2. I've tried the Denecke AD20, and while it has low noise, the audio quality on this thing is poor IMO. I think the MD pres easily beat it. I'm tempted to believe that, because this thing was designed for movie work, low noise is important, but music fidelity is not so important. I've also traced the circuit inside, and I'm not impressed.
Richard
So not true. AD20 is an amazing little sounding box. My Rolling Stones - Houston proves your opinion 100% wrong.
OK, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one, lol. All I know is I bought an AD20, listened, was disappointed, and sold the thing within a day or two (at a loss too). My opinion is that *any* gear can pull a good tape (mics and mic placement make much more difference), but I preferred UA5 (stock), R09, and MD to anything I could get with the AD20.
Richard
I find this absolutely impossible to believe. This is based on almost two years of my own experience with the AD-20 with a variety of mics (CSB, AKG 391 and Gefell M210) and recorders, including a MiniDisc. If you only had it for a day, you did not use it enough to adequately hear its capabilities. I don't mean to bash personal taste in recordings, but you did not give the AD-20 a fair chance.
I wouldn't call anything "impossible". Well, anything aside from claiming an improvement by putting gold cables on your speakers, lol.
The beautiful thing about taping is we can often get great sounding recordings with less than perfect gear. Now that we've got lots more retail gear (Edirol, etc), the options are even wider. As I said earlier, the most important thing (aside from the performance) is getting the mics in the right spot. After that, almost anything sounds great.
That said, it is still *my* belief that the AD20 is not great.
The real test (see my thread on "transparency") is probably not music, but ambient recordings of familiar events, like visiting with family, eating dinner, whatever. I've started making a lot of these recordings to compare gear. Aside from this, I'm keeping important memories.
Richard