Strange behaviors

[Nickname]

Hi!
I recorded an album this week in a church. Tracked for 5 days using an sq5 / dx168/ outboard preamps that I’ve had for twenty years. Millennia Media and DAV Broadhouse Garden. I recorded via Dante into Logic. I didn’t like the sound going straight out from L/R from the desk to my trusted old Dynaudio BM6As that I have used for 24 years so I used an old apogee mini-dac that I am familiar with to control monitoring etc. I like the sound going into the DAW. When I listen back through the same chain I sometimes get fuzzy distortion in the fiddle and the flute. I can’t see any hot meters anywhere. Still listening through the mini-dac via aes.

I am back home now. Making bounces of dry mixes listening through a Focusrite Scarlett 212 . The cheapest sound card on the market.
The distortion is not present and the sound is warm and full compared to the output jacks on the sq5. I find them too bright, sterile lacking everything below 400.
I use the same speakers.

I really don’t get it. I am not trying to be rude or to speed negative energy. I am just trying to understand. Tbh I was hoping the preamps and the outputs would sound better! A Yamaha LS9 sounds like a Neve console in comparison.

I must be doing something wrong. This was the first time I recorded anything serious with this set up. Any ideas?

I like the sq5 live . Specifically with d&b systems. But I guess the sq needs a little help beefing things up electronically?

[Hugh]

My response is intended to illuminate the pros and cons of Pre-amp detailed transparency with digital processing: some performances greatly benefit from a hihgly detailed transparent recording capture but it is not universally appropriate. Truth told there are very few musicians that have developed the skill to create clean lush resonance with out surpurfolous noise. Over the past 50 years I have been producing Americana recordings with some of the world’s very best, session ready, acoustic musicians; (Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, JD Crowe, Vince Gill, David Johnson, Steve Lewis, Eric Hardin, Josh Scott, Jeff Little & Doc Watson). Unfortunately the first five artists mentioned recorded projects with me back in the old tube, tape and ribbon analog days so digital processing clarity was not available at that point in time. The 35 year period from 1955 thru 1990 was the zenith of analog “warmth” in music recording that was greatly helped when stereo FM broadcasting increased the hz levels above 10K from the AM 5K limits. However all of this was about to become obsolete post the digital revolution. (I have found most of my work is sonically helped a lot with the tubes and transformers incorporated in well made tube mics; That WARMTH is a very seductive sonic element for digital percessing)

Five years ago I started out with an SQ5 & a DX168: the detailed response generated with the D-Live I/Os in the DX168 were a expotentially better than the stock SQ I/Os. Given that fact, when A&H made available their world class Money channel “Prime I/Os” I stretched the budget and sprung for the DX32 loaded with 8 Prime Pre-amps, 8 Prime Outputs & 16 D-Live pre-amps. The cold hard reality is most performers sound much better with the D-Live pres that do not reveal as much detail however some performances can not pass the transparency bar with any of my gear. I can feel the frustration the OP has expressed but the answer lies with in the fact that some of his older, less detailed gear sounds better. I too have deployed a high end point source KV2 system for more than 20 years that does reveal the difference produced with world class detailed I/Os. be it for better or worse!
Hugh

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