POD + Headphones
- Thread starter King Soda
- Start date
Godsguitarist
New member
Also make sure that the little switch at the top left-hand-side of the POD is on "direct" when you go straight in.
in Christ Jesus,
Brandon
in Christ Jesus,
Brandon
No comments on the SB but, I record the POD direct to ADAT and it sounds exactly the way it does in the headphones.
But the best way to record is to listen to the output of the recorder for how it sounds, not the input.
IE: don't listen to the headphones jacks on the POD listen to the output of the recorder (computer?) And make your adjustments with that as your reference. It will be the final measurement.
The problem you may have is that your headphones have a certain coloration to them that may differ from your monitors connected to your computer or mixer. (Just try different model headphones on the POD alone and listen to the differences.
Try to monitor the output and you will get more acurate results.
But the best way to record is to listen to the output of the recorder for how it sounds, not the input.
IE: don't listen to the headphones jacks on the POD listen to the output of the recorder (computer?) And make your adjustments with that as your reference. It will be the final measurement.
The problem you may have is that your headphones have a certain coloration to them that may differ from your monitors connected to your computer or mixer. (Just try different model headphones on the POD alone and listen to the differences.
Try to monitor the output and you will get more acurate results.
I've always thought the POD sounds better plugged into a 4-track, or whatever, with headphones plugged into the 4-track rather than headphones plugged into the POD itself. I assumed this was a reflection of its intended use i.e. as a guitar DI box rather than a headphone amp (like the Pandora).
King Soda said:
you're gonna need more than a soundblaster to get the most out of the pod....you could get an audiophile to replace the soundblaster, or perhaps the guitarport which may circumvent many of the traditional obstacles to recording guitar direct to pc. the guitarport is supposed to be POD for PC but we'll have to see....the guitarport can bypass the lower quality converters on cheap cards...however, it is supposed to be able to record 24 bit, so, if you wan't to take advantage, your card has to do this...last i heard, even the audigy can't record at 24 bit.....however, the audiophile can, though a little more expensive.
Absolute and utter BS. You'll never sound any better at 24 than 16. If 24 bit sounds better then lets hear it. You'd be the first to prove it. I've got tons of recordings done on 16 bit (many on a SB Live) I'll match against anything you or anybody else at 24. If 24's so darn terrific then lets hear your terrific recordings. I've got a few CD's I've picked up this year that were recorded at 24 and they sound no different whatsoever than the multitude of 16 bit recordings done over the past decade.
Nothing fancy there, just short 30-second intros for Flash backgrounds. But my drummer and I did every one of them here at the house on my little SB Live at 16/48. If you've got something that sounds better than this I'd like to hear it. How are these SB converters bad sounding? Either you've never used an SB or you didn't know what you were doing behind the colsole. Or you're just regirgitating a bunch of mis-information you've picked up about them...same as most the teenage idiots that come to this place.
I'll be waiting for your better sounding 24 bit recordings. I gotta feeling it's gonna be a long wait. You'll get out of a SB exactly what you oput into it. If your POD sounds like crap it's something else. (Actually I've played through a POD myself and I think it's one of the worst sounding direct to the board units I've ever heard. Even my old Rockman blew it's socks off.)
Nothing fancy there, just short 30-second intros for Flash backgrounds. But my drummer and I did every one of them here at the house on my little SB Live at 16/48. If you've got something that sounds better than this I'd like to hear it. How are these SB converters bad sounding? Either you've never used an SB or you didn't know what you were doing behind the colsole. Or you're just regirgitating a bunch of mis-information you've picked up about them...same as most the teenage idiots that come to this place.
I'll be waiting for your better sounding 24 bit recordings. I gotta feeling it's gonna be a long wait. You'll get out of a SB exactly what you oput into it. If your POD sounds like crap it's something else. (Actually I've played through a POD myself and I think it's one of the worst sounding direct to the board units I've ever heard. Even my old Rockman blew it's socks off.)
Basslord1124
New member
not again 
Slackmaster2K
Gone
Yes, you are hearing your soundcard. It's an "ear opening" experience for most people. You should congratulate yourself. A lot of people *ahem* never allow themselves to hear it.
It has less to do with bit depth and more to do with the quality of the converters to begin with. Something in the lower prosumer card range will get you considerably closer to what's going in than a soundblaster. At first the difference will be extremely dramatic, but after a while you'll be begin to hear its converters as well.
