SvenArne

pianodano


I think it all depends on the distribution medium. If CD is the target, what is the point? MP3 ? 8 bit would prolly do.  Vinyl on the other hand, well higher or highest quality is certainly better. Regardless of what sample rate that is used (and I am not familar with anything above 96K) I just can't hear the magic that is always imparted to a track such as a drum stereo bed or bass that is obtained with a really good analog machine. The shimmering cymbals and awesome bass obtained because of normal head bump cannot be matched in the digtal domain. Beautifully delicate acoustic guitars are a thing of the past. I just hear a certain unquantifiable harshness  unless the tracks are recorded to a analog machine first and then dumped to digital. Yes I know about the machine plugins and other wizbang gizmos but nothing beats a nice analog machine for the rough tracking of a rythm section. This is not to say that music recorded completely in the digital domain is not still music and fine quality too. It certainly is. But audiophile grade. Hmm. YMMV of course. 

 
Head bump is just a name for the eq curve that a certain tape played on a certain deck at a certain speed imposes on the recording. It's the complex distortions you get with tape that's difficult to reproduce with digital, not head bump.
 
8 bit adequate for MP3? You're kidding? Try bit reducing a fairly dynamic MP3 recording and listen for yourself. The MP3 format is definitely capable of using all your 16 bits of dynamic range. Vinyl on the other hand...
 
I found this Wikipedia article  surprisingly good for understanding the limitations of digital and analog!
 
Sven

 
Are you confusing even ordered harmonics with head bump ? I have listened to tracks coming off a 2" JH24 for half my life. Thanks anyhow but I really don't care to refer to Wiki to hear about it's limititations.

DonaldDuck


I'm not interested in joining a scientific debate of the ins and outs of digital audio.  With some here, they love to wrap facts around their own opinions. So, trying to point out true FACTS is a waste of time....  Ultimately, facts don't matter.  Music is subjective anyway. Some people think Kurt Cobain was a great vocalist while others (me) thinks his voice sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.  If YOU like it a certain way, it really shouldn't matter what others think.  Just switch over your converter to 96k, and hit record.  If you want to record at 96k and like the results, rock on!  I do, and I like the results....

Interesting opinion!  Where would you be, though, if the scientists and engineers amongst us had never bothered to give you the equipment and options to have these opinions?   What would you have available in your recording arsenal if we didn't trust the facts either?

I know several "pro" studios that use 44.1 for most projects (unless the artist asks otherwise).  SSL, apogee, more outboard than you could shake your stick at.  And national releases.  Their stuff just sounds fine.  It is the sound you get going in that matters more than the zero-one-zero it ends up at.  Or that is my opinion, which is the only one that matters when I'm working (except for the guy signing the check).

But has been repeated (now reaching ad nauseum) to use your ears.  If you don't hear a diff don't use 96.  If you do, use it.  If you just feel better using 96, use it.  There is science w/ this stuff, but it is art, not science.  As Robert Stack says in "Airport,"  "you are the big cheese, the head man, the big guy, top dog ..."

@

Mr. Ease

DonaldDuck


I'm not interested in joining a scientific debate of the ins and outs of digital audio.  With some here, they love to wrap facts around their own opinions. So, trying to point out true FACTS is a waste of time....  Ultimately, facts don't matter.  Music is subjective anyway. Some people think Kurt Cobain was a great vocalist while others (me) thinks his voice sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.  If YOU like it a certain way, it really shouldn't matter what others think.  Just switch over your converter to 96k, and hit record.  If you want to record at 96k and like the results, rock on!  I do, and I like the results....

Interesting opinion!  Where would you be, though, if the scientists and engineers amongst us had never bothered to give you the equipment and options to have these opinions?   What would you have available in your recording arsenal if we didn't trust the facts either?

Let me try this again.... the point is that people can quote all the 'facts' they want to. Ultimately, people are going to tend to do what SOUNDS the best to THEM. Thus, they will ignore the facts and do what sounds the best.  Consequently, I arrived at the statement you have so kindly put into bold font.

