this might sound stupid , but i read something somewhere, about putting the playback to 8 bit and recording to 16 bit , instead of both 16 , that way the recording quality is better, i heard this was good for the sound blasters that arent as good as the echo and delta sound cards, if thats true then since i have a built in sound card on the motherboard, and a new sound card , if i put the playback on the built in sound card and recording on the sound blaster , would that be better ?
How to get the most out of your soundcard ?
- Thread starter kostas04
- Start date
Uncle Roel
Member
It WOULD be a good idea to put playback to 8bit, if your PC has 8bit busses. 
Sending 8 bits of data is just as much trouble as sending 16 bits...
Also, using different soundcards would not matter, if the soundcard is full duplex, the playback will not influence the simultanuous recording. Well, it WILL, but the little influence that the extra current running over the soundcards PCB will have, will be too low to bother about.
Sending 8 bits of data is just as much trouble as sending 16 bits... Also, using different soundcards would not matter, if the soundcard is full duplex, the playback will not influence the simultanuous recording. Well, it WILL, but the little influence that the extra current running over the soundcards PCB will have, will be too low to bother about.
AlChuck
Well-known member
What you might have read somewhere is that, for the old Soundblaster AWE cards that were not truly full duplex, recording was at 16 bit but simultaneous playback (that is, while also recording) was restricted to 8 bits. This was not something you could select anywhere, this was a hardware limitation and you just had to live with it. It meant that while you recorded a new track and listedned to what was already recorded, those earlier tracks would be heard in reduced quality, but it was good enough to work with. Once you stopped recording and just played back all the tracks, they were all played in their full 16-bit glory.