And then of course recording at 24bit can help, even if windowman and his soundblaster are unconvinced. To assume that we should all be convinced of our mass hysteria just because you're mixes don't totally completely suck is absurd. Personally I've heard dozens upon dozen of better sounding mixes by people from the BBS, none of which were done on soundblasters. Maybe you're sitting too close to that drummer. Every now and then somebody does come along with a decent soundblaster mix. Congratulations. That doesn't mean that upgrading equipment won't have an immediate and drastic impact on your work.
All in all, and the key that windowman keeps getting hung up on, is that a $3000 16bit converter is going to sound better than a $175 24bit converter. Wow, who woulda thunk it.
Maybe the professionals who move from high quality 16bit to high quality 24bit sytems do so for a reason, even if the end result isn't drastically improved. Can you think of any reasons why this might be true? No?
Slackmaster 2000
It has less to do with bit depth and more to do with the quality of the converters to begin with. Something in the lower prosumer card range will get you considerably closer to what's going in than a soundblaster. At first the difference will be extremely dramatic, but after a while you'll be begin to hear its converters as well.
And then of course recording at 24bit can help, even if windowman and his soundblaster are unconvinced. To assume that we should all be convinced of our mass hysteria just because you're mixes don't totally completely suck is absurd. Personally I've heard dozens upon dozen of better sounding mixes by people from the BBS, none of which were done on soundblasters. Maybe you're sitting too close to that drummer. Every now and then somebody does come along with a decent soundblaster mix. Congratulations. That doesn't mean that upgrading equipment won't have an immediate and drastic impact on your work.
All in all, and the key that windowman keeps getting hung up on, is that a $3000 16bit converter is going to sound better than a $175 24bit converter. Wow, who woulda thunk it.
Maybe the professionals who move from high quality 16bit to high quality 24bit sytems do so for a reason, even if the end result isn't drastically improved. Can you think of any reasons why this might be true? No?
Slackmaster 2000
More Slackmaster BS. Have you ever once taken up the challenge to prove anything you say? Again, lets here those great 24 bit recordings of yours. Or anybody else for that matter. Where are those terrific 24 bit recordings in the MP3 listening section? I haven't heard anything that sounded any better than an SB and I'd be willing to bet your magic Peter Pan ears can't hear anything different either unless you were born on Crypton and you're holding out on us.
Kurt and I have done a very fun listening test to everyone that's game to take it in our studio. We have them sit with their backs to the console both with headphones on and with 2 different sets of speakers. We have them listen to an excellent Tellark recording of Vaughn William's "A Lark Acending", by the London Philharmonic. We have a copy of it that I made on our 12-year old NAD 6240 cassette deck with TDK Metal tape and Dolby C, and we randomly push the solo buttons on the console every 20 seconds or so, so they get to hear 20 seconds of the original CD and 20 seconds of the cassette copy. NO one has EVER been able to consistently tell which is which. And we're talking about a cassette deck that's only flat to around 14k.
And you want me to think someone with golden ears can hear the dif between 16 and 24 bit? Give me a break. Either that or put your music where your mouth is. There's hardly a person above the age of 15 that can even hear anything at all over 16K. And this nonsense about having "trained" ears is absurd. The older you get and the more you play and listen to music the worse your hearing is. You don't get better hearing from listening to music day in and day out any more than you get better eyesite from reading everyday.
But hey, maybe a 10 year old kid with a 3 thousand dollar stereo will hear the difference between your new 24 bit recordings and and your old 16 bit ones eh?
You told me I'd be waiting a long time before I could get anything close to professional sounding recordings from an SB Live. I took up the challenge and I'm fully satisfied I've proved you wrong. Why can't you do the same?
Kurt and I have done a very fun listening test to everyone that's game to take it in our studio. We have them sit with their backs to the console both with headphones on and with 2 different sets of speakers. We have them listen to an excellent Tellark recording of Vaughn William's "A Lark Acending", by the London Philharmonic. We have a copy of it that I made on our 12-year old NAD 6240 cassette deck with TDK Metal tape and Dolby C, and we randomly push the solo buttons on the console every 20 seconds or so, so they get to hear 20 seconds of the original CD and 20 seconds of the cassette copy. NO one has EVER been able to consistently tell which is which. And we're talking about a cassette deck that's only flat to around 14k.
