Sept 12, 2017 5:08:31 GMT -7 kcatthedog said:
ok no offense, in this comment butam I missing something, for example, the radar 24 is quite an old design, including the conversion, is it really better than say the new apogee symphony or are we just splitting sonic hairs and actually talking about workflow preference ?
I to sure what happened with this post I wrote. The first time I posted it only the picture attachments appeared??? So, I had to edit and re-type my observations of RADAR.
I have been using RADAR Systems since 1995.
The RADAR Classic converters no matter how old will have better resolution than most modern converters unless you are running yours from a Big Ben or other high resolution clocking system.
The RADAR NYQUIST converters which sample at 192/24bit are in a league of their own.
Barry and the guys are RADAR spent a lot of time designing the analogue front end & output stage of the converters. The analogue sections run on + & -18 volts while most converters runs on + &- 15 volts.
So, right out of the gate the input to the RADAR converters can handle 2db more level before clipping and can output 2db more before clipping. The RADAR has a internal clock with very, very low jitter.
In my experience the RADAR running at 48khz/24 bit sounds every bit as good as other converters running at 96khz 24/bit.
Someone twisted my arm a few weeks ago to come in the studio and cut a vocal on one of our microphones. They brought in their LOGIC system with a Focusrite converter. It took them 20 minutes to get analogue audio out of the Focusrite and then another 15 minutes for it to accept the analogue output from the Radar. The producer kept blaming my analogue set-up, yet we could hear the microphone and vocalist and see the level on the RADAR. I patch the output of my microphone preamps whether our MT8016, LA610, 1073 Clone or Sony MXP3036 preamps directly into the analogue line inputs of the RADAR converters. The output of the RADAR converters come back up on Channels 1-24 on the Sony MXP3036 console. When any track on the RADAR is selected for Record and Input is also selected the audio runs through the RADAR converters with no latency. Like the old tape machines the analogue input is switched to the analogue outputs via a relay. Once we got the Logic/Focurite to send and receive analogue audio then I noticed that the clip light was coming on the Focusrite but the RADAR still seemed to have lots of headroom. The audio quality through the RADAR was definitely fuller, punchier and cleaner sounding than the Logic/Focusrite audio.
I have two RADAR units in the Advanced Audio (Two Cats by the Lake) Studios. One is a Classic 24 that I bought used over 6 years ago for $5K CAD with controller.
I sent it down to Barry at IZ Technologies about 4 year ago and had a new motherboard fitted that supports USB back-up plus I had a removeable solid state drive installed. This unit also has Tascam I/O's.
The folks at IZ ran a frequency response on the converter and replace two faulty caps that were cause the low end to roll out early.
I have seen RADAR 24 Classic units sell for as low as $2500 CAD with controller. That's pretty amazing for 24 channels of high end conversion.
I bought a 2nd one 3 years ago for $3K CAD and sent it down to Barry at IZ and they upgraded it to the RADAR STUDIO with solid state drive for $4K CAD.
So, I have 48 converters that go 96khz between the two RADAR units. The 2nd RADAR Studio also has 24 light pipe I/O's
Now, the older RADAR 24 will only run with the RADAR operating system and only allows you to record 24 tracks for every project. However, for example if you want to re-do the drum tracks and keep everything else you can hit the COPY project button and everything is instantly copied over to a new project and then you just put the drum tracks into record and have the drummer play along.
With the new RADAR STUDIO even operating in RADAR mode, you can have 8 takes for every track without having to create a new project. Radar does all these operations from a single keystroke on the controller. Now, the RADAR STUDIO can be booted up in PC mode and run any DAW software and the advantage is you can now access plug-ins and mix in the box.
In the RADAR STUDIO mode you can mix in the box with your favourite DAW software, fix pitch and auto-time tracks. You don't need to bring the 24 analogue outputs up through an analogue mixer.
Now, I started recording professionally in 1971 to tape and I have used analogue mixers all my life and it feels foreign to me to mix in the box, although I have done it on the rare occasion.
With RADAR Studio you have the best of both worlds. There is something about cutting tracks on the RADAR that is very organic, very fast and very user friendly.
The older Radar 24 does have a noiser power supply fan and the older hard drives were noisy. However, my RADAR 24 is in a storage room behind the control room and I just have the controller and monitor in the control room. The only time I have to access the main frame is to plug in the back-up drive. The Radar Studio is lighter and quieter. I take the RADAR Studio out for live recordings and I have run it in the control room and the noise is not bothersome. The Radar Studio backed-up a 2 hour/12 track recording to a USB drive in less than 3 minutes via the USB port.
The older Radar Classic 24 only had VGA monitoring but the RADAR STUDIO will support DVI, VGA and HDMI.
There are good reasons why folks like Daniel Lanois are using the RADAR system.
I still like to mix via the console with real faders but I now have the option to use plug-ins like the lovely EMI reverb plate in the mix. However, I can take the RADAR studio to a remote location, record in RADAR MODE. Then boot the RADAR up in DAW mode and do a quick mix in the box right there at the live venue.
The RADAR is an incredibly rugged system. I can only remember having to re-boot it during a session on one or two occasions and these were both sessions were the hard drive was nearly full.
I have had to re-boot it on a couple of other occasions over its 6 years in the studio just when I was backing up tracks and it couldn't recognize the back-up Hard Drive.
The Radar Studio seems to have no problem recognizing the USB hard drive and it was the older unit that has a problem on occasion.
Cheers, Dave Thomas
aamicrophones.com
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