Prism Sound Dream ADA 8XR Master Converters
Prism Sound Dream ADA 8XR Master Converters
The reference converter
The Prism Sound Dream ADA-8XR is the conversion standard against which we judge everything else in the room. Eight channels each way, and a measured performance that has kept it in front-line mastering rooms for two decades.
Why conversion is not a solved problem
Specifications converged years ago; sound did not. The Prism's analogue stages are the reason. Low-level detail — reverb tails, room tone, the decay of a piano note — survives the trip out and back in a way that cheaper converters simply do not deliver. On a mastering chain where the signal converts twice, that difference compounds.
Stem mastering
Eight channels of matched conversion is what makes eight-stem analogue mastering practical at all. Every stem leaves the DAW through identical circuitry, so the rebalance we do in the analogue domain is honest.
How it sits in our chain
The Prism is the reference point of the whole room. It is the main DAC and ADC on the Maselec MTC-2, and it also feeds the Trinnov ST2 Pro — we deliberately convert through the Prism rather than using the ST2's own converters, so every monitoring path and every capture shares the same reference quality. Alternative DACs (Crane Song HEDD, Violectric V800, Benchmark DAC1) and alternative ADCs (Crane Song HEDD, Burl B2 Bomber) hang off the MTC-2 around it, but the Prism is what everything else is judged against.
Hardware info
A fully loaded ADA-8XR is a five-figure purchase and remains one of the most expensive multichannel converters ever produced.
Hear it on your record
Book a master
This chain is available on every stereo and stem master we deliver from Manchester.