Tom Fine:
All or most of the first-gen professional converters were in-board cards, and they worked fine.
Huh?
So called sound cards are a late entry on the scene, Tom.
External professional converters were first and have always been the professionals choice.
I would never use any internal soundcard containing A/D or D/As whatever their paper claims.
When I started doing mastering in 1987 I used the Sony PCM 1630 converter at 16 bits using 44056 and 44100 sampling ONLY, with a Sony DMR2000 U-Matic recorder for storing the digital signal.
Price for these two boxes at that time approx $40.000 USD here in Sweden at that time.
Also needed was the Digital editor DAE1100 with the DMR4000 Digital Master recorder using U-matic for an additional hefty sum of $$$s
Also, think of all the albums mastered on Macs with in-board cards and Sonic Solutions,
I started using the Sonic Solutions SSP2 DAW in 1991.
I have used both SSP2, SSP3 and USP systems and I own 4 SSP and 3 USP systems at the present time.
NONE of them have never ever used any A/D or D/As in the computer.
The stated reason have always been that for the very best A/D and D/A conversion possible then external converters should always be used.
So called soundcards were at the beginning of dubious cheap quality to put it mildly and were frowned upon by professionals.
Sonic Solutions is a hardware based system under control by software keyed to the serial numbers of the hardware cards.
The hardware cards, SSP3, have only toslink for 4 channels digital in/out directly on the hardware card(s)
The USP uses an 50 pin SCSI2 connector on the hardware card to connect to various external interface boxes using 68 pin SCSI3 connectors.
The following boxes can/could be had:
1/ DI/O4 4 channel digital in/out only 44 & 48 kHz sampling 2 DI/O8 8 channel digital in/out only 44 & 48 khz sampling 3/ High density I/O 4 channels in/out only 88 & 96 kHz sampling 4/ A/D8 8 channel A/D 44 & 48 kHz sampling 5/ D/A8 8 channels D/A 44 & 48 kHz sampling 6/ DI/O HD3 8 channels in/out sampling up to 192 kHz for use by the Sonic Studio HD system that came after the USP system but USP can use this up to 96 kHz sampling.
although many places also used external converters and just brought digital into the box.
This is what old school professionals always did/does.
http://www.weiss.ch/core.html http://lavryengineering.com/ http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/
Are the top 3 when it comes to digital conversion that are as good as it gets in my opinon.
I´ve never heard any analogue A/DD/A conversion in a soundcard stuck into a computer that sounds even close to any of the three above in my experience.
YMMV indeed.
-- Best regards,
Goran Finnberg The Mastering Room AB Goteborg Sweden
E-mail: mastering@xxxxxxxxx
Learn from the mistakes of others, you can never live long enough to make them all yourself. - John Luther