Review: TC Electronic Digital Konnekt x32

TC pioneered the use of digital I/O on its effects devices. Back in the days when you could count yourself lucky to get balanced I/O on the back of a new reverb, TC had the forethought to also provide AES/EBU and S/PDIF. Well, now imagine teaming up a full rack of TC outboard: a Finalizer, a FireworX, a Gold Channel, an R4000, M3000, S5000… and a System 6000 with your DAW. It’s a mouth-watering proposition. But wait one cotton-picking minute… it’s not that easy to plumb external devices into a computer-based setup. Most interfaces baulk at it, or they introduce unacceptable/arbitrary amounts of latency. This is where the Digital Konnekt x32 really does come into its own. It’s a Firewire 400 interface, combined with a sample rate converter and a digital patchbay. If you rely on digital devices – and many, particularly in broadcast and post, do – the x32 is a godsend.

TK ELEKTRONIK

The x32 is essentially a 16-in/16-out device. Unlike most, however, the emphasis is on digital I/O. The only analogue ports on the x32 are two TRS jack outputs for general monitoring purposes. Simple enough – you won’t need an external D/A to hear what’s going on. The two analogue outputs are a mirror of the digital 1+2 outs so should you opt to monitor via a separate converter there’s no internal patching to rearrange.

The back panel offers two Firewire ports – one goes to your Mac or PC, with the second for daisy chaining up to four x32s – that’s 64 channels of digital I/O, for the mathematically challenged.

As I mentioned in my opener, the digital I/O come into their own when you’re interfacing with digital outboard – the integration is seamless. Unfortunately, my armoury of digital outboard is limited to a FireworX but for those with greater arsenals of sonic ordinance, the x32 is the only game in town for this style of hookup.

Earlier I painted a TC-only picture of outboard nirvana, but these days you could easily bring in ADAT-equipped sets of eight mic preamps, single channel strips, basically anything with digital I/O – all enjoying the bags-full of headroom a completely digital signal path affords. Then you could forego the built-in monitoring D/A section and enjoy the output from your Benchmark DA-1, for example. In short, the x32 could well act as a bona fide backbone of an extremely customisable digital editing and mixing system. The possibilities are truly vast. I’ll explain the interfacing options in a tad more detail and you’ll realise the versatility of the x32.

KONNEKT FOR…

The rear of the x32 is crammed with ports, beginning with eight channels of AES/EBU ins and outs on XLR connections. There are eight RCA S/PDIF ports following, then ADAT optical I/O with the facility to allow 96k operation via a second pair of optical TOSlink I/Os. Wordclock I/O is a prerequisite for a unit such as this, and the x32 will, of course, act as master clock for its connected devices utilising TC’s low jitter DICE II/JET clocking technology – the same jitter reduction smarts as found in the S6000 mega processor.

Integrating your digital outboard into your DAW platform on OSX requires nominating the x32 as your Core Audio playback device and selecting from the available 16 inputs, as per usual. But then there’s the need to use the x32 I/O as sends and returns from your digital outboard. For this task TC supplies the ‘Integrator’ – a VST or Audio Unit plug-in. Instancing the Integrator sets up a simple send and return path on the DAW channel. The plug-in will allow you to adjust your send and return levels, but more importantly, the Integrator calculates the round trip latency and adjusts your audio accordingly, taking care of not only the delays incurred leaving and re-entering the unit, but the delays introduced by the outboard processor as well.

At the moment, software for the x32 is still in development, with the Windows drivers and control panels apparently in better nick than the OSX equivalent. Having said this, I waded in and installed the software in Mac OSX 10.5.1 – yep, Leopard – and was pleasantly surprised to find it worked perfectly in Logic Pro 7.2.3 and 8. As it stands there’s no RTAS version of the plug-in and I’d doubt there’s anything on the drawing board, as the x32 would have to be running as the main ProTools LE interface – an unlikely scenario. Not to say the x32 couldn’t be used as a patching system to bring any digital outboard into a ProTools LE system on a case-by-case basis.