 sample rates and soundcards |
Digital Cause 
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Registration Date: 06-07-2006
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what is it exactly about sample rates that make a sample usable or not usable? is it the exactness of eq that you can use? ive recently started sampling from cds, are these samples gonna be alright to use? they sound fine... also...
ive recently bought a soundcard which was one thing I was lacking and it doesnt seem to have any effect whatsover on the sound. I was also experiencing latency in cubase but on the pc which ive got running cubase the soundcard was not compatible, but after messing around with the sound drivers or whatever options i got rid of the latency? am I holding myself back by not having a soundcard while running cubase if i can not tell any difference with and without the soundcard???
thanks
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17-08-2006 17:18 |
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Muad'Dib
Andrejnalin
Registration Date: 02-12-2003
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Sample rates are the amount of informations about the sound that are possible to be received/used.
It is something like a resolution in JPEG files - higher resolution, clearer image, but larger taken disk space.
CDs have sample rate of 16 bits, 44.100 Hz (stereo, or 22.050 Hz of each mono channel (left-right)) which is enough for normal listening, but it is begining to lack some audio quality which DVDs for example can provide. CD also have 96dB dynamic range (the maximum difference of volume between two sounds), also called headroom. For instance, vinyl has 115 dB and tapes 130 or similar.
The samples which you get from CDs are enough and are widely supported by almost every soundcard in this Solar system, so yup - they are ok. The problem comes when you have, for instance, 24 bit samples instead of 16 bit (like the ones from the CD). Not every soundcard supports 24 bit samples, so there are problems with their playback and usability (your card can't render them properly). These problems are sometimes solved by interpolation and conversion of the samples to lower sample rates, so they become usable but loose their high-quality.
Here, read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate
You can't get rid of latency, as your computer is not the fastest in the universe. Latency is present everywhere, but with different computing power and program settings, you get different latencies. And you cannot use cubase without having a soundcard because YOU WON'T HEAR ANYTHING. So, if after you turn off your soundcard, you can still hear stuff from cubase, that means that you have another soundcard that creates the sound (and which might make some problems with the new one). I recommend you to disable this soundcard, so you can use your new one.
Go Start->Control Panel->System->Hardware->Device manager and find your old soundcard. Right-click on it and click on Disable.
There, I'm glad if I helped 
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17-08-2006 17:37 |
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Digital Cause
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cheers man, very helpful, yeah sorry thats what i meant, ive REDUCED the latency manually.
what i mean is the soundcard ive purchased is an m-audio fastrack pro, wihch is kinda made for production, verses the internal soundcard on the computer. my question is since i can not notice a difference when I use the m-audio, why did so many people tell me it is and essential piece of hardware to invest in????
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17-08-2006 17:57 |
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Digital Cause
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Ive got some Roland DM 1200s. Im not sure how good they are but they sound alright, actually if youve got a good knowledge if speakers what kind of quality are these?
what is AD/DA conversion? if I cant hear the difference with and without the new soundcard, why does it matter... the answer i always get is they sound better, but i have yet to justify to myself spending 150 pounds on it though....
anyway AD/DA?
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17-08-2006 20:50 |
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Muad'Dib
Andrejnalin
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About the Roland, I have no clue.
About the AD/DA conversion: As it says, Analog-digital/digital-analog conversion. That is, if you try to record a signal you will get much cleaner and dynamic sound through the quality soundcard. And also, quality soundcards never have hiss, pops or any noise produced by themselves. My previos (inside-pc) soundcard was making this very annoying hum which keeped me from increasing the volume. That pissed me off a bit.
Now I have Terratec phase 26 usb and it rox!
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18-08-2006 00:43 |
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Digital Cause
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schweet
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18-08-2006 11:05 |
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