UR22mkII quirks?
Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 2:21 am
So I've been using the steinberg ur22mkII a month-ish or more. I got some minnie maggies when I got this interface. I'm still using an old panasonic RX-540 to drive them. Pretty much all of the levels are controlled by knobs on the device (ur22mkII). With a knob to mix the inputs with the output (works with an iPad). There's no alsa mixer settings. I'm okay with that. It sounds good, output and input. With decent sampling rates 24 bit / 192kHz. So onto the quirks.
The minnie maggies really crunches / sounds bad when you play a clip with clipping. It could be that I have the ribbon speakers at an angle since they don't fully fit in the book shelf. Severely reducing the levels outputted to the stereo helps make it sound less bad. But there's no alsa mixer levels. Soooo... at the moment I have a pulse over jack setup on a RPi 3B+. With the 7" screen and I have jack_mixer running to lower the output -36 (dB I assume) in software by adding an input source and routing through it with qjackctl. With the jack_mixer in the middle I can turn the knob on the steinberg ur22mkII up to full and the headphone preamp (presonus hp4) to full that feeds the stereo. At which point it still sounds good / less bad and the EQ meter has at least a couple LEDs light up (< 50% height) on the RX-540.
The clipping still crunches. I have a Jessica Andrews CD that sounds particularly bad, from the clip crunch, I like the artist. Otherwise it seems like it runs hot in terms of audio output levels. I am powering the ur22mkII from an external usb power cable (one of the reasons why I got it (over the focusrite 2i2), is this feature), instead of the USB bus. I've moved it from the 2.4A plug to an older 1A plug and still basically the same. Anyone else observed this behavior? The output being HOT for higher end speakers?
I kind of wanted to use this setup to record in the middle of a corn field type setup. Although on a 10k mAh battery the interface alone drains it 1% per minute, so not really an option baring more beefy mobile power sources. But I'd probably be using something like a pocketchip for the recorder since it gets a good solid 4 hours on it's own power. I really need to build a custom desk to setup the speakers right / normal. And I should test the speakers with my older m-audio mobilepre (16 bit / 48kHz). With the current setup I do have to turn the stereo up 2x's as much as I did with the older 48" magnepans (that have almost no bass, but sound amazing, even 20 years later).
Maybe these quirks go away if I set up the speakers right. Or get a more modern alternative to the stereo to power them. Or with any/all other sound interfaces. But not something I can test readily at the moment. There is a bit of jank in the current setup. To the stereo with RCA, a headphone preamp in the middle (but it has knobs and MUTE). Plus stereo cables too fat for the stereo to the speakers. A stereo that's more than twenty years old now. 1970s wiring near high power lines. And such and such and such...
The minnie maggies really crunches / sounds bad when you play a clip with clipping. It could be that I have the ribbon speakers at an angle since they don't fully fit in the book shelf. Severely reducing the levels outputted to the stereo helps make it sound less bad. But there's no alsa mixer levels. Soooo... at the moment I have a pulse over jack setup on a RPi 3B+. With the 7" screen and I have jack_mixer running to lower the output -36 (dB I assume) in software by adding an input source and routing through it with qjackctl. With the jack_mixer in the middle I can turn the knob on the steinberg ur22mkII up to full and the headphone preamp (presonus hp4) to full that feeds the stereo. At which point it still sounds good / less bad and the EQ meter has at least a couple LEDs light up (< 50% height) on the RX-540.
The clipping still crunches. I have a Jessica Andrews CD that sounds particularly bad, from the clip crunch, I like the artist. Otherwise it seems like it runs hot in terms of audio output levels. I am powering the ur22mkII from an external usb power cable (one of the reasons why I got it (over the focusrite 2i2), is this feature), instead of the USB bus. I've moved it from the 2.4A plug to an older 1A plug and still basically the same. Anyone else observed this behavior? The output being HOT for higher end speakers?
I kind of wanted to use this setup to record in the middle of a corn field type setup. Although on a 10k mAh battery the interface alone drains it 1% per minute, so not really an option baring more beefy mobile power sources. But I'd probably be using something like a pocketchip for the recorder since it gets a good solid 4 hours on it's own power. I really need to build a custom desk to setup the speakers right / normal. And I should test the speakers with my older m-audio mobilepre (16 bit / 48kHz). With the current setup I do have to turn the stereo up 2x's as much as I did with the older 48" magnepans (that have almost no bass, but sound amazing, even 20 years later).
Maybe these quirks go away if I set up the speakers right. Or get a more modern alternative to the stereo to power them. Or with any/all other sound interfaces. But not something I can test readily at the moment. There is a bit of jank in the current setup. To the stereo with RCA, a headphone preamp in the middle (but it has knobs and MUTE). Plus stereo cables too fat for the stereo to the speakers. A stereo that's more than twenty years old now. 1970s wiring near high power lines. And such and such and such...