Review: TC Electronic Konnekt 24D
Not just another portable Firewire audio interface.
By Brad Watts
6 February 2007
I get to see a lot of audio interfaces, and, of late, many of these have been Firewire based. Firewire audio interfaces certainly have a good deal going for them. They’re relatively future-proof compared with the myriad PCI flavours circulating the globe; they’re simple to install and consequently can be swapped between computers and computer platforms very readily. Nowadays, however, there are so many competing manufacturers utilising the concept that, when asked to review the latest in Firewire interfaces, I often find myself pondering whether the world needs yet another version. If you were shopping for such a unit you’d also realise that most alternatives offer a typical layout and feature set: a standard pair of mic preamps, instrument inputs, Adat I/O and varying degrees of additional analogue I/O. There’s often very little to discern between them… until now that is.
TOGETHER AGAIN
TC Electronic has finally ditched the TC Works entity and is now pleased as punch to include its computer-based products alongside the rest of its professional hardware line. And a good thing too: there’s very little point trying to artificially separate the audio software and computer users from their audio hardware brethren – the lines are too blurred now to bother. The Konnekt 24D interface is a good example of these blurred lines. DSP processing (derived from the company’s Powercore range) shares space with some tasty reverb, a very functional set of channel strip processors, and high quality analogue design.
Let’s look at the mainstay functions of the unit first… then we’ll get into the more interesting bits.
DIS-KONNEKT
The Konnekt 24D is most definitely a portable device. Measuring a mere 241.5 x 44 x 226mm and weighing 1.5kg, it’s perfect for lugging around with your laptop. It’s also happy to be powered via the Firewire bus alone, so recording is certainly possible away from mains power, or in circumstances where your mains could be suddenly interrupted. The supplied adapter accepts all of planet Earth’s voltages, so international movement is also hassle-free.
Analogue I/O consists of four ins and four outs as balanced TRS 1/4-inch jacks. This line level I/O offers a dynamic range of 108dB on the way into conversion and the same spec on output. Inputs 1 and 2 are also conveniently replicated on the front panel with Neutrik combo XLR connectors – each sporting its own gain and pad control. Phantom power is switched on globally for both mic pre inputs. RCA coaxial and optical S/PDIF connections also make an appearance with the optical port doubling as an Adat I/O. There’s also Midi in and out and two Firewire ports. The unit’s casing is a single-piece, 2.5mm-thick aluminium sleeve that looks sturdy enough for typical ‘mobile’ transportation.
Returning to the front of the Konnekt 24D, the aforementioned mic pre/instrument inputs, provide 62dB of gain and must be physically turned on via a toggle button that switches the input between the front panel preamps and the rear panel line inputs – a handy feature that allows various sources to be permanently plugged into the unit.
Visually, the front panel white-on-white aesthetic borrows heavily from the Apple iPod ‘school of deportment’, so it will look attractive alongside either a MacBook Pro or white MacBook. The input gain knobs and the output level knob are all a strange elliptical shape which is neither good nor bad in my opinion, but it does offer the advantage of differentiating these controls from the fourth – a dual pushbutton/rotary encoder with LED surrounds. This control accesses a bunch of software-based parameters, which we’ll investigate in a moment. TC has gone to great lengths to explain that the output level control is an analogue volume attenuator positioned after the DAC outputs. Unlike units that simply lower the DAC output, this system is, in effect, a master volume control of your monitor signal. Strangely (and somewhat unfortunately), this control sets the output volume of all the analogue outputs, including the two front panel headphone outs. The upper of these two headphone outputs ‘auto-mutes’ Outputs 1 and 2 when cans are plugged into it. TC presumably considers this automatic function desirable in a recording environment and in most situations I’m certain it is – you obviously don’t want your monitors blaring at you while recording into an open microphone. However, I would liked to have seen this auto-muting function be a matter of choice – i.e., not ‘auto’ – as there are circumstances where this could become a hindrance. A separate headphone level control would be far superior.
