opinionated question

The correct answer is: All of the above. Seriously. Are you wrestling with something in your recordings that you're having a particuler issue with? Just curious.

well i am recording recording my guitar and vocals and want a professional clean sound.. I am currently using a behringer 1204 mixer and m audio audiophile2496 to do this, and i want to upgrade.

was wondering if firewire would be better... was thinking of buying a Presonus FP10 firepod 24-bit/96K FireWire Recording Studio

so your saying theres no difference in a Presonus Firepod and a behringer 1204 mixer ran into an m audio 2496 card??

"so your saying theres no difference in a Presonus Firepod and a behringer 1204 mixer ran into an m audio 2496 card??"

He's just saying that the difference is so negligible that probably no one will hear the difference. Behringer makes a good clean mixer, although some models tend to "break" quicker than others. The old Eurorack series was a good one. But these days even the cheapest mixers have great pre-amps and are dead quiet. If you click on my user-name and go to my website you'll find a link called "Sound Tests" where I put a Behringer mixer up against a ART Tube MP. They sound very close. There are also some test for various sample rates/bits.

If you search this site you'll find several threads about this stuff from the past.

nodrog, ur setup will give perfectly good results. unless you have $2000 to speand on a new mic, preamp/mixer and soundcard, you won't see any difference. better off spending spare dough on a better mic, guitar or good software. imho.

"your mixer may have a higher noise floor than a mixer of higher quality (say a mackie or soundcraft)."

Some Behringer mixers are more reliable than others, but I've never heard of one with bad noise specs.

"24-bit recording allows you to record without having to be concerned about headroom. if you peak at -12db, or event -20db, it's no biggie. with 16bit that can be a problem."

Wanna bet? I don't care if you're recording at 16, 24, or 2,000,000 bit, you're not getting as much signal down at -12db as you would at -3. Boosting the volume after the fact doesn't give you your lost signal back. It simply boosts what little signal is there. You'll always get a better, thicker, cleaner, and more detailed sound by recording as close as you can before pegging the meters in the digital realm. Try it.

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo

"your mixer may have a higher noise floor than a mixer of higher quality (say a mackie or soundcraft)."

Some Behringer mixers are more reliable than others, but I've never heard of one with bad noise specs.

that's why i say "may" - i've never tested them personally but i've heard that some mixers are quieter than others.

"24-bit recording allows you to record without having to be concerned about headroom. if you peak at -12db, or event -20db, it's no biggie. with 16bit that can be a problem."

Wanna bet? I don't care if you're recording at 16, 24, or 2,000,000 bit, you're not getting as much signal down at -12db as you would at -3. Boosting the volume after the fact doesn't give you your lost signal back. It simply boosts what little signal is there. You'll always get a better, thicker, cleaner, and more detailed sound by recording as close as you can before pegging the meters in the digital realm. Try it.

i agree you should get the hottest signal that you can, in the analog realm. in the digital realm it does not make any difference, at all. it is pure math. once it hits the soundcard, it does not matter in any way until the noise floor from the analog equipment gets down to the noise floor of the card itself. one bit does not sound better than another bit. with 24 bit, you simply have more bits of headroom to play with. you can still slam the levels as much as you want, and it doesn't cost anything but cheap hard drive space. there is virtually no downside.

"i agree you should get the hottest signal that you can, in the analog realm. in the digital realm it does not make any difference, at all. it is pure math. once it hits the soundcard, it does not matter in any way until the noise floor from the analog equipment gets down to the noise floor of the card itself. one bit does not sound better than another bit. with 24 bit, you simply have more bits of headroom to play with. you can still slam the levels as much as you want, and it doesn't cost anything but cheap hard drive space. there is virtually no downside."

Sorry, but you're missing it entirely. I'm not talking about the noise floor. It's so quiet at 16 bit that I couldn't care less about 24 bit when it comes to that. I'm talking about the ammount of recorded information. The softer you record, the less information you're getting down. Whether digital or analog makes no difference. Anybody that's ever recorded at low levels knows this. It only takes once and you'll never do it again!

