48khz to 44khz conversions sound like crap!

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CJWalker

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I've been dumping some jam sessions from my XT20s to Cakewalk Sonar and mixing down to a normalized stereo file at 24/48. When converting the mixed-down wav file to 44khz I am getting a lot of distortion and loss of quality. I am doing sample rate conversions through Wave Studio. I want to get the mixed files to CD as well as play them out of winamp, which is running off of the 01V 44khz clock via S/PDIF input. I am using the analog outs of my card to monitor; D/A convertion is clocked at 48khz by the master XT20, so monitoring is not a problem. Is there a program that will do the sample rate conversion without screwing up the wav files?

The problem does not lie in the the attempted output of 48khz recorded digital audio through a 44khz clock. My card has 2 clocks. The 01V is clocked at 44khz while the lightpipe and D/A converters for the analog are both synched to the ADAT clock of 48khz. In other words, the wav files are not stretched out to meet 44khz, they play back with the same pitch as recorded in 48khz and register as 44khz audio. I just need something that will do the 48 to 44 conversions with clarity!

Thanks!
 
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When I have to do sample rate conversion, I use Soundforge. It does a decent job. But no matter what you use I bet you'll hear some artifact of the conversion. I have ended up recording at 44.1 but at 24 bits and just dithering down to 16 which to my ears sounds better than going through the sample rate conversion.
 
Cool. Guess I'll start tracking to 44.1 since my only choice for the first 8 tracks is through the lightpipe. I am gonna buy a Motu with a shitload of analog ins sooner or later so I can track to whatever rate I choose. Thanks
 
I did the same mistake recently, trusting some article I found on the net saying that the SBLive records a cleaner signal in 48k mode. Well, yes, it does, but sample rate conversion sucks much much more than a little grit from the SB. But that's not my problem any longer, since I purchased and installed a 1010lt this week, so I'm going the 24bit/44.1kHz route now as well.
If I will ever have to do it again, I'll give SoundForge a try, cause Wavelab screwed up in this disciplin.
 
about the SBLive - the reason that recording at 48Khz is better, is because that is it's "native" rate.
Basically, anything you put through there is first sampled at 48, then converted to what you want (in your case, 44.1)
And since it's doing real-time conversion on a not-so-powerful DSP, I'd imagine it can't have nearly the oversampling quality of a good software converter. I've done some reading on the highest-quality modes of the sample rate converter in the newest version of Samplitude, and they seem to have the best oversampling around.

In fact, for my next project, I plan on tracking at 24/48 with my MOTU and converting to 44 with Samplitude 6.0 as a last step in the "mastering" stage - just before dither. Their software conversion just seems too good to pass up - essentially artifact-free. In fact, I'm betting it's going to retain a bit more high-frequency information.
 
i use SEKD RedRoaster aka Samplitude Master and it does a great job of making the sample conversion from 48khz to 44.1.

i agree that there is some loss when going from 48khz to 44.1 because no software is perfect; however, doing all of your processing in 48/24 and then going to 44.1/16 is still better to me than going from 44.1/24 to 44.1/16.

of course a conversation like this is like debating whether the earth is round or flat to digital folks, and i'm not 100% certain who is right.

having said that.

i use to do image processing for the Meteosat (european) and GOES (american) weather satellites. they were geosynchronous push broom satellites. i also did some AVHRR-1b decoders for NOAA.

the more swaths the satellite made and the more lines per swath, the better the image quality. then after all processing was complete, we could size the image for customer display.

i look at digital audio the same way.
 
I recorded 10 months of music on 96K rates on SONAR. Converting it to 44.1K really sucks!
I eventually took it to a studio and routed my sounds out directly instead of converting them digitally.
SONAR really sucks when it comes to downconversion.
 
Tell me about it. I just mixdown to 24/48 and let Wavelab do the conversion. It does a pretty decent job IMO.
 
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