Mixdown To G5 Or Dat?, which is better: mixdown to G5 or Dat? Options

[mfro]

I have a pretty basic question. I record to analog tape (4-track open reel at the moment) and have always mixed down to a tascam DA20MKII DAT machine. I just bought a new 1.6 G5. I'm wondering if its better to continue mixing down to the DAT and then transfer digitally to the G5 for editing/cd burning, or if it would be better to mix directly to the G5. Is the Dat obsolete? It's only 16bit and I believe the G5 can record at 24bit but I wonder if the DAT has better converters. How are the a/d converters if I record directly into the sound input jack of the G5? Would I need to buy an expensive interface like the MBox to make it an improvement from the DAT?

thanks for your advice,
mark

[dougk]

In your current situation, I would definitely continue mixing down to DAT and then transferring dgitally to the G5. Built-in A/D conversion on the macs has never been the greatest. Ideally you'd want to have some sort of nice A/D conversion going into your G5. I wouldn't get the Mbox for what you're doing. There are others out there, such as the M-Audio Flying Cow.

[Stuartpa]

HI with the way things are going in this business, everything is obsolete. The way I feel about it is that if you can use and like it and get good results it is not Obsolete.

Having said that there are some advantages to the higher sample rates and greater bit depths, but the bottom line these days is a lot of people only listen to MP3's nad that is pretty low quality and CD's are still at the 44/16 level and a whole bunch of really good stuff has been done at that level.

Continuously updating is a money drain and can often prevent you from doing some really good stuff with what you have.

I doubt very much that the G5 converters are as good as your Tascam's they are aimed more at the general public than Pro Musicians, but for getting some things together I am sure they are good enough.

There is not doubt that editing Etc is a whole bunch easier on A computer than it is on any kind of tape, but take a look at how much money gets spent on trying to emulate that god ol tape sound.

As for recording into the Analog Ports of the G5, I think you would be better off recording on your DAT and then putting the digital audio directly into the SPDIF port on the G5 that way you get the benefit of you Tapes better AD converter, OK you forfeit the 24 bit but you don't lose any quality in the conversion process. When you have done your work on the Mac, you should be able to take it straight out of the G5 Digital poort into your DATA again bypassing the Macs AD/DA conversion and staying with a higher class converter. I hope I am correct in thinking the Digital Port in the G5 is and I/O port, if it is an output only then you still need to get you audio into the G5 and that will require some kind of converter and anything that is any good is going to cost a few bucks. Also be warned the Mbox will work on OSX but not properly on Panther 10.3 at least not in Pro Tools. Someone did mention DP 4.1 and Logic Audio 6 as being 10.3 ready but I use a Pro Tools HD system and Logic 6 and it does not hang too well with Panther just yet. 10.2.6 being tha last good update to OSX that was really stable for me.

I am sure there are plenty of others out there with good opinions, I tend to stay on the Digidesign TDM side of things so I get a bit out of touch with anyone elses converters. I just have too much into Digi to switch although I use Logic Audio for lmost all the actual work I do and only refine with Pro Tools at the end.

Stuart