Carbon 1 week in use

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by Carl Lie

Don't understand what this means.

I am also unclear what "Additional latency with AVB" means and do not understand the phrase "presentation time offset can be tuned down from the default of 2ms."

All I know is when recording overdubs (say a vocal over a rhythm acoustic guitar track) compared to my HD Native system and Omni,(which I always recorded dry, with no plugins and no outboard processing)......... recording with Carbon and DSP plugins and also running the signal through my outboard Reverb and Compressor there is a more "right there' accurate feel to the audio going onto in my HPs than with my old system

Enough so that in this little first recording attempt below , tracking an Acoustic Guitar on rhythm, then over dubbing lead riffs then a vocal ( my amateur playing ability not withstanding) I was able to actually do one pass all the way through on each part, and had an acceptable if not perfect result .
The mics were plugged directly into the Carbon

Here is the result of that first recording session, where my lack of skill at video post production, took significantly longer than the audio production
So ignore the amateur performance and focus on the sound quality (considering also it is compressed YouTube audio)

https://youtu.be/PN3WxHxWwCo

[trimix]

Originally Posted by Kyle Splittgerber

Hey Mark,

I'm very surprised that you're finding the fan too loud as that's not feedback I've heard yet. Generally, it's never noticed or only heard when putting your head very close to the unit (as mentioned in this thread). HD OMNI fan is much, much louder. This is going to sound like a ridiculous question, but are sure it was not Mac fan noise? On certain Macs, Turbo Boost will kick on when using AVB and cause the Mac fan to spin faster and thus be louder. What year and model of Mac do you have and was it positioned near the Carbon unit? Do you still have the Carbon unit?

Thanks,

Kyle

Thanks for the tip on why a MacBook's fan would keep spinning up when Carbon is connected. I installed Turbo Boost Switcher on my 2014 MBP Quad Core 2.5 and now I can run completely silently 99% of the time, I can barely hear the fan in Carbon with my ear up to it.

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by trimix

Thanks for the tip on why a MacBook's fan would keep spinning up when Carbon is connected. I installed Turbo Boost Switcher on my 2014 MBP Quad Core 2.5 and now I can run completely silently 99% of the time, I can barely hear the fan in Carbon with my ear up to it.

Good news. Just a quick tip IF you pre size your photos to about 840 max pixels before up loading OR at the bottom right of the share window in Imgur choose to resize to " Large Thumbnail" (as opposed to default "Original" ) your photos will not be so large , and be much more DUC thread friendly.
Thanks, Kev

[Kyle Splittgerber]

Originally Posted by Mark Ziebarth

Hi Kyle,
I’m sure it was the fan noise of the carbon. I’ve tested it mainly with my Mac mini from 2019 which has a fan noise problem on its own if you push it harder.
The Carbon unit I have has a constant fan noise even though the unit doesn’t get really warm during a day. Maybe you can reduce the speed of the fan via software to reduce the noise?
I’m a little confused why Avid audio interfaces have fans while other manufacturers don’t use fans in their products, e. g. RME.
I can’t exclude a problem of my Carbon unit as I didn’t have the chance to compare it with a second unit but it sounded familiar to me compared with other Avid interfaces.
I don’t say it’s “loud loud” but too loud if I need to have it in arm reach because I need to control the preamps, headphone gain, the monitor control etc.

Best

Mark

Hey Mark,

Just wanted to follow up and say I'm aware that Customer Support reached out to you. I understand you no longer have the unit, but I'm going to see if we can track it down to figure out what the issue is. It's possible it's a software issue where the fan "thinks" it needs to be spin faster than it does.

The decision to put a fan in Carbon was driven by the goal of having a lot of analog I/O and DSP in a 1RU package. The high performance analog I/O generates a lot of heat. The DSPs do as well. So, we went to great lengths to design a virtually silent fan which could deliver the cooling required. We're very sensitive to the stigma around fans in audio interfaces. And, that's for good reason because historically audio interface fan design has not been very good - resulting in noise. So, we felt there was some innovation to be made in this area. Obviously, the experience we want to deliver wasn't the case with your unit, so we'll be investigating why that is.

Thanks,

Kyle

[Mark Ziebarth]

Hey Kyle,
I appreciate how you care about Carbon. I try to get in touch with your German distributor on Monday to identify the unit I had for my review. I’ll come back to Mark Corbin on that matter on Monday.
If you will be able to solve the really “little noise problem” compared to older Avid interfaces Carbon will be an even better product. I personally prefer full EuCon control when it’s ready but even without Carbon/Hybrid Engine is the greatest invention since TDM imho.

Best regards

Mark