Bought a Burl B2...

BTW - I would assume this won't be an immediate "Oh my God" kind of thing...I don't know if expect to hear a huge difference in say - one vocal take...I would imagine it's more of a thing when it's layered...But - I am kind of hoping I record some acoustics and it makes me poop my pants. That's really where you can tell it. In that jangly, punchy acoustic track...Here's hoping, because taking it back will be a pain in the ass.

Yeah...

I see a Burl/ Ross Martin 4222 shootout in the near future.

Hmmm...I've yet to hear it...I spent a while last night trying to get it to lock with the Presonus with no success. Needless to say, I'm a little frustrated.

I'm frustrated enough to where I don't know if I want to deal with learning an entirely new system...Hopefully, I'll have time to call Presonus today. Not sure I can use the SPDIF and ADAT at the same time.

Oh what a tangled web you weave....relying on digital connections...

Matt, I've never used ANYTHING that "sensed external clock"--that would be a fucking horrible idea. What does that so I can never EVER buy their product. THere are all kinds of clocks in a digital studio, you should NEED to tell each piece whether it's master or slave, and if slave where master is...The last thing you want is shit trying determine for itself where it should get some clocking.

John, You need to add pieces one by one.

1- Presonus...it's analog inputs and it's headphone outputs...got signal to the computer and phones (and I mean Presonus phone jack)

2- Once 2....plug up the Burl. Sync Presonus to it via whatever control panel. Now...you can record the Burl? And hear it through the Presonus's headphones?

3- Once 1&2....Plug up the Hearback. Hearback should be SLAVE to ADAT clock**. Now, you can move your phones over to that system and see what's up. Do it show signal but not hear it...do it give you a message like it can't find the digital signal?

**this may be the issue...whenever you get into daisy chaining clocking, it becomes a "let's cross our fingers and hope it works". Studios who want to utilize all digital connections NEED masterclocks and all devices need to be able to receive word clock...and you want to know why I continually recommend people use analog connections? Here you go.

Yeah...set it to external clock-I got you, I had this flash of "holy shit...what if everything autodetected...and they began to fight over who was master...nothing would ever work"--I thought it because RME has a little light in their control panel that says "clock detected"--even if you're not using it...I read your post and thought someone had taken that one step further and would auto connect. Which is funny how my iPad ended up surfing on a neighbor's network the other day. I guess mine dropped out...their's was available...so, my iPad switched on me. Of course, mine's fine....now...I'm assuming it was some momentary thing...but, then of course theiPad won't auto switch back to the fast one! I had to be "why is this thing so slow? Why am I on the neighbor's network?"

...and the clock should be the Burl, John. Always the AD.

You're quite the smart ass, aren't you?

I've been so busy I haven't had time to dig in. But - I'm headed up there in a little while. Guess I'm just gonna go analog to the hearback...

I'd love to hear about the Ross Martin, symphony and burl comparison.

Btw, according to reports all the above have the clock as one of the main weak links. So, that could possibly be a future improvement.

Just bouncing something off the wall here. The Burl B1 pre is 775 right? Couldn't you run out of your preamps, into the B1 in line mode, then into your Symphony line in to get a similar vibe to the Bomber?

Everyone says that it's the line amp built into the bomber that gives it the sound, not the actual conversion right?

I don't think the preamp is related. The transformer sits prior to Attentuator on the converter, so I believe they made the preamps clean gain-so you can drive into the conversion linearly. I could be wrong, but I think that why people aren't over the moon for the pres. They expect them to have the color of the converters, but they don't. One of the reasons I think it would match my Millenias so well.

You know Cowboy posted a vocal of the Symphony and Burl (multed) before. The Burl was clearly nicer, but also audibly saturated because he hit it so hard...it barked on a couple words. It was truly just "not digital sounding". I also think he did it at 44.1....which is mostly not meaningful to me--since nicer converters generally sound better at 44 than cheap ones (not that either are)...I want to hear both running at 88.2. The Burl is the same chip as the old 192s...which were designed to run at the then new high sample rates.

According the the Burl page....

"The B1 and B1D come complete with both Gain and Level controls. If you want that heavy, gainy tone, crank up the stepped gain control and offset that with the level control. If clean tone is your thing, turn the gain down and crank up the level."

Wouldn't running a line signal into the B1 hard, leveling down, then hitting any old converters work the same as running the B2 hot and attenuated?  

It looks like the converters use a BX1 input transformer and the pres use a BX3 input transformer with a BX2 output.  I guess the different transformers can make a difference, but it seems to me like you'd be in a similar ballpark anyway.