So, I finally got my AD20. (Thanks to AudBall for patiently waiting for me to mess with various Ebay transactions and third parties!)
OK, I tried it out tonight and I'm not totally happy with the sound. Compared to my (poorlymodded) UA5, it seems pretty "lifeless". It just seems muddy and not that clear. So far, then my opinion is AD20 < (modded)UA5 < Presonus Firepod. I'm not even sure this thing has a better line input than my MD, which is kind of dissapointing.
I opened it up and see what looks like a transistor input stage (good), but I see some pretty awful opamps there. Some people have SSM2019, which doesn't look bad. But I've got TLC2272 (CMOS!) opamps in there. I'm wondering if I swap out something decent if this is going to sound OK. Comments?
Also, if anyone has a DMIC20, *44.1k*, please let me know. I'm considering trying one of these (hack it to output optical).
Thanks,
Richard