Chef wrote:
Every added piece of equipment you run audio through will affect the audio in some way, why add more colour when you dont need to.
It may not colour it more than a mixer and i'm aware of this, but a kam or numark mixer would colour the sound in a worse way to an Allen and Heath mixer, every bit of kit brings it's own inaccuracies and raises the noise floor level and distortion ratio...
The only way to have the cleanest signal possible is to use the highest quality wires and components(the less the better) while using the shortest lengths of wires possible.
Running your vinyl through the serato box adds another unnecasry bit of kit and colour to the audio path.
The serato box needs to be powered for it to work as a vinyl run through which means the sound has to be processed, that's another stage.
If it was exactly the same as good piece of wire it wouldn't need to be powered to work.
It doesn't make your vinyl sound shit, but it certaintly ain't making it sound any better.
Nothing personal against you at all Chef.Serato User wrote:Is there quality loss when the phono signal is passed through the device opposed to the phono signal going straight into the mixer?Steve M from RANE wrote: No. One the one hand, one could argue that the added cabling length required could technically degrade any signal (which is always true when using unbalanced audio cable). In other words, it's not a good idea to extend a turntable's output cable length since this lowers the signal quality. Yet the active (powered) internal circuitry in the SL 1 significantly improves the signal-drive capability - meaning it could also be argued that this approach improves the signal quality as cable is added. In reality, it's a wash - there's no quality lost.
Note that when playing back computer files, you can greatly out perform any and all vinyl and any and all turntables ever made by using high quality audio files.
I used to sell audio equipment and have a degree in audio engineering. I value sound quality. I wouldnt have switched if I thought it sounded bad in any way. The coloration from the box is no different than any other piece of Rane gear, which is very minimal. Rane is one of the best DJ equip companies I have used, read up on and worked with (their sales reps are dope).
I LOVE vinyl, I just cant afford $12-14 for one (hopefully two) tunes on one vinyl especially when I can get tunes for $2 or less on other sites and can play unreleased tunes from around the world minutes after downloading them. Those benifits far outweigh any slight coloration of the sound the box may add or the few khz on the top of the sound spectrum that a well processed 320 looses (and that 75% of people cant hear anyway)
