Just before Christmas, we published a shootout between 2 recordings of a Steinway piano recorded through a PreSonus Quantum and a Merging Technologies Hapi and we asked you to take a listen and let us know which one you prefer. We can now announce the results of the shootout and which interface was which.

The Results

The PreSonus Quantum was Interface A and the Merging Technologies Hapi was interface B.

The Analysis

As you can see it was a close run thing and when you take into consideration the price...

If we take the Hapi base unit which is priced at £1,838 and then add a Standard 8 Channel Mic/Line ADA card also priced at £1,838 we get a total price of £3,676 excluding taxes for a Hapi with 8 mic preamp inputs.

Compare that to the PreSonus Quantum which comes with 8 preamps as standard and is around £875 excluding taxes and baased on this test, it makes the Quantum a very good buy.

What do you think? Does it change anything now you know which is which? Do share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Test

These recordings were made by Francesco Perlangeli and Derek Williams in the Zipper Hall in  Los Angeles, California on 29th August 2017 using a pair of Sennheiser MKH80s Microphones.

The piano is a New York Steinway “D” 9ft Piano,  and the pianist is the very talented Jaemin Shin.

The two recordings, both at 96KHz/32 Bit, are two separate passes each with the microphones connected directly to the mic inputs of the test interface using 35 ft Canare Starquad cables.  No Splitters or multicores were used in this test. They used the internal clocks of both interfaces.