ADC16 Silver w/ FireWire Int. Card 110V/220V

The sound of your studio is the reputation of your studio, and there is no single piece of quipment in the modern studio that is more essential to shaping the overall character of sound than your converters. Benchmark's ADC-1 converter has been embraced by the recording world with great enthusiasm. The ADC-16 is a full-featured 16-channel package with identical output quality.

DAW interface
This version of the ADC16 ships complete with Firewire card. With a Firewire connection to the computer, the ADC16 can operate as the sole interface to native DAWs, including Pro Tools, without the need for any other hardware. Moreover, The ADC16 is completely compatible with the digital I/O interfaces of the Avid/Digidesign interfaces and other interfaces with AES, coaxial, and/or optical inputs.

The ADAT mode of the optical outputs makes the ADC16 a perfect companion for older Pro Tools interfaces, as well as other digital interfaces with ADAT and coaxial inputs, as it can fulfill the entire digital-input capability of the interface with state-of-the-art A/D performance. This type of flexibility means the ADC16 can work perfectly with DAW setups from the past and the future.

Analog input stages
The ADC16 features 16-channels of transformerless balanced analog inputs. The analog front-end continues Benchmark's tradition of exceptionally pristine, award-winning analog circuitry “ a legacy that dates back to the early 1980's.

Each channel of analog input has a gain control (via a trim-pot) that has a 20 dB range. At 0 dB of gain, it can accept 28 dBu at the input without clipping. At max-gain, an 8 dB input-signal will drive the converters to full-scale.

Routable digital outputs
The ADC16 features three separate 16-channel output groups:
Balanced AES/EBU (16 channels at all sample rates)
Coaxial AES (16 channels at all sample rates)
Optical (AES or ADAT) (16 channels at all sample rates and formats)
There are two sources available for each output group:
A/D output (16 channels)
DAW return (16 channels)

The control panel allows the assignment the source groups (A/D or DAW) to the output groups (AES, Coaxial, or Optical). This is very useful when the ADC16 is used in a studio with an analog console. The digital audio from the A/D chips can be sent directly to the digital outputs to a multichannel D/A to feed the console “ completely bypassing the DAW while tracking. This reduces latency and DAW artifacts in real-time monitoring. At a press of a button, the return channels from the DAW can be routed to the same outputs for mixing.