So what are you using for preamps? Alesis converters are not bad at all, especially with good preamps in front of them.
Nothing too crazy. I haven't bough any gear in a couple years. I have a V3, 4 channels of Aphex 207, and a soundcraft spirit console for the other 12 pre's. If and when I can afford I would purchase various other preamps to add to the list. You know how that goes.
Are you saying that the regular (non XR) A/D's are decent? I'm sure they are decent or usable. It sounds like the big reason to get the XR is to do above 48khz recording then. Do you think that both units running at 48khz, one using the normal stock A/D and one with the XR stock A/D would have a big audible difference? I have MOTU 896 (non HD) currently for A/D so I imagine that would be comparible to this unit to some extent. It is not as if I have or could afford top of the line A/D anytime soon.
I wish units like this would at least have a line pad. I have interfaced with a lot of consoles that are sending a hot signal and at +4 line with no gain my MOTU units clip and the console doesn't show peaking. This would be coming of groups and sometimes directs too.
I have not done a direct comparison between the two, but the XR version's converters are newer and are somewhat higher quality than the original converters (simply because they are a more recent design and have benefitted from technology advances since the original HD24 was released). Their main benefit is 96kHz via analog inputs however. I don't know if the difference would be audible to most folks (if even at all) if both were run at 48kHz side by side. I don't think the original HD24's analog converters are bad at all - Alesis makes a significant number of converters for other manufacturers, so it wouldn't be all that likely they'd stick crap in their own branded machines.
You can still do 96k on the original HD24, but only via lightpipe (and only a max of 12 because of S/MUX), so yes the big draw of the HD24XR is the ability to do 24 tracks of 96kHz.
I would rate the Alesis converters at least on par with the MOTU converters overall, at 48k. Not a bad deal you've got there, with the pres and the console. I like the Soundcraft preamps - I think they have a nice sound. Haven't heard the Aphex in person but it looks nice and I've read some pretty good things about it.
And I agree, I wish there was a pad on the input, or at least a way to go from +4 to -10 with jumpers or something (maybe there is, I haven't looked too hard).
Dirk