I am always prepared to be wrong - I certainly haven’t taken the 950 apart and analysed it - but this is my understandnig from experience and assorted similar threads. I think there’s a psychological element to the 950 that convinces people it’s performing some kind of magic regardless of what it’s actually doing, like a lo-fi version of an audiophile cable. I woudn’t want to fully discount the value of psychological effects, but the notion of someone sitting on a 950 just to use it as some kind of preamp is… disturbing. Psychologically disturbing, as I realise I just made that person up. But even so.
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I’ll run tracks through bypassed rack gear just because I like the sound of the buffer occasionally, or use the beat up old Space Echo I have as a preamp with the echo bypassed, because the pre itself has a really recognizable, nice sound. I could definitely see the s950 live monitoring coloring the sound a little (on top of the placebo effect of people thinking hey were hearing the converters when they weren’t).
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I’d just use that excellent vst fx plug-in and avoid the 950 altogether , save £100’s
I doubt anyone will ask for a refund / leave the club in disgust if they find out an element of a sample in your track isn’t ‘authentic’ …
https://www.inphonik.com/products/rx950-classic-ad-da-converter/
Tangentially, recently ran across the Akaizer which tries to emulate Akai’s early timestretch.
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If you can get your hands on an old version of Sound Forge (4.5 or older), it does some of the better 90s windowed timestretch sounds I’ve heard in software, and it’s over 20 years old so it’s “authentic.”
For fun I jsut spent some time messing with the timestretch in the s950 (I sually ignore it because it’s “too good” but also not good enough) and it’s obviosuly not the same but if you use the lowest quality MUSIC algorithm, stretch to 50% a couple times, and then 200% the same number of times, it definitely gets into a similar zone.
Gwem’s comparison of a bunch of old samplers is a good reminder that even though they all have their own sound, the differences aren’t enough to make or break your track:
The Volca is the only one that really sounds radically different than the others, like a broad caricature of an old sampler.
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I don’t there is any special magic in the s950 input, but overdriving the input can create its own kind of magic I guess.
No I think that was a common misconception, but it’s not true. The preamps still colour the sound though