AT


But has been repeated (now reaching ad nauseum) to use your ears.  If you don't hear a diff don't use 96.  If you do, use it.  If you just feel better using 96, use it.  There is science w/ this stuff, but it is art, not science.  As Robert Stack says in "Airport,"  "you are the big cheese, the head man, the big guy, top dog ..."

@

Exactly...

Hey it's great to see some actual dialog here in the old ghost town of
Sonars Before X. Most threads die after 1 answer. Just like the good ol day's.
I'm finding this all very interesting and somewhat educational.
Since digital came out it's suffered from widely varying opinions.
Remember the popular consumer marketing term "CD quality"
And now in our minds that's the lowest setting we can use. But is it the worst quality? Would it sound terrible? That's the magic question, and easily argued about.
I'll tend to agree with AT's comments. Spend you cash on good mikes, pre amps, convertors and signal chain. Changing the sample / bit rate might just be a non issue unless you start there first.

We all read the articles about what the pro's use but most cannot afford that stuff, so we try and squeeze the lemon.

DonaldDuck


You are correct in that assuption that most professional studios use 96k (with most doing classical at 192k).  When I was getting my college degree a few years ago, I worked (interned) in Nashville studios, and every "Professional" studio used 96k. Even most "demo" studios used at least 48k.  I don't know of ANY professional studio (meaning major label recording studio) that uses 44.1 or 48k.

Thanks for the information. This confirms my belief in this regard.

Test results in short:

Only a slight difference in the frequency response of pink noise recorded through the same chain at the same volume at 44.1kHz and 96kHz. Specifically, the 96kHz has a slight gain extending from about 100 Hz sloping down to 18 Hz, peaking at 0.73 db; the 96k also has a slight (-0.2 db) cut at about 300 Hz compared to the 44.1kHz. So, there is a slight difference, but not as dramatic as one might think (this is of course, just on this chain/these converters [LynxTwo-C].

However, this is only measuring up to 20kHz. Even so, the difference remains even if the audio is dithered down to 44.1kHz/16 bits.

Do you have a dedicated hard drive for audio?  Try increasing buffers and turn on cache.  I record at 96k on sonar 8.5.3 with no problem. I've tested it at recording 10 channels at once with no problems.  How old is your computer? What are the specs?

pdarg

Sonar 8.0 keeps choking on recording at 96kHz.

... kind of hate to say "I told you so", but that's the sort of problem seen over and over with the advice often being to try using 48/24.

Otherwise, this has been an interesting discussion.  In some regards though, I view this in the same way I view marketing for digital cameras where it really doesn't much matter if you have 2 megapixels or 20 if the camera uses a cheap plastic lens or a generic CCD or even a glass lens but you'll never crop or blow up the picture.  At some point the real challenge is going to be striking that balance between the quality of your media gathering equipment and the granularity of the recording.

Meanwhile, bad news, my 17 year old son is purchasing his music on vinyl; old vinyl so generally AAA recordings.  Did I see someone mention preferring 30 ips to 15 ips???

[Edit: Maybe try recording mono tracks though... might help.]

Kev999

I recently tried working at 96kHz.  The only real problem that I encountered was with a particular UAD plugin, the EMT-140 plate reverb, which won't work at all.  Everthing else seems to work ok.

I spoke too soon.  NI B4II is misbehaving in my 96kHz project too.  Each time I re-open the project, this softsynth is silent until I reload one of its presets.  This is annoying.

that's why I stick to 44.1kHz - because of softsynths misbehaving in higher resolution projects.  if I were recording in audio domain only I'd use 88.2k or 96k but I've had too many problems with softsynths not working in those rates.

Bub


I used to rip LP's a whole side at a time using Sonar 4PE at 192kHz on a P4 w/2GB ram with 1 HDD. Plus I recorded multiple projects at that sample rate as well on that P4 rig. I still have that DAW and it's about 6 years old now iirc?

There should be no reason pdarg can't get a minute in to a recording without a crash at 96kHz short of a configuration problem.

