RME ADI-2 Pro Discussion Thread

any progress on the Yggdrasil vs adi 2 battle? who won?

 

Is it the fostex TR90 behind?

 

Kinda curious if any of you can comment on the Grace M920 vs the ADI-2 Pro? They are playing in a similar price bracket so I'm curious.

 

Yup, DC input gets heavily filtered inside the unit, so there wouldn't be much sense in going overboard with PSU's. I'd get a 12V Lithium pack for cleaner measurements tho. And a possibility for the most killerest portable rig.

And no, no preamps. Line inputs only. Matthias said that mic preamps would've complicated the PSU section.

 

Has anyone spent time with the crossfeed function? I would be interested to know how well it works, especially with hard panned jazz.

'The Blues And The Abstract Truth' is one of my favourite jazz albums, but it is so damn tiring to listen to on headphones...

 

I'm not a big fan of simple crossfeed. In this case I wasn't a fan of losing the low end.

 

I thought the crossfeed implementation was good on low setting, but then again this was comparing vs the iCAN crossfeed aka "3D holographic sound" which I thought was dreadful.

At times I found myself wishing there was a step between 0 and 1 when listening to hard panned jazz. On most regular recordings I thought 1 and 2 were ok. Higher than that and it didn't sound right.

 

Would one of you owners mind testing the built-in crossfeed compared to JRiver crossfeed (or 112dB Redline Monitor if you use that; if you don't, there is a trail available). Those are the two crossfeed implementations I am most familiar with. Thanks!

 

It's the same crossfeed used by Chord too, I think. I usually always have it set to minimum (opposed to off) unless I listen to Hip-Hop or Electronica and I need that forward slam.

My crossfeed is on 1/4 and I sometimes jump to 2/4. I wouldn't want to miss it!

 

I found the JRiver crossfeed to be very subtle and the differences in the settings not very noticeable (ver 20). I found it's treatment of heavy panned stereo recordings to be gentler than the RME. On the other hand, overall tone was affected and sounded somewhat faded.

The RME crossfeed is stronger, cleaner, and doesn't have the faded sound of the JRiver plugin.

 

There's actually another way to manipulate with stereo width on the ADI-2 Pro. The "Width" option lets you go gradually from stereo to mono.

Just listened to "The Blues And The Abstract Truth" with the crossfeed on and surprisingly I preferred it that way. Usually I don't mind having hard panned instruments on headphones and I'm too lazy to switch crossfeed on depending on the music I listen to.

 

tried to do some apple to oranges comparison this week end:
Gungnir Multibit/mjolnir2 with LISST vs ADI Pro 2 (SD sharp) on my active monitors.

Obviously there are some very clear differences... the former combo is heavier, bulkier!

In terms of sound, the presentation is quite different. the Gungnir Multibit sounds overall brighter compared to the adi 2pro. On "My heart is a drum", the voice sounds better with the ADI, less bright.

Gungnir Multibit sounds more spacious and provides a great sense of clarity. But in terms of detail retrieval the ADI 2 pro is on par with the Gungnir Multibit.

The one area on which I'm not yet clear is listening pleasure... Which one do I prefer for long listening sessions... dunno yet!

 

I am still wrapping my head around the sound, but I can't remember a desktop amp that accommodates IEMs so well. This thing is SUPER quiet. Pitch black background without the adventitious noises that plague most setups when listening to IEMs.

 

@hifi01170
What monitors are you using?

 

I've ordered one of these for work for my office/mix room. I will be using with studio monitors as well as headphones, both primarily with Sonarworks calibration applied (headphones individually calibrated from SW). Looking forward to hearing what this thing can do! Time to read up on the balanced operation as I ordered a 650 so I don't have to bring in my 600. I probably won't have much to say other than "it sounds really good and clear." Sound quality was not a problem with the Grace m903 it will replace.

 

PSI a21m

 

So I've been working on this multi-dac comparison which seems to be growing...
Prism Lyra
Prism Callia
RME ADI-2 Pro
Forssell MDAC-2a
Schiit Yggdrasil
and now a friend of mine wants to lend me his Hegel HD12.

Interesting times ahead.

 

Feel free to prioritize that over annoyances like work and sleep .

 

Current evaluation setup...
headphones: Hifiman HE-6
nearfield speakers: ATC SCM20
amp: Lab Gruppen 300 or Benchmark AHB2
preamp: Stereoknight balanced TVC
sources: all the toys (most of them are on loan; I'm a poor beggar who looks like he won the gear review lottery this month)
source in between: Peachtree X1 to convert usb to optical and coax*
cables: pro audio XLR microphone cables or patch cords; short length where possible
power: big honking Furman

Surprisingly, I think I might actually prefer the Lab 300 over the AHB2 for this evaluation. The Benchmark sounds more resolving... yet somehow I find it harder to tell the dacs apart. That might have something to do with the TVC and amp input interactions however.

While I can only swap between 3 dacs at any time, my general impressions seems consistent so far (not blind, blah blah). One sentence mini-summaries:

RME = clearest but hardest sound, best treble and deep bass
Prism (both) = "sweet", most "air", definition soft, but makes me want to drum along, best upper mids/low treble
Forssell = best low mid/bass warmth, widest but lowest stage, fuzziest
Yggdrasil = clean but not hard, slight burr in upper mids, richest mids


*yeah yeah this might be a weakpoint, but it's currently my only method to reliably get multiple feeds out to the dacs; I can also feed optical outputs from the Prism and RME units, although there's chicanery going on in there too, so make of that what you will