And you want me to think someone with golden ears can hear the dif between 16 and 24 bit? Give me a break. Either that or put your music where your mouth is. There's hardly a person above the age of 15 that can even hear anything at all over 16K. And this nonsense about having "trained" ears is absurd. The older you get and the more you play and listen to music the worse your hearing is. You don't get better hearing from listening to music day in and day out any more than you get better eyesite from reading everyday.
But hey, maybe a 10 year old kid with a 3 thousand dollar stereo will hear the difference between your new 24 bit recordings and and your old 16 bit ones eh?
You told me I'd be waiting a long time before I could get anything close to professional sounding recordings from an SB Live. I took up the challenge and I'm fully satisfied I've proved you wrong. Why can't you do the same?
I might be wrong, but doesn't 24 bit vs. 16 bit affect how dynamics are recorded? I.e. a larger sample has more bits to store how loud/soft the level is, so that at 24 bit you can record at a lower level and still retain some detail. I record at 24 bit and I can record at a lower level so as not to worry about clipping my AD converters. At 16 bits, you would need to track much hotter to get a similar level of detail/resolution. I don't like to compress/limit while tracking. The sampling rate (i.e. 44.1 kHz vs. 96 kHz) would affect the frequency range recorded. Correct me if I'm wrong!
You'll get a flat response across the the entire frequecy spectrum from 20 to 20k no matter whether you record at 16 or 24 bit. 24 bit just takes more sample snap-shots. The question is, is it being redundant to add more info than we already had at 16 bit. The obvious answer is yes. No human could possibly hear the difference. I don't care if you go to 2 trillion bits you'll never hear any difference. We topped out at 16 (maybe less.) It's the equivalent of recording 16 analog tracks on 2 foot wide tape. Fostex proved you could get wonderful sounds with 16 tracks on just a 1/2 inch of tape. Does 16 tracks on 2 inch tape sound better? Only slightly if at all. Most people could never hear the difference. So if I go to 2 inch tape from 1/2 inch tape and there's hardly any improvement in the sound why would I think that I could go from 2 inch tape to 2 foot tape and hear any diiference? It's just redundant. I've topped out at 2 inches for 16 tracks.
But like I said, the proofs in the sound. There are plenty of new CD's out recorded at 24 bit. I've got a couple. They sound no better whatsoever than the 16 bit recordings we've been hearing for the last decade. If anybody knows of one that sounds better I'm all ears. Lets hear that puppy.
I don't know why you would have problems with low headroom or a compressed sound at 16 bit. There are thousands of CD's out there recorded at 16 bit that didn't have those problems.
It simply could not be a coinsidence that when sales started to fall dramatically in workstations (presumedly because everybody already owned one) that the manufacturers suddenly decided we needed more than 16 bits after all. It's just sad that people are this gullible. And you can bet that someday when sales start to slide again that we'll suddenly need even more bits and better converters.
But like I said, the proofs in the sound. There are plenty of new CD's out recorded at 24 bit. I've got a couple. They sound no better whatsoever than the 16 bit recordings we've been hearing for the last decade. If anybody knows of one that sounds better I'm all ears. Lets hear that puppy.
I don't know why you would have problems with low headroom or a compressed sound at 16 bit. There are thousands of CD's out there recorded at 16 bit that didn't have those problems.
It simply could not be a coinsidence that when sales started to fall dramatically in workstations (presumedly because everybody already owned one) that the manufacturers suddenly decided we needed more than 16 bits after all. It's just sad that people are this gullible. And you can bet that someday when sales start to slide again that we'll suddenly need even more bits and better converters.
I think you may have a fundamental misunderstanding of bit rate and bit size (or word length). The statment "24 bit just takes more sample snap-shots" is completely incorrect. If the sampling rate/frequency is fixed at 44.1 kHz, changing the bit size doesn't change the number of sample snap shots. There will ALWAYS be 44,1000 samples per second. The difference is that each sample will either be 16 bits or 24 bits. Regarding "compressed sound", you must have misunderstood me. When tracking, I can get away with recording at a lower level in 24 bit. I have enough resolution that I don't have to record as hot nor worry about clipping my converters. If I recorded at 16 bits, I would have to record hotter to get the needed resolution, but then might need to compress/limit before the converters to make sure I don't clip. Get it? I've been trying to stay out of this, but that first statement I quoted from you doesn't help your argument too much!
