TIP: recording at 24bit 96k then mix down to 44.1 16bit

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alchemist3k
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hi,, im reading all these posts. I am going to get a new sound card. i have a soundblaster live. when i record it sounds like crap. i used cool edit 96 . Then i got cool edit pro. when i recorded with that i jacked it up from the 16 to "floating 30" whatever that is. I think it sounded better. any info? what is "floating"? I got an athlon 800 mhz . i was gonna get a gina 24, but i see gina 20s for better prices. what do you think of the gina 20s? would it still sound pretty good? i record on an md8 yamaha then run it into my computer for mix down. i think my md8 works at cd quality. Im starting to feel that i outgrew the md8s quality limitations. if i get a gina card and use my computer as a track recorder instead,, will i have many latency problems?? soo many questions.. sorry ,,,
i didnt want to find the proper place to post all of my questions seperatly. :confused:
 
Hi. If your sound's crap, it isn't the computer or Cool Edit. It's either your soundcard or the mics you're using. Or the instruments. Or the way you're using everything. I've heard that people get okay results from Soundblaster Live, so I'd look at putting some money into your mics for a start...

Cool Edit's 32-bit floating point setting is essentially 24-bit for recording purposes, and 32-bit for processing files during the mix. It produces better sound for both recording and mixing.
 
when i record into my track recorder i get great sound. when i record it into my computer it looses the quality to it. I am currently using a rode nt1 microphone. 200.00 mic.
 
What signal path do you use to get the sound into your computer?
 
when i was using cool edit 96, i used the line in. when i installed the cool edit pro,, it wouldnt work with line in. i now use the mic input. i disabled the mic "boost". like i said,, it sounds better now im useing the cool edit pro. I did use the mic input for cool edit 96 before. It was ok, but since then i figured out how to use the line in. but as i said,, i cant get it to work with cool edit pro.
 
Using the Mic In, you lose whatever quality you would have gained by using an expensive mic.

So, does anyone have mp3 examples of what they're able to do with all these expensive 24 bit recording sound cards? I still have yet to really find out if the nicer sound cards give a professional (or closer to it) result, or if it's another case of geargasm and the home recordist...
 
I think it's geargasm and the home recordist. On a scale of 1-10, my feeling is that recording at a higher resolution takes you up about one notch on the scale. I hear a much bigger difference according to the mic and pre used.
 
So it isn't nearly as dramatic as the leap from 8 to 16 bit was (if you ever owned an original Sound Blaster or Sound Blaster Pro, you know what I mean), yeah?

I dunno... I certainly want good equipment as much as the next guy, but sometimes I worry that new home recordists are being misled into spending a whole lot of money that doesn't need to be spent. If you're willing to put hours of work into what you do, you'd be shocked at the result - even with "bad" equipment!
 
I've got a friend (though not a good one really) who works in the sound/recording part of one of the bigger music stores in St. Louis and that's exactly what he says. It's just a ploy by the music manufacturers to try to get you to buy new equipment. He says he can't really hear the difference at all between 16 and 24.

But, like I said, I haven't heard 24 yet myself so I'll reserve judgment till I do.
 
It's not bullshit that the more money you spend, the better sound you get - it's true most of the time, and although there are exceptions, they don't disprove the general rule. The thing is, as you go up the price scale, you keep getting a smaller proportion of improvement in the sound for the same incremental increase of cash laid out. So, if you compare a $100 mic and a $400 mic, the $400 mic would sound, say, twice as good as the cheaper mic. So then if you listen to a $700 mic, it'll sound clearly better than the $400 mic, but not twice as good. Maybe half again as good. :D

It's the famous Point of Diminishing Returns, and every homer has to decide where exactly that point is for him/her. Then you work like hell to coax the best sound you can out of the gear that you've got.
 
windowman said:
Speaking of recording at 24/96KHz, is there anybody here who's actually done it? I gotta think that even with dual Pent4's and 512 ram it would still take forever to do anything.
Click to expand...

I did it. I recorded the few tracks at 24/44.1 and 24/96, converted both to 16/44.1 and burned on the same cd one after another. I played it in the car, on a boombox, hifis. Results sounded very different. 96-recorded tracks sounded smoother, bass was tighter, but lower to the extent that the bottom end was less audible on the boom box or hifi with bookshelf speakers. They sounded better on floor standing speakers though. Since the ultimate sound should be "good for all" I was trying to decide what was better and I could not. The choice for each separate track was different. Next time I'll try to mix little differently and test again.
BTW in each case one stereo track was recorded at 24/96 without live effects on P266 computer with 256 RAM using Audiophile soundcard. File size for about 4 min of play time was about 160 mb. Hard disk was aging IDE 6 gb unit.
 
