Abbey Road Studios Invests in NTP DAD AX24 Digital Audio Converters

"The AX24 units have been purchased primarily for use by our mobile recording unit," comments Simon Kiln, Head of Editing at Abbey Road and a producer of recordings both in the studios and on location. "They give us the benefit of exceptionally low-noise analogue signal preamplification, high quality digitising and considerably shorter setup and dismantling times. We have been trying to build affordable recording packages for many styles of music. Key to this was the ability to set up quickly without compromising the quality people expect from Abbey Road Studios. Our equipment is transported in flight cases to wherever it is needed and then set up with an onsite control room. Putting kit in place to record a medium-size orchestral production can easily take three hours and includes running as many as 30 microphone cables out to the control room. The four AX24 converters allow up to 32 microphones to be combined into a single MADI channel and routed to the control room as just two cables: the MADI feed itself plus wordclock timing reference. They also give us the ability to adjust the level of each preamplifier channel from a laptop PC or digital audio workstation in the control room.

"Having one box that performs preamplification, analogue-to-digital conversion and MADI integration has greatly improved operational efficiency," adds Abbey Road Senior Recording Engineer Jonathan Allen. "We also wanted the option of working at higher sampling rates and, after comparing it to other converters, I found the AX24 made one of the best cases for working at 96 kHz and above."

"The DAD AX24 has the quietest front-end amplifier we have ever tried," details Arne Akselberg, Abbey Road Senior Classical Engineer. "Comparing the AX24 with other brands, the difference was astonishing. And it is one of the few such devices that sounds really good at 96 kHz."

The four AX24 signal converters were supplied via NTP Technology's UK distributor, eMerging, which also supplied the Pyramix digital audio workstation used by Abbey Road Studios as a mobile recorder and editing system.

Designed for high quality music recording as well as mastering and monitoring in DSD, the NTP DAD AX24 offers A/D and D/A conversion in PCM at up to 384 kHz sampling rate, DSD at 64 frame/s or 128 frame/s, and 352.8 kHz DXD. The optional microphone preamplifier incorporates analogue gain control in 3 dB steps as well as digital gain control with 0.25 dB precision. Dynamic range is between 118 and 121 dB. The preamplifier's equivalent noise floor is -130 dB.

The AX24 is fully remote controllable via RS-422, USB or Ethernet. Preamp parameters can be represented on the channel strip of industry-standard audio production consoles and workstations. MADI output is configurable to operate in loopthrough mode, connecting multiple converters to a single data output. The interface can be set to access any configuration of 64 MADI channels in blocks of eight consecutive channels. The AX24 can be synchronised to incoming AES 11, Word Clock, Super clock or video (PAL, NTSC, SECAM). An integral phase-locked-loop circuit is able to correct for minor variations in external sync timing.

About Abby Road Studios

The world's first purpose built recording studio, Abbey Road Studios celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2010. Offering recording, mixing, mastering and online mastering, audio product and post production services, Abbey Road Studios continues to be at the cutting-edge of new technologies and innovations and is the studio of choice for the world's music talent.

About Merging Technologies

Pro-audio sales and distribution company eMerging was founded in 2007 by a group of professionals with long experience of the audio, video and technology industries. In addition to running Merging Technologies' UK distribution for the Pyramix digital audio workstation, VCube video player and Ovation media playout system, eMerging is a UK reseller and distributor for other high-value high-tech brands, including PSI Audio, Smart AV, DAD, MicW and Trinnov Audio, Steinberg and Euphonix. eMerging's customers include recording studios, post-production facilities, broadcasters, further and higher education colleges and schools.

About NTP

Digital Audio Denmark is a brand of NTP Technology. Established in 1958, NTP is a major supplier of high-reliability audio routing systems for major international broadcasters. NTP products are integrated into television and radio stations as well as major production centres, post-production facilities and outside broadcast vehicles. Since 2003, NTP has been a member of the Dan Technologies A/S group which has more than 125 employees and is one of Scandinavia's largest suppliers of audio and video broadcast equipment.