Enjoy your soundblaster!
PS - regarding what sounds better, I haven't done any tests, but it is a lot easier for me to track at 24 bits for the reasons I mentioned above. I do acoustic guitar work which is quite dynamic and I have to keep the average level down around -9 to keep from clipping (i.e. fingerstyle yanking of the strings, or banging on the body). I feel that 24 bits is much better when recording ~ -9 then the same situation in 16 bits.
Enjoy your soundblaster!
PS - regarding what sounds better, I haven't done any tests, but it is a lot easier for me to track at 24 bits for the reasons I mentioned above. I do acoustic guitar work which is quite dynamic and I have to keep the average level down around -9 to keep from clipping (i.e. fingerstyle yanking of the strings, or banging on the body). I feel that 24 bits is much better when recording ~ -9 then the same situation in 16 bits.
windowman said:
gordone said:
Well, you sort of got me on a technicality. Yes I misused the term "sample", but the fact remains that you're just dumping in more snapshots. I don't see any reason not to refer to the data represented in each amplitude as a snapshot also. It is effectively just that—more snapshots of the amplitude frequency, rather than more amplitudes. So each amplitude is represented by more snapshots of it. Do we need more bit depth though? The only problem with 16 bit was always the portion out of the human hearing range anyway. It was the stuff recorded between 19.5k and 22.5k that was getting a little distorted (more or less but feel free to call it jitter if you like.) Oversampling very effectively did away with the last 2,000 or so bits though which left us with a recording between 20 and 20k that was for all intents and purposes distortion free and clear as a bell. I really don't see where taking more or longer snapshots of the amplitudes will make things sound any better than taking more amplitudes themselves. Neither will help in my opinion. But as I've said before, eventually (in about two years) we'll all be ready for new puters with new soundcards and anything we get then will be quite capable of 24/88.2. And if you can record at that with no ill effects than you might as well whether you can hear the difference or not. Right now however, going to 24 bit recording means a lot of stress on the machines most of us have and I just can't see buying a new box with a ton of RAM, and a huge HD, and a Pen4 just to record at a higher bit depth or sample rate. If you have to go out and blow a thousand bucks for something that I know good and well isn't going to sound any different that's just being wasteful which is fine if you're content to keep blowing all your money on gear and live in your mom and dad's basement till you're 35.
Please understand what I'm saying. I'm not condemning recording at higher bit depths or sample rates. I'm condemning people saying things that are untrue such as "Your SB Live is a crappy soundcard and you'll never get professional sounds out of it." That's horse hockey as I believe I've already demonstrated (as well as many others have.) That's just being irresponsible. It's telling every kid that comes in here that he's got to go out and blow money he probably doesn't have on something that he'll never hear the difference in. If you can't get a great sound with a SoundBlaster or any other 16 bit card then you'll never get a good sound with a better one, plain and simple. Anyone that can't get an absolutely perfect sound with something like an SB Live just doesn't know what they're doing behind the board, period.
As to enjoying my SB, I only use it here at the house for little things. We have a Hoontech at the studio but still only record at 16/44.1 and we won't be changing any time soon.
Now as to your acoustic guitar recordings, I too play mostly fingerstyle. I can't imagine not using a compressor with one! How do you get a worthwhile sound on an acoustic instrument without a compressor? I've never in my life seen anyone do it. It's not that we're so worried about low signal levels or tape saturation/distortion (depending on if you're digital or not.) It's just that everyone loves that open, airy feel you get with compression. It just thickens things so much! I would NEVER think of recording or playing live without my DBX 160XT. I used to go to Winfield for the flat pick and fingerpick championships every year and one of the things most of us complained loudest about was the fact that they always used a crummy dynamic mic with no compression on the guitars. They sounded awfully skinny like that and they actually recorded those performances and sold them on CD. I just couldn't believe it.
Of course if you're compressing your sound then record levels aren't a problem. If you're not compressing your guitar mic I'd highly encourage you to go out and get a good DBX or Valley People compressor. You'll never regret it and I just can't imagine getting a good sound without one. I don't think you can point to recording of acoustic guitar (except for some older classical recordings, which usually sound fairly bad) that wasn't done with a compressor. Phil Keaggy, Doyle Dykes, Eric Shoenberg, Tony Rice, Doc Watson, you'll never find a recording by any of the top acoustic players without a lot of nice compression on it. It's simply a must!