmonics up the spectrum),
And of course AK4396 can do 192kHz,DSD,etc where the AK4393 can only do 96kHz.
AFAICT, both are part of the same lineage with consistent DR and THD+N specs and relatively few changes in pinout and registers.
AK4393 (11/98) was the first 120 dB class DAC ever to be released.
It took until 09/99 for the Cirrus/Crystal CS4396 and CS4397 to come out (quad speed, the latter with DSD + HDCD support).
AK4394 (11/99) was the quad speed version.
AK4395 (08/00) got better filters.
AK4396 (?/04) reverted to AK4394 filters but got reduced power consumption (as it was the first since the 4393 to support 3.3 V digital) and DSD support.

There seem to have been some advancements in 1/f noise level but that may have more to do with production date than specific model, being a function of process improvements.
 
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