More Apogee Rosetta samples!

Here's a few more:

Fleetwood Mac - Never Going Back Again

Styx - Come Sail Away (MFSL)

Jazz at the Pawnshop - Take 5

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Soundtrack - Anything Goes

Kraftwerk - Pocket Calculator (The Mix)


Since I get a ton of messages on what equipment I use for my recordings, here's a list:

Sources:
     • Rega P25 turntable, upgraded with with Michell Engineering 'Technoweight', Isokinetik GT subplatter and Rega white belt
     • Zyx Omega G moving coil cartidge (.24mv, low output version, gold wire coil windings)
     • Denon DP-52F turntable
     • Zyx R100H moving coil cartridge (.48mv, copper wires)
     • Denon DL-103R and DL-103D cartridges

Preamps:
     • Audio Research PH5 tube phono preamp with Electro-Harmonix 6922 tubes
     • Musical Fidelity X-LP (original 'can' version)

Cables:
     • Wireworld Eclipse II 1m RCA (unbalanced) interconnect
     • Mogami XLR digital cable
     • Custom digital coax and time clock cables by Blue Jeans Cables using Beldin wire

Analog to digital converter:
     • Apogee Rosetta AD 96K, professional rack mount unit, 96K @ 24bit, using JBL RCA to XLR adapters

Recording interface:
     • Focusrite Liquid 56 using ADAT 2 input
     • Behringer Rev2496 reverb, using as a digital pass-through and converter, XLR/AES digital to SPDIF optical converter in bypass mode, time synch'd to the Apogee Rosetta clock
     • Presonous Inspire firewire recording interface.

Software:
     • Steinberg Cubase v5.1
     • Reaper v4.22
     • Waves Master Restoration Suite plugin

Monitoring speakers:
     • Mackie MR5's
     • Paradigm Mini Monitors v3
     • Paradigm Studio 100's

Headphone monitoring:
     • Sennheiser HD 650's and HD800's
     • Burson Audio HDA-160 solid state headphone amp
     • Musical Fidelity X-Can v3 with Amperex 'Bugle Boy' 6922 tubes
     • Audio-Gd NFB-12.1 DAC and headphone amp (for monitoring directly off the Apogee Rosetta AD)

The audio was recorded in native 48K / 24bit format, which was compressed to 320k mp3 format.

 

Here's two more samples:

Don Slepian - Reflections

Steely Dan - Peg (MFSL)


The midrange is so clean, defined, transparent and completely free of distortion. There's definitely a difference between the Presonus Inspire and the Apogee Rosetta.

I'm still waiting for the Ross Martin PCM4222 ADC to ship. In the meantime, I'm having fun with the Apogee Rosetta. 

I ordered two 35 foot coax digital cables from Blue Jeans Cable, one for the digital signal and one for the clock. Since the Apogee is supposed to have a very accurate clock, I wanted my Focusrite Liquid 56 interface to sync to the Rosetta. One cable is RCA to RCA, the other is BNC to BNC. For the clock signal, I used a BNC T connector and two 75ohm terminators to balance the cable at exactly 75ohm.

So far, the Rosetta seems to bring out the midrange, which makes recordings sound just a bit 'forward' sounding, especially vocals. The highs are also just a tiny bit rolled off compared to the Presonus Inspire. I'm guessing the Ross Martin is going to sound flatter, with a sound more true to the original. That's not to say that what the Rosetta is doing is a bad thing - not at all; but there is a slight coloration or 'signature sound' with the Rosetta.

I can't wait to compare it to the Ross Martin. Hopefully it will ship early next week. Ross sent an email on Tuesday explaining that my unit is done and it passed his testing measures, but he broke a tooling bit while finishing the case, so shipment will be delayed a few more days.

I built a simple rack mount for the Apogee Rosetta so I can mount it under the turntable. Here's a few pictures:

Guess what I won on eBay today...

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I really love the sound of the Apogee Rosetta, so I figure I'll upgrade to the 96K version and see how it sounds.   

Once it comes in, my 48K version will be for sale.   

I was actually considering the Korg MR-2000S DSD recorder, which I found on ebay for $1249. If I sold the Apogee and the Ross Martin, I would still need to invest another $500 ~ $600 more, which I didn't want to do at this time. The biggest feature of the Korg is the ability to record PCM from 32K to 192K plus 1-bit, DSD recording at 2.8Mhz and 5.6Mhz. It has a built in hard drive, so it's self contained, plus it works as a DAC and can play back recorded files through RCA and balanced XLR outputs. It's truly a professional unit and many recording studios use it to record 2 track masters of analog sources. Eric Johnson uses it to down mix his studio albums. It would be a 'dream' piece of gear for recording vinyl but I can't justify spending the extra money right now. Maybe sometime in the future... 

For now, I think I will be very satisfied with the Apogee Rosetta 96K. I really love the sound of the Apogee AD converters and I can't wait to hear the differences recording at 96K vs. 48k with such an awesome piece of gear will make. The funny thing is, the stock 48K Rosetta has a 96K capable A/D chip (Crystal 5396-KS) in it and I think the upgrade is really just swapping out the ROM chip to process and pass 96K.

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The Apogee Rosetta 96K is on it's way and will be here on Thursday via Fedex. 

Once the new Rosetta is here, I plan on selling my 48K Rosetta and the Ross Martin PCM4222 ADC. The Ross Martin is a nice unit, but it's not suited for recording low level, unbalanced audio. I had to crank the input knobs all the way up to get a decent recording level which also increased hiss and background noise.