Sampling rate - which one to use?

[A Drummer]

I've been perusing the numerous posts regarding sampling rate at 48khz vs. 44.1khz. I've found a lot of great information but there are a couple of questions that I still have.

I have a SBLive Value card, which I know internally processes at 48khz. I understand that you can record at this sampling rate and then later on convert it to 44.1khz. Some people have said you can do it through N-Track (which I use), but I'm not sure how to do that (yet). I usually just burn my wav files to CD, which I've learned by reading this board that the CD burning software ends up doing the sampling rate conversion for me, right (causing audio quality loss)?

So my question is can I just record at 44.1khz to begin with? I would imagine that would be hard on the SBLive (or my CPU) to convert on the fly from 48khz to 44.1 constantly? Anyone have experience doing this?

Next question is wouldn't it just be easier to use a 44.1khz card, like a SB 16 PCI card, or SB 128 or 512? This would simplify things greatly wouldn't it? I don't know how much sound quality difference there would be between using these 44.1khz cards vs. a SBLive, but I would imagine the differences would not be major.

Does anyone have any insight to these questions, or can point me to articles or posts that address them?

Thanks much

 

[Slackmaster2K]

Don't worry about the soundblaster's internal sampling rate so much, it really doesn't matter. Unless you can notice a degredation in sound quality, there's nothing wrong with recording at 44.1khz. There's also nothing wrong with recording at 48khz, as long as you have software that can downsample to 44.1 well.

You can resample in n-Track by mixing a track down at a different rate....but n-Track SUCKS at resampling. Grab a copy of goldwave if you need to resample.

Slackmaster 2000