safetyman Posted September 20, 2009 Share Posted September 20, 2009 Ok, want to record live African drums in a drum circle, as well as a live trio etc .I will be using an HHB Burnit 830 to record on to direct from the desk, and need a new mixer with more inputs than the little Tapco 60 that I have already.I have been looking at various desks( A & H Zed 14, Soundcraft M8/12, A & H PA 12 etc, etc )some with SPDIF direct outputs and some without.So, the burning question is will those with SPDIF outputs sound better overall( when using this output ) than those with analogue only outputs when recording direct to the Burnit, please ? Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted September 20, 2009 Share Posted September 20, 2009 yes! ....... but! If you have an analogue mixer with the A/D inside the mixer, then it is possible that the A/D in the Burn-it could be better. If, however, the mixer is digital from the mic pre-amps onwards, then any extra noise generated during the analgue summing/splitting/send stages won't apply. Once in the digital mixer, the audio quality is maintained, and the result should be better. If you have a high quality analogue desk, then you may be unable to hear a difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
safetyman Posted September 20, 2009 Author Share Posted September 20, 2009 yes! ....... but! If you have an analogue mixer with the A/D inside the mixer, then it is possible that the A/D in the Burn-it could be better. If, however, the mixer is digital from the mic pre-amps onwards, then any extra noise generated during the analgue summing/splitting/send stages won't apply. Once in the digital mixer, the audio quality is maintained, and the result should be better. If you have a high quality analogue desk, then you may be unable to hear a difference.Ok, so, generally its better to use the digital -to-digital recording if a mixer has this facility ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted September 21, 2009 Share Posted September 21, 2009 With the mixers you are talking about, which are fairly simple analogue mixers with digital outputs, I doubt if you'd hear very much difference in practice - however, as the desk meters will be be linked to the meters on the HHB if you use digital in, then you don't have any problem optimising the gain structure. what you see on the desk is what appears on the recorder. If you use analogue, then it's possible to get it wrong - compromising quality - so high mixer output = very low recorder input or very low mixer output = very high recorder input gain. Neither is good for signal to noise ratio. Plug it up via the sp/dif and worrying about gain structure on the output sort of goes away. It works. It's pretty foolproof. I'd certainly do it this way, and it's 50% less cabling! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
safetyman Posted September 22, 2009 Author Share Posted September 22, 2009 Ok, thanks for your help and much appreciated. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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