24-96 Mastering wrote on Mon, 17 January 2011 01:23 |
On the HEDD: I'm with jdg on the converters. When I compared, I thought them to be not handling transient peaks close at high levels in a way i cared for; I found it softens them a bit when approaching full scale. Maybe that's what people mean when they say the HEDD handles overs graciously?
The processing options I use a bit, maybe on 5% of projects; though very subtly (usually no higher than 1).
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I'd agree with these comments whole heartedly. The HEDD 192 was my first set of converters, I had the D/A board upgraded but never bothered with the A/D. That aside, it rated fairly well in my recent GS converter poll. In actual use though it does seem to compress transients a little on the A/D side for some reason compared to other units & so it can sound a little pushed or squashed when going for level in that regard.
I remember doing an album for a client with the HEDD converters & then getting the Lavry Gold A/D just after that project & when I was asked to master a radio edit of one of the songs from that album, I did it through the same logged settings but captured through the Lavry Gold instead. When the client heard it he rang me & asked what I'd changed & when I explained it was only the AD converter he was amazed. He actually paid me to re-run the whole album through the Lavry Gold AD because there was more detail & in his words "sounds more expensive". Since then I've sold the Lavry bought a PM Model 2 which I rated better than the Lavry, but now have a sale pending on the PM Model 2 unit & running Forssell exclusively & it's even more revealing of transient detail than any of the other units I've had in here. Superior imaging, detail & a very tight low end. The headroom is marvellous, very open & no signs of stress.
I still have the HEDD & on occasion, maybe 5% of jobs I use the processing but very little & if I do it's usually a touch of pentode. The D/A is pretty good & I used it in conjunction with the Lavry Gold AD for sometime. Now I have 2 Forssell units; one for my analog loop; the other is my main monitoring DAC.
What can I say, I'm a drummer & transient detail is very important imo.