RME ADI-2 Pro Discussion Thread

ADI-2 Pro measurements are delayed as the Ares, Pontus and Soekris went into the queue ahead. My next opportunity for measurements will be out several weeks as I take a holiday with my social director. Have been using the ADI-2 Pro for dialogue editing with HD800 and it has been serving me exceptionally well.

 

Are you inferring that ADI-2 Pro out-resolves Yggdrasil? I see to have this almost mythical memory of Yggdrasil's ability to present low level information, but I never had them side by side to compare.

 

Thanks for the kind words ...

My RME ADI-2 Pro is sitting in it's box awaiting my attention. I might take a break between finishing my Ares write-up and starting the proper Pontus listening to play with it a bit. Won't get a chance to do much as I don't want to hold up the Pontus tour.

I will say that it took VERY little listening (a couple of minutes or so), to trip me over the edge and into ordering the ADI-2 Pro for myself (we'll have to see if it sticks around, but I am interested in it as much for it's AD functionality as anything else).

 

Let me rephrase. With the Yggdrasil I can see the forest. With the RME I miss the forest for the trees. I feel like there's this super precision, but I don't get that encompassing whole feeling like I do with the Yggdrasil. It's like... imagine there's a wooden fence with gaps between the slats, and you're looking at the scenery on the other side. Now if you're standing still or walking slowly, you can focus your eyes between the slats and get a pretty good view of what's there, but you can only see what's available. If you're walking or driving past though, you can't focus and get those minute details, but all the images sliding past merge and you get a better sense of the landscape on the other side. That's how I feel with the Yggdrasil. Does that make sense?

 

That makes perfect sense, thanks.

 

It was the best analogy I could think of on the spot that didn't involve microscopy terms like spot size and fuzzy words like resolution. So now different dacs are not just varying the gap to space ratio, but also changing the speed that you're moving past and how good your "eyes" are.

 

That's a good analogy, but it kinda implies that there are no superior depiction of the audio piece. In the real world, you can't see both the background forest and the forefront fence at the same time.

 

Sounds a bit like Yggdrasil has a better cohesive sound than the RME based on the previous comment. That said I would love to see this on a loaner tour.

 

I've been going through the manual and it seems that the peq for the analog outputs is shared between balanced and unbalanced? If so that's a shame could've been a nice digital crossover otherwise.

 

All back analog outputs are mirrored. You could do a dual 6.3mm fork and plug it in front to get both outputs running different DSP settings.

My solution is using AN1/2 for main speakers and routing optical to miniDSP which is used for subwoofers.

 

Interesting, i agree the mini dsp solution is cleaner.
Thanks

Btw that anniversary edition looks cool but not €400 more expensive cool. Performance looks to be the same.

 

Maybe the fictitious viewer is also wearing glasses. Or maybe it's a foggy day. Or there's a plague of locusts. One should also be sure that they are viewing a nice scenic forest, as opposed to a Charlie Brown Xmas tree...

 

Joking aside, and going further down the rabbit hole, an ideal situation would be a DAC that allows hearing both perspectives depending on where we focus our attention. I take it the Yggdrasil or RME actually don't let you do both, correct?

 

It's really picking nits at this level. I preferred the RME feeding into my Lab Gruppen amp, and the Yggdrasil into the AHB2 (though I needed a preamp here).

The laser focus of the RME can also be tailored through choosing different filters.

 

Yes, two adi-2 pros would work as two dacs. Twice the price, and there would be an unused dac in each one, very frustrating.

I wonder if RME could allow both balanced dacs to be used simultanously in a future firmware update?

I tried a Hilo about a year and a half ago. It sounded great when it worked, several times in each session I would get a BSOD. I got severely sick for a few weeks and couldn't communicate with Lynx tech support before the 30 day trial was up, they might have been able to help. I've used RME interfaces for at least 15 years without a problem, rock-solid drivers. That's why I'm gravitating towards the adi-2 pro, if only it allowed the use of both of its dacs simultaneously.

 

Perhaps raising the question on RME's forum would be a good next step?

 

Canopener beta for windows is out.
I've tried to get it to work in jRiver both inside and outside a wrapper (Metaplugin) and so far I haven't been able to get it to load

 

Darn! I'm glad it is coming, at least. Hopefully it will get fixed soon.

 

Still no luck. I think this is due to the fact that Metaplugin can't load 64bit plugins on a 32bit host (jRiver MC) and the CanOpener beta is available as 64bit only, but I'm no expert...

 

Forgive me if this is an obvious question, but would I be able to directly hook up a power amp (like the Vidar) directly to the unbalanced outputs and be able to control the volume of the amp via the volume controller of the ADI-2 pro? Would I need a separate preamp because the preamp mode is for analog inputs?