I'm just a software geek, so maybe I misunderstand this issue... But it seems like it depends on what 'as much' means. You still are capturing the whole signal, even if you peak at -10dB instead of -6dB, it's just that there are somewhat fewer bits between the lowest and highest part of the signal. So it would seem that you are losing potentially some 'dynamic resolution', i.e. the span of dynamic range between spanned by the sample values x and x+1 is larger so you have less granularity wrt to dynamics. But you aren't not recording some of the signal. With 24 bits, there are probably still way more than plenty of bits there to provide as much dynamic resolution as any human could possibly hear if you just get reasonably punchy levels.

Or, then again, I could be completely wrong, and that's not to say that you shouldn't peak at -6dB if you wanna. But you just don't gotta.

Jack is correct that recording at 24-bit gets you a lower noise floor, especially when your target format is a CD. If you record something quietly at 24-bit, you still probably are getting more than 16 bits of information recorded. Whereas recording quietly at 16-bit is not as great of an idea. This assumes, however, that your audio interface can actually really record 24-bits at a go. I've read some threads that claim that audio interfaces often don't capture more than 20-bits and just pad the other four bits with noise. I cannot say for sure.

Joe is also correct in that your ADCs probably have sweet spots and the more signal they see, the better off you are. I imagine the real world differences are quite subtle either way.

Does 24-bit sound better than 16-bit? Maybe. Does 96 KHz sound better than 44.1 KHz? Maybe. I have almost never been able to tell the difference in blind listening tests. You may be able to do so. Try it out and see what you find. The more bits and the higher the sample rate, the more disk space you use.

With regard to balanced and unbalanced outputs, Jack is again correct. Balanced lines should reject more noise. The real problem is that you need balanced TRS cables, which are not as widely available and are expensive. No, your guitar cable is not a balanced line. You also need a completely balanced signal chain, or else you lose the benefits. What's more, a lot of gear will unbalance the signal for internal purposes before balancing it again on the way out. What's the solution? I would say don't lose too much sleep over it.

If you want my opinion, I will offer this advice:

Don't buy, just be.

If your recordings sound really bad right now, it's not your soundcard or your mixer. It's probably you, or another component in your chain (bad guitar, amp, mic). Learn to use what you have and upgrade cautiously. Your money is better spent on guitar and voice lessons instead of gear. Just going out and buying stuff wastes your life (that is, the time that you traded for money so that you can buy the gear), energy, and natural resources. Buying things that you don't need may be the American way, but it's not a wise long-term solution. That's not to say a better soundcard wouldn't offer you some additional capabilities, but it won't make something that already sounds bad any better.

Well, I just did some sound tests to satisfy my conscience on this, and I have to admit I don't really hear any difference to speak of, if any between 16/44 recorded at -3db, and 32/44 recorded at -20db and then dithered and converted to 16/44 with the volume normalized to match the first recording.

was wondering if firewire would be better

Firewire in and of itself is only a data streaming bus.
So... it won't have any direct affect on your audio quality.

Your mic is the single most important piece of gear.
If it's sub par, you'll struggle to achieve a great sound.
If you're wanting to do quality acoustic guitar recording, mic choice and a clean/quiet mic pre-amp are two key components.

I'd start with a good mic... and work 'backwards'... replacing items as budget allows.
The Audiophile is a decent interface. I have a client in FL who does pro work (overdub sessions with songwriters) using one.

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo
Do you have an interface that can record at 32-bits? If so, I am impressed.

Wise guy. Okay 32-bit mixing/24 bit float.

Gotcha. I thought you may have gotten a hold of some revolutionary piece of gear.

But on the other hand, if a person wants to record at -20db or something well under -3db, they're going to have to raise the volume eventually anyway. Chances are that no recording app will give you enough volume by simply using envelopes to get the file where you want it to be loudness-wise. So maybe that's something to consider. Dunno.

That is a good point. If you record something very quietly, you still need to make it louder somewhere along the way. Your noise floor should be lower, but ultimately turning up the volume turns up the noise inherent in the gear that you used to record. I have always looked at 24-bit as an alternative to using a compressor. You can potentially record vocals a bit lower and skip the compressor on the way in.

Your test seemed geared toward determining if there is a measurable difference between recording a presumably 16-bit source at 16 and 24 bits at varying volume levels. Pretty interesting results.

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo
Maybe I didn't say it right. When you record at a lower volume, you're not capturing as much of the sound, so no matter how many bits you have, if you're not getting as much signal to those converters to begin with, it won't matter. The converters can only use what little you give them. Know what I'm saying?

Check out this thread....

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/15038/0/

These guys have some serious credntials.