"Budget" converters - Ross Martin?

Hey Geoff, you might want to bump this?
realgearonline.com/post/3292/thread

Ok, have now read the thread linked above. Not sure if it would be better to bump that one up or keep this one going/ merge it with that one?

Anyways, it sounds like the folks who have heard them seem to like them. Although a couple folks on that thread had ordered them and not come back and told us what they thought once they got them (up and running). So, if you now have them up and running, thoughts?

And yes his website is, uh, confusing.

Ok, another stupid converter question re: connections and clocking. Can you clock from a DAC? Just trying to figure out how things would be routed/ connected. If I wanted to use just the Rumour for ADC and the Martin for DAC could I do that? The Rumour has no word clock. Currently I have it plugged into the SPDIF on the Echo. Then, if I bring the Echo back into the picture (so, when I want more than two channels of AD or DA) will everything play nicely together? The Echo is firewire, but has ADAT and SPDIF in/out as well as wordclock in and out connections. I am completely clueless about this, so any clarification/ help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Geoff

I've got the Ross Martin 4222 ADC and it's fantastic.

whatever time ross gave you, add 3 weeks :-)

BLA mods the Echofire and I've heard that after they do it sounds incredible. I think the Echofire retails out for little over $500? Think the mod is $395. So for around 1k you'd have 12 channels of D/A, that's pretty good. If that mod is half as good as the mod they did on my ADA8000 it will sound incredbile.

That's also something to look at. You can buy ADA8200's for $199, ADA8000's for $179, BLA mods it for $450, and I can tell you from first hand experience it turns that unit into something comparable to an Ensemble, maybe even better. Plus you've got 8 Pres that sound amazing. The only downside is that you can only go up to 48khz.

From what I've heard from people the best mod that BLA does is the M-Audio Profire 26, BLA even says that for the money, this mod blows their minds. That's a lot of conversion for the money.

I also have the Ross Martin Pcm 4222, and it is fanstastic.

I had some issues with mine, loose pin. Probably from the shipping. But Ross kindly fixed it for me.

Dont let the cost fool you. This thing rocks.
Sure the DAC will be just as good.

I have the d to a. I think it's good. My mixes translate well but I've never done any comparing. It's stable, it's light, small and cheap. I like it.
Sorry I'm so lamely unscientific y'all.
It did take a while to get.

OK, i own the standard cheapest DAC of the Ross Martin line of products for 179,- dollars and it is freaky awesome.
My brother owns 2 different models, one with the same standard National opamps which exactly sounds the same, and latest, the SuperBeast with those Analog Devices ADA opamps, that i just heard yesterday for the first time.
We compared all units with the same monitoring in the same room, and i think they are all outstanding. We heard them on Klein&Hummel active studio monitors and Cabasse speakers that are very linear and can be used as studio monitoring, driven by Restek and Van den Hul (Array Audio) highend amps.
The SuperBeast edition is somehow different.
I did not expect it beeing able to add anything important to sound, since we were literally shocked how good our first 2 DACs from Ross Martin sounded.
But the ADA-something chips in the SuperBeast do add something, that changes the game even a bit more, i.e. an even clearer bass and low mids, which leads to a subtle but clearly hearable difference in analytical perception of mixes.
It makes up for an even better stereo field and drives a tad of attention away from the highs, that sound great on all converters. Consider this as a good thing.... I guess some psychoacoustical effect or so. Which might help in getting even better balanced mixes.
There is simply nothing you can do wrong with the RM products. Just order the ones fitting your bill and desired feature set. They are good and not only "for the price".
The prices are just silly low. Waiting for those very small company production lead time is well worth it. Can't go wrong with that. Previous converters we used were Kronauer, Swissonic and Mytek...

Best regards,
Martin

Sure Martin,
the Mytek stuff is very serious, so was the Kronauer, that was a bit older and i bought it from a mastering studio.
The Ross Martin is just a newer date product, with an excellent todays DAC chip obviously well implemented in a niche product. So it would not be fair to say we compared it to the actual product lines of these companies, because we didn't, i haven't heard the actual product lines. The Ross Martin might look weak, no heavy 19" format, external small PSU, crappy website etc., but i want to imply these things are not toys, and it was not a budget decision to try and buy RM products.

Best regards,
Martin

Those are the Analog Devices opamps I specified when Ross built my DAC. He had not heard of them until I asked them to be used in mine. They are the ADA 4898-1. These slew at 60v/us, .9nv noise, 55 mhz gain bandwidth and very good low end output current. These have more energy in the bass than the other opamps as they have high current, almost class A output stages.

That is what makes them so great, the water clear top end of high speed, low THD parts with that missing depth in the low end. They have a more uniform sound than many fast chips only because the spectral balance is better.

I also did some consulting for Michal at Mytek. He does very good work and his low jitter clock designs are great.

i'm considering this, but i'm still a little unsure about it, i'd like to get up to 32 channels if i can, but i know almost nothing about configuring these.

I'll say it again...that website is horrendous. I have gone over several times to buy something - gotten confused and given up. Can someone point me to the 2 channel DA? Also, is there a 2x2 AD DA?