Gone 24 Bit, But No Go!!

Village Idiot

Village Idiot

The Love Butler
I have upgraded to N-Track's 24 bit capabilities, but i cannot get in any 24 bit recording.
Now, this is not an N-Track issue, so I bring it here...

What I have is called an Opcode sonicport optical, which is a USB hook-up that is supossed to bypass my crappy soundcard & go right to the hard drive...And it says on my sonic port that it has 2-bit capabilites. It has one phono plug in the front to plug into, anda USB plug to go into the computer..Simple there...

So..What am I doing wrong?
I have checked my preferences on N-Track, made the changes I thought I should, but then I get a message saying to check my preferences, because something is not jiving (Paraphrasing)

Can anyone please help me? I am looking forward to the bliss that is 24 bit...:(

Thanks for any help!
 
I took a look at the specs for your Opcode. There appears to be some inconsistency. The features lists says -

- 20-bit, high-quality, stereo Analog to Digital and Digital to Analog converters
- 16 and 24-bit sample resolution supported

I'm not too sure how it can have 20 bit A/D converters, but support 24-bit. Sounds to me like marketing hocus-pocus. Maybe someone else can explaing this.

I assume you have been able to record at 16-bit prior to this without problems? Also, what is your sample rate? It looks like the Opcode supports only up to 48K.
 
Dump the card if you want 24 bit capability. What the card is doing is truncating the 4 LSB coming into the 20 bit converter, bad, bad , bad thing. So whats happening is that the software realizes that the converters are only 20 bit and your stuck. I had the same problem with my last card, it wasn't a true 24 bit card, so PT and Logic Audio would either freeze or give me some sort of error. Sorry:0( but the card isn't 24 bit...Marketing people should be held accountable for this kind of crap.

Peace,
Dennis
 
Actually it's not truncating, since there are no "bits" before the converter :) What's actually going on is that the 20bit output of the converter is being padded with four zeros (most likely) to create 24bit samples. 20 bit converters aren't necessarily going to be bad either. I mean for a long time 18-20 bit converters were quite common back when 16bit was still the norm (I guess it still is in a way).

Padding isn't necessarily wrong or bad. It's not making anything sound worse. But you're not getting the extra headroom offered by 24bit converters. How much difference it will make in real life with cheap prosumer cards is hard to say though.

Before buying a new card, you should know that n-Track supports several 24bit structures. I can't remember where you select the sample format...it might be in the recording VU meter someplace.

Also, the conversion from 20 to 24bit might be happening in the card's drivers. In which case you might make sure to update to the very latest drivers. The fact that it's a USB soundcard might also be causing headaches...make sure that all of your windows applications can see it and use it. Also make sure that you select it as your Wave device for input in n-Track, and do a full duplex test.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Thanks for the replies...

Slack- Do I set it on ASIO or MME? These are choices given to me.

If I knew what to put in preferences/settings, I'd probably figureit out.

And are these products that are supposed to bypass the soundcard any good?
I mean-Are the 24-bit converters supposed to be inside the Opcode Sonicport itself?



VI
 
I only saw the 20 dac, meaning to me, no 4 bit pad on the DA converters, I assumed it was a truncation because the said 24 sampling...i.e. incoming data, a 20 bit converter just plainly will truncate the 4 LSB. A 4 bit pad is ok, only if its a controlled pad, aka re-dithering or noise shaper. As usual my assumtions probably added more confusion to the problem so Ill shut up now.


Peace,
Dennis
 
Quote:

"As usual my assumtions probably added more confusion to the problem so Ill shut up now."

No confusin added...
And I appreciate your input, Toyz!

VI
 
atomic,

It's got 20bit AD & DA. I assumed you were talking about AD, oops. I thought that this thing was an input only device...guess not.

Slackmaster 2000
 
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