20bit vs 24 bit, how big is the difference?

[dobro]

Dolemite - ooooo! you're feeling preachy today. Never mind - your response was great, full of useful information. I'm all new to this area of recording, so there's lots for me to learn in exchanges like this. In future, please allow yourself to feel similarly irritated by my speculations.

What are your feelings about the midiman Flying Cow, BTW? That Flying Cows produce Flying Poo?

 

[frank_1]

Sjoko2, I know we are comparing those Aardvark sound cards but let's switch gears a bit.

I have been wondering about a comparison between MOTU's drivers and Digi001's drives. If you happen to know which one stands out on top, please tell us. One more thing, compared to Aardvark how do these two brands come out?

Thanks.

 

[musicsdarkangel]

argh

wow sjoku, that was raw.
Unfortunately, I can't use 32 bit resolution, which ticks me off, only like 16 or somethin crazy. It says destination format couldn't be found. My sound card (project card in project pack with cubasisVST) screws up so much. Every lil while, it'll give me this horrible backround crackle every time I record, sometimes it'll start echoing, and it won't let me export with 32 bit res. Do you guys have any soundcards that you could suggest to me?? I'm taking a look at the DSP Factory card. SJOKU or anyone, if you can please make a suggestion of a buget around under 500-600 bucks, please tell. =) i'd be honored.

 

[sjoko2]

MDangel -- why on earth are you trying to record at 32 bit? You can't! Cubase is 24 bit max, perhaps the internal processing runs at 32.

I suggest you ensure your system configuration is correct. Also, go to the Cubase website and make sure you have the latest driver for your card.

I am certainly not a soundcard expert at all, just have tried and tested quite a few. I'm asking some tech guys I know for their recommendations.

Another thing, the site Tekker posted is really awsome, you'll find all your answers regarding cards right there!


Frank - my choice would be the 001, without any question, mainly because the software is awsome! (if you want to buy and Digi stuff, ask me first, I have a contact with some really good prices)

Tekker, thanks for that link. I get asked about cards often, and they are not something I use in my work.
Please don't think I'm just always critisizing cards and stuff like that "just because". It is possible to make stuff sound really good, relatively cheap, but like always, everything comes at a price. Thank goodness that today that price is a small fraction of what it was 10 years ago.
The best clock on the market, bar none, is the Lucid GEN6. It is also 1/3 of the price of its nearest rival, at a much higher quality.
Reason... its a clock made for audio, not for audio and video. Like with the digi gear, ask me if you want to buy one, I can get them at a very good price through my company.

 

[Dolemite]

Dolemite - ooooo! you're feeling preachy today. Never mind - your response was great, full of useful information. I'm all new to this area of recording, so there's lots for me to learn in exchanges like this. In future, please allow yourself to feel similarly irritated by my speculations.

What are your feelings about the midiman Flying Cow, BTW? That Flying Cows produce Flying Poo?

Heh...well I'm glad you've got a tougher skin than some people around here! Sometimes I do get a little preachy but mostly I just take every chance I get to use the word "poo." Poo, poo, poo, poo, pooo! I dunno about useful information, though, but good thing sjoko's around for that.

Anyhoo, about the Flying Cow, I'd venture a guess that its little better than the converters found in the M-Audio/Midiman Delta cards. Here's a rather lukewarm review:

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/mar98/articles/flying.html

I definitely wouldn't buy one new, but I have seen Flying Cows go for a pretty good price on eBay, and the A/D-only Flying Calf is even less. These external converters' separate power supplies and shielded external enclosures might give them a slight advantage over prosumer sound cards, but personally, I think the convenience of going straight into the computer and having more channels to work with make the 4-in 4-out sound cards (like the Delta 44 or Aardvark DirectPro) a better option. You might look into converters from Swissonic, but short of a Lucid or Swissonic, I think you'd be better off just getting a good sound card.

