POD + Headphones

  • Thread starter Thread starter King Soda
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OK, you decide. I believe MP3s aren't the best medium to make these kind of subjective sound quality judgements but give it a shot. The tune "We Don"t Go There" was made using a SoundBlaster Live! sound card at 16/44.1 and "Back At You" was made thru a MOTU 2408mkII at 24/44.1. Do you hear a difference?
http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/8/1331/singles.shtml
 
windowman said:
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
Click to expand...
Ofcourse you can get decent recordings on SB live "evil BS" ;) (I used it for 4 years on local bands recording demos) but if you don't hear the hiss and the fact that the lows sound slightly crappier after the SB converters than straight from the board you need better monitors. There is a audible difference in AD converters comparing it to my new Terratec EWS88MT, the difference in DA converters is not that big, but still audible.
Oh and my 24 bit recording:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=44284

Keijo
 
Actually windowman, you sort of have the same feeling toward the 16bit vs 24bit thing as I have with another subject. I will first off say that I will stick with 24 bit seeing as it has become the standard nowadays and that I could pick up a good 24bit recording soundcard for not much more than an SB (talking the Audiophile here). The opinion on the other subject I have is in terms of computers, upgrades, and a person's needs. Most would recommend to a newbie in computer audio recording to get a 1Ghz processor or better. But what if that person is an acoustic folk act that might average 3 or 4 tracks max? Do they really to waste the money on that much processor? Just my feeling but I can see the idea of buying as much processor as you can afford...never know when you might need the extra power. But anyways you get the idea.
 
Good tune Warlock. I agree on your assesment of the SoundBlaster. The hiss is my biggest complaint with it but the converters just don't measure up.
 
Yeah, what's the point of telling someone "You suck"? Is it his NAME that you're referring to?
 
It was not meant to insight ill feelings. For, I love you all and see you all as my children.

In the Lord's name I post,

Amen
 
Sorry I bailed out on this thread for a while but, so many threads, so little time....

I listened to the tunes Warlord and Track Rat had. I thought that they all sounded fine sonically. Now, one interesting thing though, I had forgotten which tune T R said was recorded on the SB at 16 and which was at 24 so I decided that was a good thing and would allow me to judge the tunes independantly of one another. Now you probably won't believe this but I honestly thought "We Don't Go Back There" recorded with the SB was the best sounding of the two. Both were fine however and there was little difference between them. Could've been the way instruments were miked along with all kinds of variables. I also thought Warlord's tune sounded every bit as good as the SB recorded tune T R had. But I honestly didn't think it sounded "better" at all.

And I've mentioned this until I'm tired of hearing myself say it but an SB Live has a SNR of 93 db. That's incredible. The difference between that and 100 db is so minimal that you'd have to really boost the volume on the silent passages to hear any hiss whatsoever. I just can't imagine anyone being such a pampered sissy that they would complaim about a 93 db SNR. Good Grief! I'd be more than happy to record with a SNR of 72 db. Hell, I did for ten years along with everybody else on the planet. We made some fine recordings like that too.

And in fact the new Audigy cards do have a 100 db SNR. They also have the ASIO drivers with them now and a latency of 2milsec. It still only records at 16 bit but it uses 24 bit converters on the analog in's and all it's built-in effects (their reverbs are sweet by the way) are all processed at 32 bit. Not to mentioned all the synth stuff (boy I wish synths would go away.) For a hundred bucks that's a hell of a card.
 
Yes, one track recorded with the sb is not too bad, but when you record 24 tracks, the hiss gets really loud on quiet passages. Believe me I tried. I had to use noise reduction to get usable quality.
And I agree that there is no audible difference between 24 and 16 bit recording, but recording in 24 bit is much simpler since you don't have to worry every single peak that passes 0db.

Keijo
 
Originally posted by warlock

"Yes, one track recorded with the sb is not too bad, but when you record 24 tracks, the hiss gets really loud on quiet passages. Believe me I tried. I had to use noise reduction to get usable quality.

How? Myself and the rest of the known recording universe used to record as many as 24 tracks with a SNR of 70 db or so and we didn't have noisy recordings. The general rule was that any improvement in SNR over 75 db was to small to worry about. I'm sure as hell not going to worry about my 32 stereo tracks at 93db. I can't believe anybody would. But to each his own.

"And I agree that there is no audible difference between 24 and 16 bit recording, but recording in 24 bit is much simpler since you don't have to worry every single peak that passes 0db."

I know you're correct here but on the other hand I seldom track anything without a DBX compressor anyway. Not because I'm worried about overloading the signal so much but because a good compressor usually will punch up a track very well and you want your record levels to be close on all your tracks. I especially want the low level signals to be brought up. A good compressor is essemtial in any studio. Now you may say that you would rather use a compressor plug-in after you've recorded your tracks but my problem with that is, you can't find a compressor plug-in that isn't noisy as hell. That's gonna bring a lot more noise into your recording than a tiny 7db of noise from a SB Live ever could. Plus, DBX just has that wonderful airyness to the sound! You'l never get that with a plug-in and a DBX is so quiet you won't even need a gate with it. I don't know why people really so much on plug-ins myself. None of them can hold a candle to my outboard gear so I seldom use them.
 
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