I'm trying to build a decent recording environment for someone but this question is general. I am someone with more electronics knowledge than audio tech. Though by no means am I saying I am an expert in either.
I'm just trying to figure this out. I'm trying to find information but I just seem to hit a void on it. So I figured I'd ask here.
Say there is a case where you have a really nice good quality, low noise analogue signal. How do we best digitize this? What (tending towards best) systems are in place to turn the analogue signal to digital? Where do the bottlenecks occur?
Is it that beyond a basic ADC quality point (such as M-AUDIO fast track MKII), there isn't much relevance as to which ADC you use as much as which mic, room condition etc you use? What ADC systems do people use in studios? What exactly is in the mixer part (with many input lines)? Does that also have an ADC? Do studios normally have an ADC at the end of the stages? I see a lotta of info on high quality preamps and mixers etc. But I don't seem to find much on the final conversion to digital. Surely if you have an awesome signal, it will be of little effect if the final ADC is not good enough. No?
What am I missing? Is it that its quality of ADCs are so high that its just negligible when compared to the input mic, preamp etc? Or am I just looking at the wrong places? What is the industry best connections between an ADC and a computer? (plain old USB?) I am not asking about latency or any of the associated things, just purely about end quality.
I have an Behringer C1 condenser mic fed into an M-Audio Fast Track II box with Phantom Power and was wondering what were the next steps to improve quality. I built a preamp and I was wondering, how do I run it through the M-AUDIO without using its internal preamp as the only other way to digitize it would be to use the computers built-in "line in" input which is obviously poorer than a dedicated ADC. To be clear, this is not a "How can I make my recording environment better" question. I just want to understand where the bottlenecks exactly occur and hopefully gain some insight. I just provided details incase anyone was wondering where I'm coming from.