Recording and Production in the News

Air Mastering invests in ADA-8XR as 'no compromise' choice

London UK: Air Mastering, based in the London suburb of Kingston-upon-Thames, has become the latest facility to invest in Prism Sound's ADA-8XR multichannel modular AD/DA converter.

Jerome Schmitt at Air Mastering

The studio is owned by Jerome Schmitt, who also acts as mastering engineer. His career spans 15 years of recording, producing and mastering music in the South of France and London, before he set up Air Mastering in 2007 (www.airmastering.com).

"I initially used Apogee for my basic set-up and some Lavry on some particular projects, but felt I needed to have a more solid, transparent and reliable converter as the base of my set-up," he says.

That decision led him to Prism Sound, and several blind tests of the company's ADA-8XR and Orpheus converters. "I have to say the Orpheus is an amazing converter. However, although only a subtle difference, the ADA-8XR's fullness and stereo imaging suited my needs better," he says. "Choosing a good converter is very subjective but for me the ADA8XR was a "no compromise" choice for reliability, transparency and quality, which will reflect on the work.

"The sound was my first criteria. Then the dual path at different sample rate, and the extreme flexibility and metering was also a strong selling point."

The ADA-8XR is a multi-channel AD/DA converter that can be configured in numerous ways using plug-in modules to suit a very wide variety of applications. It can be a 16 channel AD converter, a 16 Channel DA converter or an 8 channel AD/DA converter. It can be a multi-channel FireWire interface, or an AES/EBU / AES3 / SPDIF Digital to Analogue or Analogue to Digital converter. It can act as a high resolution Pro Tools Interface for recording or post-production. Similarly it can work with a wide range of other popular Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) including Logic, Cubase, Nuendo and others. In fact, there's not a lot it can't do when it comes to digital audio conversion.

"It's the perfect match, it's so flexible. I'm on a Mac and it's literally plug and play," says Schmitt happily. "It fits perfectly in my set-up. It's connected via firewire card to the workstation for now, but I know I will be able to expand my set up easily."

In its first week alone at Air Mastering, Schmitt has used the ADA-8XR on a variety of projects, notably some French Electro and UK Dubstep, and has plenty more lined up too. "I've got a few rock/acoustic projects lined up this month, so I really look forward to do them with the ADA8XR," he says. "It's changed my way of working. I feel I don't have to work as hard as before to get the sound I'm after, and that's definitely a good thing when you do mastering."