NEED TO KNOW
NEAR ENOUGH
The unit is driven via the ‘TC NEAR’ software control panel; ‘NEAR’ stands for ‘Network Expandable Audio Recording’, an acronym that’s initially hard to fathom. Things become a little clearer, however, once you become aware that multiple Konnekt 24Ds may be daisy-chained together (via Firewire) to increase your I/O and DSP count. Up to four units can be combined – for up to 48 channels of I/O – with the TC NEAR control panel addressing all four units simultaneously. What’s more, digital I/O ports can be mixed and matched among S/PDIF and Adat flavours for any combination you desire, provided you remain within the eight available streams. For example, you can use Channels 1–6 of Adat lightpipe alongside two channels of coaxial S/PDIF, or reduce the system down to coaxial and optical S/PDIF only. Inputs 1 and 2 can be linked for stereo control as can line Inputs 3 and 4. Outputs 3 and 4 – and the digital outputs – can be further configured to emit an array of output sources, from the typical configurations through to a direct relaying of the mic/instrument inputs. This is most useful when configuring the 24D for stand-alone operation. In such circumstances, the unit is a veritable Swiss Army knife A/D D/A and processing unit, which neatly, brings me to the DSP section of the Konnekt 24D.
MINT FRESH
TC Electronic has ample DSP processing products under its belt with the Powercore series of PCI and Firewire processing systems. These units provide additional DSP processing grunt to your DAW system, taking the load off your computer’s CPU. The Konnekt 24D houses DSP derived from this technology with two mono channel strip processors called Fabrik C and a stereo reverb processor named Fabrik R. The channel strip includes a four-band EQ, de-esser, multi-band compressor and a limiter. The effects GUI’s name is derived from yet another acronym from TC – MINT, or Meta Intuitive Navigation Technology, which is an easy-to-navigate interface for effects control. It allows fast adjustment of parameters without the need to scroll through countless menus. With MINT, the user grabs one of four dots on the effects interface, to which the interface rearranges its graphics to suit the appropriate parameters. Sample rates supported go all the way up to 192k, but at this breakneck speed you lose the use of the DSP processing completely. Running at 96k will force you to choose either the Fabrik C or R processors. Both processors sound particularly good with Fabrik R (the reverb processor) standing out as a spatial emulator well worth having.
Setups involving routing and effects processing can also be used in standalone mode. In fact, three entirely different setups can be saved and recalled via a front-panel button. The rotary encoder with surrounding LED ‘light-ring’ can be assigned to various parameters for control in stand-alone mode as well. In a further twist, these processors are available as plug-ins from within your DAW. At the moment Fabrik C and R are only available as VST plugs to control the internal Konnekt 24D DSP. These controllers will work with the supplied version of Cubase VST (Mac or PC) but those wishing to access these plug-in controllers from AU hosts, such as Logic Pro, will have to resort to Fxpansion’s VST-AU wrapper, which does the job perfectly. Of course, the onboard DSP can be used on input when monitoring directly without latency issues, so with a little pre-programming you could safely use the unit as a standalone reverb, stereo multi-band compressor and limiter, and (get this) a guitar tuner. I was grinning from ear to ear when I noticed the nifty chromatic tuner built into the DSP algorithms and the TC NEAR control panel. It functions in strobe mode or the more commonly-used meter mode, plus you can set things up so that the LED ‘light-ring’ will represent the tuning information – you can tune up just looking at the Konnekt 24D front panel… very cool.
KONNEKT – ALL PRESENT & KORREKT?
I found the sound of the Konnekt 24D to be very good. Unlike early Firewire designs from various companies I didn’t notice any sonic smearing or glazing of material. This is no doubt due to TC Electronic’s attention to jitter stabilisation – another acronymic title in the form of JET, or Jitter Elimination Technology. Most manufacturers are attacking this problem nowadays, firstly, I’d assume, because the problem can be so pronounced in Firewire devices, and, secondly, because users are now more aware of the phenomenon. Software support for the unit extends to Mac OSX 10.3.9 and Tiger with a minimum CPU requirement of a 1GHz processor, as well as Pentium 4 processors of 1.6GHz and up, running Windows XP. I ran the unit in OSX 10.4.8 with only a few hiccups – sections of the software are still in development stages and I did have a few moments where the Konnekt 24D disappeared from the Firewire bus. Overall, however, the unit did function as I expected. In fact, I thought the 24D was a class act, offering much more than your average interface for the same dollar. In terms of versatility it’s a real workhorse.
RESPONSES