Review; TC Electronic Studio Konnekt 48
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Markkus Rovito
MULTIFACETED FIREWIRE AUDIO INTERFACE HAS MORE PERSONALITIES THAN THE WU-TANG CLAN
It seems that every pop singer wants to act, every rapper wants to sell you energy drinks and vodka, and every star athlete starts a clothing line. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned one-trick ponies? Even in the world of audio gear, it seems that one discipline is not enough to stand out. TC Electronic's latest flagship rackmount recording device, the Studio Konnekt 48, has the look of an audio interface, but the mind of a mogul.
Fundamentally, Studio Konnekt 48 is a 30-in/28-out FireWire audio interface built for high-level professional demands, with its four proprietary Impact II mic preamps and excellent sound quality coming from its 24-bit/192 kHz operation. From there, Studio Konnekt 48 branches out. It also acts as a 24-in/8-out digital mixer with 56-bit internal processing and 48-bit double-precision summing on its mix buses, DSP plug-in hosts, precision clocking device, monitor management system…hell, it even has a built-in guitar tuner.
The bridge to all this functionality is the Konnekt 2.0 software, including the TC Near control panel, which runs on your PC or Mac when the Studio Konnekt 48 is hooked up over FireWire. TC Near is the software face of the device; however, the Konnekt 48's digital mixer is powered by the unit's internal DSPs, making it available at all times, whether linked to a computer or not. If you want to use the Konnekt 48 as a stand-alone device, you get three scene memories that can instantly recall all the saved mixer settings, routings and DSP plug-in settings that you have set up with the software.
THE CONNECTOR
The magnificently spec'ed Konnekt 48 begins with four front-panel input channels with balanced combo XLR/¼-inch line-level/¼-inch instrument level inputs, Gain/Trim knobs and selectable -20 dB pads. A single switch turns on phantom power for only the XLR portion of all four inputs, which will not harm dynamic mics, so you could use condenser and dynamic mics simultaneously. These four inputs auto detect whether an instrument-level guitar or bass is attached and if so, route them to a separate internal circuit.
Two individual headphone outputs on the front have their own level controls. Phones 1 has its own digital audio converter (DAC), and Phones 2 uses the same DAC as line out 11/12. Using the TC Near mixer, you can route two separate signals to the left and right headphone channels; for example, a DJ could route the main out to the left and the cue track to the right for mixing.
A grid of LEDs includes input meters for the four preamped front-panel inputs, as well as paired input meters — 5/6, 7/8, 9/10, 11/12 — for the total of eight balanced TRS analog inputs on the back. With six LEDs each (three green, two yellow and one red), these meters are sufficient for most tasks, and you get more detailed metering in the software. The LED grid also gives you indicator lights to show when you have an active FireWire connection to a computer or locked digital connections with ADAT, S/PDIF, TOS and MIDI In/Out (those lights blink if the connection isn't locked).
In addition to the eight balanced TRS inputs (for a total of 12 simultaneously streaming analog inputs), the Konnekt 48 has eight balanced TRS outputs on the back. Next to those are the main XLR outputs; they are analog but have precision digital control, which allows for flexible routing.
The digital I/O section on the back includes two channels of 24/96 S/PDIF I/O on RCA connections and two sets of ADAT/Toslink connectors. Those can be used as four channels of optical S/PDIF I/O over Toslink; or, if used as ADAT, you can get 16 channels of I/O at the standard sampling rate or eight channels at 96 kHz.
Studio Konnekt 48 includes Word Clock In so you can sync to an external word clock generator, as well as Word Clock Out and a DICE II chip for stable audio streaming, so you can use it as a master clock generator for other devices. It also includes jitter elimination technology (JET) to manage the delays (jitter) that can occur due to varying digital clocks in a studio setup, which can lead to reduced dynamic range and smaller stereo fields.
Two FireWire ports let you connect to a computer and hook up other FireWire devices, such as another TC Konnekt interface, which the TC Near software will combine with the Konnekt 48 into one system. TC Near also lets you set up a surround-sound speaker set, set up bass management with selectable filters and crossover points for subwoofer systems, or assign as many as three monitor sets so you can switch between them when mixing.
THE FACILITATOR
The TC Near 2.0 software handles all the programming, routing and other set-up tasks for the digital mixer and the DSP plug-ins: the Fabrik C channel strip and the Fabrik R reverb. You can route any of the physical inputs to any of the physical outputs or to DAW inputs and outputs, provided that your DAW is running and recognizes the Konnekt 48 as the audio interface. I tested it primarily with Ableton Live 7, and the integration was fairly seamless except that in its Preferences, it did not label inputs and outputs with their names (such as S/PDIF), but rather only gave them numbers. TC Electronic told Remix that some other DAWs, such as Apple Logic, have a tighter integration that recognizes and lists the labels of the inputs and outputs.
If anything, the massive routing possibilities of TC Near can be a bit dizzying, and that was one area in which the included PDF manual could have provided a lot more explanation of the functions. Still, I'd rather suffer from too many options than too few.
One cool feature to TC Near is that it will incorporate as many TC Electronic Konnekt units that you chain together. I hooked up a second unit, a Konnekt 24D, and TC Near integrated it into one virtual system that expanded the available inputs from 30 to 48.
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