Digi 192 Blue Interfaces ... in praise of the analog card

[jeff markham]

I am appreciative that Avid has continued to support the
Digi 192 Blue interfaces. In my humble opinion, the analog
card on these interfaces is under appreciated. If you calibrate
them properly, and put a good clock in front of them, they're still
one of the best sounding A/D paths in the business.
I particularly like the soft clip .. if you push them hard and
turn on the soft clip, you can tease a lot of color out of them.
I see them on E bay for $300 and I'm scratching my head...
I feel like its the old analog days where twenty years later
people go "gee .. these sound really good, I'll pay a ridiculous
price to get that sound" I have some purple gear too .. and
they're excellent too.

I'm not a collector, but I have three of them in my home studio, and
they're mostly doing send/returns to other analog gear .. but it will
be a sad day when they're not supported.

Please don't end of life support for these boxes .. they're great.

[BScout]

Support has been officially ended for a longtime. (Unclear why you think Avid is still supporting them)

The thing is they still work. Mostly because Avid can’t remove that functionality without breaking other things. But don’t confuse that for being supported.
They’ve been EOL’d since over 10 years ago.

[jeff markham]

Yea .. thanks for the clarification .. it's probably not by good will.

Like my Control-24 .. if they could, they would .. and did

But, I'm still glad they still work. If they stop working,
that will be my last upgrade.

I still have a TDM Mac HD3 PT 10 around

[Southsidemusic]

And …. Those old blue 192’s are hardly ”one of the best” sounding A/D paths, trust that. We have a few in a closet full of old stuff and we hooked up one the other day and it sounded oike we had a thick cloth cover over the monitors compared to Carbon and MTRX Sooo … tried the other 3 and still sounded old and muffled sorry!

So … Just one guys opinion and I will stick with it!

[JFreak]

^^ what he said.

I don't mind the 192 AD quality because when I need them live I need A LOT of them so it is just cost savings. But when it comes down to DA and monitoring, I make sure I have my Apogee with me.

[jeff markham]

Originally Posted by Southsidemusic

And …. Those old blue 192’s are hardly ”one of the best” sounding A/D paths, trust that. We have a few in a closet full of old stuff and we hooked up one the other day and it sounded oike we had a thick cloth cover over the monitors compared to Carbon and MTRX Sooo … tried the other 3 and still sounded old and muffled sorry!

So … Just one guys opinion and I will stick with it!

have you re-capped the analog cards?

[JFreak]

They are aged anyway. Design that is two decades old cannot compare to modern ones. They were top of the line over 20 years ago and while I can understand why people (myself included) paid 5000 euros per unit with second AD card, the box you get today for the same price is something else.

[jeff markham]

I dont disagree the newer interfaces sound better .. but I like
the character of the analog card .. maybe I just got used to it

[smurfyou]

Originally Posted by jeff markham

have you re-capped the analog cards?

Why would they need it?

[Darryl Ramm]

The issue now/recently seems to be not wether the 192 still works on DigiLink system, it's that HD Native systems on recent Macs/macOS seem to be having serious problems for some users, seemingly mostly the PCIe card in Thunderbolt expansion chassis, and according to some of those users Avid support is well aware of the problem. I get the impression (but would love to be wrong) that there have not been clear updates about this to affected owners. I wish Avid would share where they are at with understanding this problem.

If Avid does not get a handle on these HD Native problems could well be the end of many of these (today Intel) Mac HD Native systems that will not survive a migration to Apple Silicon.