Hey, alright! Thanks, that really helps a lot I think. I visited another audio forum today that's geared a little more toward highend users (I don't normally go there much since half the people there are using incredibly expensive stuff and I feel a little out of sync with them) and read through some posts about this very subject. The general concenus seemed to be that recording at a higher bitrate (24) was more important than the amount of samples. Thus, most were recording at 24/44.1 as apposed to 24/96.

They also agreed by and large that the 96 sample rate took a big toll on system resources (not to mention creating a huge file) which was one of the main reasons they weren't doing it...too many drop-outs. Actually, the big complaint was when it came to resampling the finished project down to 16/44.1, that it simply took forever to do. However, one guy pointed out that it has to do with 96 not being able to be broken into even measures of 44.1. He says to try record at 24/88.2 and things will be nice and spiffy again when resampling later. Makes sense I guess.:confused:
 
what is everyone using for dithering? I use a free program called dbpoweramp music converter. I record at 44100 30 bit floating . then i use the db poweramp to change it to cd quality. this program is freeware on ctnet. I think it sounds pretty good. i was just wondering if this is used by anyone else and what peoples opinions are about it.
;)
 
tj jr. said:
what is everyone using for dithering? I use a free program called dbpoweramp music converter. I record at 44100 30 bit floating . then i use the db poweramp to change it to cd quality. this program is freeware on ctnet. I think it sounds pretty good. i was just wondering if this is used by anyone else and what peoples opinions are about it.
;)
Click to expand...

I just record at 16/44.1 but if I need to dither I've got Cool Edit and from what I understand its supposed to be pretty good at that.
 
windowman said:


I just record at 16/44.1 but if I need to dither I've got Cool Edit and from what I understand its supposed to be pretty good at that.
Click to expand...

Cool Edit HAS to dither at some point, even using 16 bit source files, or it is Truncating. There is a difference is quality in the end between the two.

24 bit truncated isn't quite as bad as the dynamic range for 24 bit is usually beyond what the REST of your gear can produce in dynamic range and sound to noise ratio. There are also many other good reasons to use 24 bit source files, but I will let ol' Bob Katz explain those in his rather good articles on his site. It also would be wise to actually READ the links I provided earlier. The whole sampling rate deal is not worth pursuing right now, but I generally agree that staying at 44.1 is a good idea for now, unless you are going to feed your tracks back out to an analog mixer, in which case, record the highest sampling rate you possibly can and still get the track counts you need.

I think there is a LOT of misconception about how digital mixers work. Time to study boys.

http://www.digido.com

Read the articles about dithering by the daddy of dithering education!!! :) There actually MANY good articles on his site, ALL worth a read.

Regards....

Ed
 
Thanks Sonus guy; I got to thinking about it afterwards and as a matter of fact I'm just using a SB Live anyway and it only records at 16/48 so if I want to record at 44.1 (which I do) then it gets dithered on the fly as I record. So yeah, either way I'm dithering my life away. Sounds great to me though so I'm not concerned. I hear though that this thing about SB Live only recording at 48 sometimes causes latency and track syncing problems with guys who use midi. I don't use midi however and my audio tracks seem to stay in sync fine so I'm lucky I reckon.:rolleyes:
 
This may be a question that has been answered hundreds of times before, but I couldn't find the answer. So sorry if this is redundant, but if I record at a higher sampling rate what do I use to reduce the sample rate back to 44.1 for mastering. I'm using cakewalk 9.0 and I couldn't find anything in the software to do it. I can dither from 24 bits to 16 bits, but that's it.
 
Are you sure that version of Cakewalk won't do that? I would think it could. You might want to try posting that in the Cakewalk forum. If it can't be done within Cakewalk then you might have to download a good wave editor like Cool Edit 2000 or Sound Forge etc. They're both fine products and around $50 each.
 
when i said my recordings sound shytty when i mix on the computer , i think it may have something to do with the wires running to the computer. the input for the soundblaster live is just this little dinky input that is also the kind used on the cheap headphones. after that i use an adapter that turns that into 2 rca cables. then i run the rca cables into the out from my track recorder. My recordings seem to loose there "midrange" in my opinion. they have bass and treble and a little mids,,but they lack.
so if i got a new sound card to record ,,, like the gina,, i would have nice size jacks to input with. thus better quality with better cables.
right??
 
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