Hi Tom - these are my views, some of the guys with much better technical knowledge will no doubt chip in with their help.
So what should I start at and what should I export at?
For good quality recordings in GT3, you can't go far wrong with setting your default
New Project values to
Sampling Rate: 44100 and
File Bit Depth: 24. Apart from the higher 'quality', one of the many benefits is the 24bit setting will allow you to record with much more 'headroom' than 16bit and means you don't need to record so close to the 0dB clipping level.
As to the higher sampling rates available, I've tried using 48000 but I can't tell the difference so I've gone back to 41000; it also means you don't another conversion to make when you export your file - see next answer.
For exporting, it really depends on what you want to do with the stereo file afterwards.
For most purposes such as creating .wav files which you can burn to CD or to encode into mp3 files for uploading to the web, export at
Sample Rate: 44100 and
Bit Depth: 16 - this is what commercial CD's are made at and is currently the 'red book' standard for making CD's that will play in most standalone CD players.
Exporting at 24 bit is the way to go if you have a media player that can play these files, you have an mp3 encoder that can handle 24bit wave files or if you are intending to get your projects mastered by a third party.
Is it possible to export at a higher rate than the original project rate? Is that good or bad to do, possible or not or have no advantage?
You can, but there's no point - you won't increase the quality of whatever you've recorded at a lower rate.
And in general for posting MP3 files on Soundclick what should I use for the project sample rate and the export sample rate to keep things up to par?
You should still record your projects at 44100/24bit Tom - the better the quality of your original recordings, the better the quality of the wave files and mp3 files you eventually convert it to.
As to the export rate, this really depends on your mp3 encoder - if like C-Dex, it can convert 24bit wave files to mp3 then export at 24 bit, otherwise 16bit wave files can be encoded by most conversion programs.
If any of these questions don't make sense, it's only because I don't even know what I don't know.
LOL - they make sense Tom, even if the answers don't!
PC is a Dell with a 2ghz thingy inside of it. I upgraded to 1 Meg of RAM.
More RAM would be an advantage but you should be able to work reasonably comfortably with what you've got. To check your PC specs, select Start, right click on (my) Computer and choose properties from the options.
On a side note:
What's the deal with using seperate drives for your program vs your audio files or whatever it is?
This is definitely a good idea, especially if your PC's resources are getting stretched in your projects.
At the most basic level, if both your audio files and GT3 are on the same drive your system will be slowed up as two different parts of your drive often need to be accessed a the 'same' time. This, of course isn't possible but in normal operation you won't be aware of it. However, once your system starts to get stretched, you well might. Allowing GT to access two drives means true simultaneous operations can take place.
And what's the best way to divide things up?
If you do have a separate drive, the general consensus is to keep your programs, i.e. GT3, on your OS (Windows) drive and store your audio on the other/s.
You can set up all these pathways and defaults quite easily in
Options > Global > Audio Data Can that be a partition or does it have to be a physical drive?
I'll leave that one to the experts Tom, personally I use another drive.
All that being said, I haven't been having any latency issues or glitches or anything like that. So I think I am good with my resources. I am doing pretty simple instrumental stuff with a Drums, Bass and a handful of doubled guitar tracks with effects added. Most tracks so far has only be about 12 running at once. I don't remember the sample rate I used however. Maybe it's really low and that's why.
GT3 defaults to 44100/16bit Tom so I would suggest that if you've never altered these values, that is what your previous projects were recorded at.
Give 24bit a try Tom, if your PC doesn't handle the extra information too well, you can always switch back.
Hope that helps
Steve