Does "Bounce to track" require good soundcard ?

[James Argo]

I always wonder if I actualy need good soundcard to make sure the quality of the "Bounce to track" from DXi to audio track...

Here's some info that I got from Native Instruments :

"For rendering audio you only need CPU and Softsynth. The sound card just converts the digital signal into an analog audiosignal.
The time which it takes to convert the signal is the latency between trigger and sound.
So for realtime playing and a good sound quality you should get a high quality soundcard with low latency and good converters. Also it should have ASIO drivers.
Just for fun the onboard sound is okay (in the most cases, sometimes these are so bad, that sequencers refuse to work with it)

Best regards
Rico Baade
Technical Support
NATIVE INSTRUMENTS GmbH
support@native-instruments.com
5631A Hollywood Blvd.
http://www.native-instruments.com
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Tel. 323-467-5260
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Fax 866-556-6488

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS - Generate the Future of Sound!"
=======================================================



From Cakewalk people:

"The reason for the Source section of the dialog box is so that you can choose what sound card outputs are used during the mixdown. In other words you can choose to mix tracks going to individual outputs (if your card has more than one) or all outputs, etc. But the converters in the card itself are not used to process the audio. All processing is done internally (ie. in software)."

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Has anyone of you tried to disable the card's driver (in SONAR's Audio option) and try "Bounce to track" ? How's that going ?

Comments...!!! Comments...!!!


Jaymz

[mixsit]

Since no one has popped up yet, here's my best guess.
Bounce, and even Export, it shouldn't mater. My theory, based on hearsay, an incomplete understanding of the facts and various bits of misinformation, is that things like poor jitter performance and/or analog stages don't come in to play during file transfers and internal processes.

Hmm. My post is seventy percent 'disclaimer'.
Not a good sign.

Wayne

[moskus]

I've exported a song from Sonar without a soundcard installed. Worked like a charm.

[AlChuck]

The converters are only used if the sound is entering the soundcard through the analog input(s) or just prior to leaving the soundcard out the analog output(s).

Once it's data, the computer processes it entirely as data via the various algoritms employed. Bouncing to disk, mixing to disk, exporting a file, running through EQ or 'verb plugs or anything is all done by number crunching and does not employ the ADC/DAC hardware at all.

[James Argo]

Well explained gentelmen, but what I mean is not necessary the converter, it's the presence of the soundcard's driver (which I believe used as a based on source selection in Sonar export / bounce dialog). Does it matter ? Do you still have an option to select output port when bouncing / exporting ? What if you didn't select any output ?

[AlChuck]

Ahhh, my apologies... Good question. Why bother with that in the dialog box if it's not involved in some way?

Oh, I think I get it. A bounced audio track is routed to a new audio track through the driver on the soundcard -- it routes the data of the hard drive as in playback but straight to another track through the soundcard's audio stream mixing capability. Hence the driver is necessarily involved.

But it's just routing of the internal digital stream of the bounced track to another (with panning, effects, etc. applied). It does not involve the converters at all. As long as the driver actually works and pipes the data the right way, the results should be identical no matter what soundcard is actually in the machine -- it's only passing the data through the card's software mixing channels.

Does that make sense? It was off the cuff so I probably could have said it better if I hadn't just thought it through...

[James Argo]

Yes, it makes sense to me. So I think I was right, that the driver indeed involved in the export/bounce to track. Moskus, how did you remove the card and do the export ? Did you uninstall the driver in SONAR ?

Sorry, but I still curious about this thread:

http://homerecording.com/bbs/showthr...threadid=87837


Jaymz

[mixsit]

Would another way of asking this be, isn't there an output selection of 'none' (unasigned)? (Not at my system now to check--) But if so, would it still bounce?
Still, it seem like a ACKUS function not a card's.
Wayne

[moskus]

Originally posted by James Argo
Moskus, how did you remove the card and do the export ? Did you uninstall the driver in SONAR?

The more I think about it I think I had to enable the onboard soundcard.

This was when I was going from SB Live and Audigy to the Inca88, and I had soundcards laying around everywhere....

[Teacher]

i know when my sound card is unavailable in sonar it bounces to disk but there's no sound...