I am really into audio engineering and digital home recording. I find the products in that space are full of marketing double-speak, exaggerated claims, and meaningless adjectives like... "warm, buttery, harsh, squishy, chewy, gluey... etc." I was wondering if you guys could help answer a couple of questions for me without slant or auditory opinion; just details and data.
ADCs
Analog-to-Digital Converters, as far as I know, do one thing. They sample an incoming signal at a specific rate, typically 44.1 kHz - 196 kHz. And they encode those samples as binary "words," typically at 24-bit. When recording digital audio, ADCs appear in a piece of gear called an "Audio Interface," which you connect to a computer using, USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt, etc. The data from the ADC is passed into the computer for storage and manipulation using specific software called a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
Question 1: Are there any differences between one ADC over another? Obviously there can be reliability or performance issues that make Company A's ADCs "better" than Company B's. And I am sure that there are ADC for all types of applications other than just recording audio for entertainment. I'm sure there are hundreds it not thousands of applications for ADC, military, automotive, cellular technologies, etc etc. But, when it comes to ADCs used for digital audio... it seems to me like the industry would kind of, as a whole, figure out which company makes the "best" ADC for pro audio, and everyone would just use that one.
Question 2: Audio interfaces on the market have wildly varying retail prices. They start as low as ~$69 and go up past >$10,000. There are a lot of aspects and features other than just ADC that affect the final price. For example, pre-amps. In order to record a descent sounding audio signal, it must first go through a pre-amp to boost it to a higher level. An audio interfaces pre-amp(s) probably impact its price the most. However, if you are a true professional audio engineer, it is highly unlikely that you would be using the preamps that come stock in your audio interface. The world's highest quality audio pre-amps, are stand-alone rack-mounted modules or are in a massive console.
If I wanted to build an audio interface that had no pre-amps, no features, no nothing, other than simple "The world's highest quality analog to digital converters" would that still be a complex project that would require electrical engineers working for years to come up with a design, or... could I just call up Texas Instruments and ask them for their best ADC and some documentation on how to incorporate it into a circuit. Then just solder it to a PCB along with whatever power management circuit it requires, and send its output through whatever interface chipset (Thunderbolt, or whatever) is considered "the best" these days? And that's it?
The reason I ask is... I own some really great analog pre-amps that were very expensive, and sound fantastic. I need a new audio interface, but as I am looking at what is on the market right now, they are so massively expensive, and I hate to spend north of $1k on a piece of equipment that is nothing more than a box that holds 10-15 ADCs that all cost <$5 ea. and sends it to my computer along ~$20 of additional chips and passive components. Am I over-simplifying things in my head?
ADCs
Analog-to-Digital Converters, as far as I know, do one thing. They sample an incoming signal at a specific rate, typically 44.1 kHz - 196 kHz. And they encode those samples as binary "words," typically at 24-bit. When recording digital audio, ADCs appear in a piece of gear called an "Audio Interface," which you connect to a computer using, USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt, etc. The data from the ADC is passed into the computer for storage and manipulation using specific software called a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
Question 1: Are there any differences between one ADC over another? Obviously there can be reliability or performance issues that make Company A's ADCs "better" than Company B's. And I am sure that there are ADC for all types of applications other than just recording audio for entertainment. I'm sure there are hundreds it not thousands of applications for ADC, military, automotive, cellular technologies, etc etc. But, when it comes to ADCs used for digital audio... it seems to me like the industry would kind of, as a whole, figure out which company makes the "best" ADC for pro audio, and everyone would just use that one.
Question 2: Audio interfaces on the market have wildly varying retail prices. They start as low as ~$69 and go up past >$10,000. There are a lot of aspects and features other than just ADC that affect the final price. For example, pre-amps. In order to record a descent sounding audio signal, it must first go through a pre-amp to boost it to a higher level. An audio interfaces pre-amp(s) probably impact its price the most. However, if you are a true professional audio engineer, it is highly unlikely that you would be using the preamps that come stock in your audio interface. The world's highest quality audio pre-amps, are stand-alone rack-mounted modules or are in a massive console.
If I wanted to build an audio interface that had no pre-amps, no features, no nothing, other than simple "The world's highest quality analog to digital converters" would that still be a complex project that would require electrical engineers working for years to come up with a design, or... could I just call up Texas Instruments and ask them for their best ADC and some documentation on how to incorporate it into a circuit. Then just solder it to a PCB along with whatever power management circuit it requires, and send its output through whatever interface chipset (Thunderbolt, or whatever) is considered "the best" these days? And that's it?
The reason I ask is... I own some really great analog pre-amps that were very expensive, and sound fantastic. I need a new audio interface, but as I am looking at what is on the market right now, they are so massively expensive, and I hate to spend north of $1k on a piece of equipment that is nothing more than a box that holds 10-15 ADCs that all cost <$5 ea. and sends it to my computer along ~$20 of additional chips and passive components. Am I over-simplifying things in my head?