recommendations for 8 in / 8 out ADAT converters in 2024 ? (older Apogee Rosetta? RME ADI-8?)

[Michael Tibes]

As much as I like Apogee's sound quality, I'd stay clear of them because of their not so great reliability, unavailability of schematics and bad support for older units ('we don't have these old parts any more...')

 

[Mworthin]

We had some MOTUs. They are fine. Sound good. Well made. I was impressed with their cast alu chassis, for instance.

The only reason we stopped using them, is because the local importer changed it's service. Before, we paid a resonable exchange rate for repairs. Sometimes we got a new one, usually the exchange was a repaired one. That suited our administration well. They always suspect some monkey-business if repairs are expensive. Of course, not if the price is fixed and known beforehand.

These days, they feel you should simply buy a new one. Out-of-warranty repairs are slow and fairly expensive.

We bought Behringer ADA8000s. Cheap and cheerful. And RME interfaces. We can usually fix what goes wrong with them in-house. Parts are available and reasonably priced. But, most important to us: drivers are updated frequently and even for very old gear. Frankly, RME is the only manufacturer I can think of that cares for old stuff. I used to hate RME. Until I was forced to use one and RTFM. It took a while, but I can't live without TotalMix and DigiCheck these days.

This is the way I feel about my Metric Halos. I have a ULN-2 that I bought in 2004 and still in use, although not as much as my ULN-8s. They keep supporting them, although I don’t think any more ULN-2s will be made (due to chip availability).

 

[kramerb1]

+1 on Alesis HD24s and Motu. I still have 3 of the XRs (24channels at 48k or 12 channels at 96k each), 2 of them with Jim Williams mods on the analog sections, and a couple Motu 16As. Way more i/o than I’ll ever need. All sound great.

I still have 2 sets of the standard Alesis 48k boards (48 channels worth), if anyone is interested.

 

[Tubetec]

Im still trying to locate sata caddies for my HD24 .

 

[rp]

I have an RME UCX and I extend it via adat with a Motu 8A. They both fit in a nice little 1/2 width rack. The motu is exactly 8 in and 8 out. I think it sounds as good or better than the RME, but the RME has the superior interface and routing. You might be able to pick up a used 8a for fairly cheap. I've also successfully used them together as part of an aggregate device on mac os to keep the full channel count while using higher sample rates. My rme is old - maybe 10 years. Not sure how the newer ones compare.

 

[Nen'O]

I'm putting up for sale Metric Halo 2882. Going to list here on black market. Converters are stelar and it's rock solid adat stand-alone mode. It will be hard to find something that good for that money

 

[z11111]

I'm putting up for sale Metric Halo 2882. Going to list here on black market. Converters are stelar and it's rock solid adat stand-alone mode. It will be hard to find something in that good for that money

That’s a great price. Wish it made sense for me right now — unfortunately have to drop a bunch of money because of car troubles so this converter endeavor is currently on hold lol…

 

[Roboburger]

As much as I like Apogee's sound quality, I'd stay clear of them because of their not so great reliability, unavailability of schematics and bad support for older units ('we don't have these old parts any more...')

+1. I have purchased exactly one Apogee product, and it died at almost exactly the 1 year point. Then I received a laughably bad customer service email thread full of questions that are answered in the email thread above where he asked them- with screen captures marked up with circles. It took over a week to get an RMA#, and during that almost-two-weeks, he told me that he was being so thorough so as to not waste my time sending in a unit that didn't need to be sent in. He said an estimate for the repair was not available for my problem. When the repair came back, the charge was almost the cost of a new unit, and greater than the cost of a competitor that I should just bought in the first place.

Maybe they got a good product, but after all that, I'll never know.

 

[machprod]

WRT the digiface, and the lightpipe end.
I bought a couple minidsp's (link below), which has given new life to my firewire interfaces. And I can use my MOTU 2408s as digital switchers (patch bay-ish), this is awesome with the number of devices I have. I also use them to offload FX to other computers when a session gets heavy.

Sadly, you have to flash them to get light-pipe working, and they dont publish their code. BUT these boxes can send/recv 8ch @ 92k for those who use sample rates higher than 48k.

https://www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/mchstreamer-box ( I use them on mac and linux )

PS: I was going to buy some apogee mic pre's and didnt know about the support issues. thanks to Michael Tibes for the note