How 'bout some system specs pdarg ... CPU, Mobo, RAM, Audio Interface ... etc etc.

Exactly.  I've used both Sonar 8.0 and 8.5 to record at 96k for the last 4 or so years.  My old computer was a Pentium 4 single core running at about 3.8Ghz.  Surely a modern computer would have no problems. I know my 3 year old computer has no problems (my specs in my siggy). 
 
Also, I use numerous software sample packages from East West, Native Instruments, Spectrasonics, and Synthogy with no problems at 96k.  I'm not sure why people equate recording at higher resolutions with putting a man on the moon or something. It isn't rocket science... it isn't difficult on a modern computer assuming your interface supports it.
 
If you have a USB interface that might be a problem.  Otherwise, most others should be fine (PCI, PCIe, Firewire, etc.).  I do have very fast hard drives, but anyone doing digital audio (or video for that matter) should have fast hard drives.
 
If you are using windows 7 especially, it loves to freak out over different sample rates between Sonar, other software, and windows itself.  This could be where the problem is.

Beagle

DonaldDuck

Exactly.  I've used both Sonar 8.0 and 8.5 to record at 96k for the last 4 or so years.  My old computer was a Pentium 4 single core running at about 3.8Ghz.  Surely a modern computer would have no problems. I know my 3 year old computer has no problems (my specs in my siggy). 
 
Also, I use numerous software sample packages from East West, Native Instruments, Spectrasonics, and Synthogy with no problems at 96k.  I'm not sure why people equate recording at higher resolutions with putting a man on the moon or something. It isn't rocket science... it isn't difficult on a modern computer assuming your interface supports it.
 
If you have a USB interface that might be a problem.  Otherwise, most others should be fine (PCI, PCIe, Firewire, etc.).  I do have very fast hard drives, but anyone doing digital audio (or video for that matter) should have fast hard drives.
 
If you are using windows 7 especially, it loves to freak out over different sample rates between Sonar, other software, and windows itself.  This could be where the problem is.

I admit that I have not tried higher sampling rates with Kontakt - I've only had Kontakt 6 months or so.  I've had problems in the past using other softsynths and samplers with higher sampling rates such as Gigastudio, The Grand, Halion, SFZ, TTS-1 and others and so I've simply not tried it recently.  however I think you're being a bit presumptuous to say that anyone should be able to do it with all softsynths/samplers unless you've tried them all in various configurations.  for the record - at the time I was using an m-audio delta 44 so I would think that qualifies as an interface that supports it and the computer was up to spec at the time as well.
 
if you've successfully used Kontakt at higher rates then that's at least an indication that would prompt me to possibly try it with my current system and see if I have any problems - when I have some time, of course, not in the middle of recording for a client. 

Well, I didn't exactly say that all softsynths work although I guess it could have seemed like I was implying it.  I was more referring to the original poster who said his computer wouldn't run it.  There has to be a reason since I've personally gotten it to run on much older systems.
 
However, all the synths/samplers that I listed DO work w/o problems, even NI B4II which one poster said would not work. I use it often in my projects, but I did have to download an update for it. NI makes it easy to get updates with their utility thingy.  If someone is having a problem, I would suggest consulting that synth maker to get tech support or download updates. 
 
As I said before, "Pro" studios have been using 96k for years.  Almost everything 'pro' (software at least) supports it, much more so than 64 bit software processing audio at 64bits or even 32bits actually.  We Sonar users are kinda spoiled in that it pretty much supports all the cutting-edge technology. However, 96k has been supported for years by many, many different plugs/synths/samplers.  (Note that most are NOT sampled at 96k, so if you use mostly synths/samplers, 96 isn't likely to be a huge gain anyway unless there are many, many different layers of tracks).   
 
I will say that 96k projects to tend to eat RAM and HD space, so if someone is having problems, i'd start there.  Remember that even all 7200RPM are not the same. Some are faster than others.  Also, as a hard drive becomes more and more full, it's performance suffers greatly.  Keep HD's defragged and less than 50% of the space used.