Just bought A16 Ultra!

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:15 pm

I've been eying the A16 Ultra for years but never could afford it until now. So I have it at last...it feels really pro. Sounds great, works great, does both ADAT and Z-link...works with high sampling rates, can switch settings without glitches...after using the Alesis AI3, which would spew out noise if it lost the digital signal (unless that was Scope? I'm not sure), the A16U mutes itself and works like a charm.

My ONLY complaint is that when slaving to ADAT, and I set the host computer to 96k, the A16U doesn't automatically switch into S-MUX. I have to manually press the samplerate button. There's no hidden way to make it do S-MUX automatically, is there?

Not that I'm even going to be using 96k...takes too much processing power. So it isn't really a problem after all.

Now for a Scope Xite to match the A16U in my rack!

Shayne

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:50 pm

Oh, I just remembered...the ADAT signal doesn't say if it's 48KHz or 96KHz, so that's why the manual press of the button is needed. Got it.

Thank you, Alesis.

I guess ADAT was invented a long time ago, so I'll forgive them for their 1990's ignorance.

Post by **irrelevance** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:55 pm

Nice one Shane

I'm still using a..dare I say it Ultragain pro to interface to the outside world which surprisingly works quite well. I've always wondered if I would see any improvement in sound from my external synths if they were running through better higher quality converters seeing that the synths are outputting at 16bit anyway via analog means?
How much did you pick it up for if you don't mind me asking?

Shayne White · Post by **Shayne White** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:10 am

It was $999 at Front End Audio, plus extra for firewire cables.

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:15 pm

I think the A16 Ultra sounds as good as units twice the price.

My friend uses Lynx Studio products and claims he hears a difference, I tend to agree on really dynamically recorded music, where many dips and peaks occur, but I tend to like the 1900 USD I saved on the A16 Ultra.

That's a half of an XITE-1.

kylie · Post by **kylie** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 12:56 pm

Shayne White wrote:Oh, I just remembered...the ADAT signal doesn't say if it's 48KHz or 96KHz, so that's why the manual press of the button is needed. Got it.

Thank you, Alesis.

the s/mux extension to the adat protocal was introduced by sonorus, afair. since they obviously weren't able to integrate another field into the frame header or misuse a reserved one, multiplexing channels on top of adat was the only option to do it. that's why both ends must be manually set to the corresponding sampling rate.

I guess ADAT was invented a long time ago, so I'll forgive them for their 1990's ignorance.

there were also times where 640kb of ram was considered more than enough for anybody

-greetings, markus-