Here's another idea: if you're set on getting your converters out of the computer, M-Audio's new Audiosport Duo and Quattro are USB-based audio interfaces that look quite interesting to me. I'm a little wary of latency issues with the USB so I'm waiting for a review, but the Duo does have built-in mic preamps based on the DMP2 design, which are considered quite the bargain. I've had my DMP2 for a few months now and I am quite happy with it. So if you can live with just 2 channels of I/O, the Duo looks like a quite the deal, giving you a complete digital interface in addition to preamps for just slightly more than the DMP2 itself.

 

[musicsdarkangel]

yea Sjoko, and tekker thank you both so much.
Yea thats my fault man =) as you've noticed, i'm computer illiterate. But when I export the whole 4 audio files, it gives me option of 32 bit, 24, etc. Wierd. Is that not supposed to happen?

 

[Dolemite]

I just ran across this Keyboard Magazine 16 vs. 24-bit test and thought it was pretty interesting:

http://www.keyboardmag.com/features/bitwars/bitwars.shtml

BTW, this compares .wav's recorded at 24-bit and then converted to 16-bit with those recorded directly to 16-bit. They use different sections of a song, to confuse you I suppose. Its not the most scientific comparison but I just thought it was interesting. I got 4/5 resolutions right.

 

[sjoko2]

Cool post dolomite. Pitty they did it in SS first, then transferred it into Pro Tools via an 888/24, thereby losing some of the advantages of higher bitrate / clockspeed recording.

 

[dobro]

mdangel - my understanding is that nothing tracks higher than 24-bit, but some programs (Cool Edit Pro, for example) has this '32-bit floating point' option instead of 24-bit. I think it's basically a show-off term that means you're essentially operating in 24-bit.

 

[sjoko2]

The 32 bit floating point refers to the internal signal processing only.

 

[musicsdarkangel]

yea, thats exactly what i was referring to (silly me, 32 bit is for kids)

 

[dobro]

I got a couple of places to email me their prices on the Aardsync II clock:

* $4699 (Australian)

* $ 2940 (Sing)

Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

(dobro picks poor self up off the floor, wiping tears of helpless laughter from eyes)

Yeah, right.

 

[sjoko2]

What do you record in/ on dobro?

 

[dobro]

I record in the back room on a computer. Who wants to know?

I record in an altered state of consciousness on the wings of a song.

I record in time, on time. Anything but Father Time.

 

[sjoko2]

my uncle fred
I was trying to find our out what you are using to record on, so I could perhaps make a suggestion you, you, you do....bro!

 

[dobro]

LOL

I record on a small, slow computer (Pentium I? 233 Mhz 32 MB RAM) which I am replacing with Pentium III 256 RAM 1 GHz as soon as I get a good reason to, other than the fact this one's dying slowly. Software's Cool Edit Pro. I'm looking at both the Gen6 and the AD 9624 - I'm thinking of one, but not both, and leaning toward the converter (it'll be good enough for a long time, and it sounds to me like there's room for lots of improvement/development of clocks for audio applications in the near future - wait a bit, and it'll get better and cheaper is how it looks to me). Both would cost me more than the price of the new computer, and that's just silly.

 

[sjoko2]

Not so silly - just different kinds of gear. Yes, in your case, you'd benefit most from a good converter.

 

[Gidge]

Sjoko,

whos your uncle Fred?.....

 

[sjoko2]

My uncle fred is the one who wanted to know that dobro was recording in the backroom on his computer

Dolomite - I just played with some USB stuff, you were totally right to be worried about latency. Whatever you do, use USB and you've got it. I suppose its OK if the latency is consistent throughout, and always. (for instance, if you do a punch-in and you have 7 ms latency, its ok if you have the same latency any other time as well).
But!! The latency is dependent on what the protocol perceives to be priority, it seems, so its a variable. Goodbye USB.

Oh yeah - I read an interesting press thing about Lucid clocks here: www.surroundpro.com look for the link to Susquehanna.
Its also a good newsletter to subscribe to.