Hey everyone.
I’ve been thinking about this stuff a bit and the inconsistencies that exist in my setup and what the overall effect is.
I have the following setup:
Ableton Live on my Macbook
Allen and Heath DB4 USB to my Macbook running at 88khz Sample Rate.
Digitone and Octatrack running into my DB4.
Also, for context, I don’t make complete tracks or have things mastered; I put together sets of my stuff with the intention of performing them live.
So the questions I have in my head are:
When I use VSTs like Diva in Live and then freeze the track and flatten it, it is at 88khz. If I play it back then that quality remains. However, if I sample it into the OT, which I often do, the quality changes to 24bit 44khz (I think) so was there any point in having things running at 88Khz in the first place?
If I have a set playing with Live Flattened Loops recorded at 88khz etc. playing alongside the OT and the Digitone, where is the difference? The juxtaposition of these loops doesn’t seem to create an obvious sound quality difference.
The fact that the DN and OT have different quality converters (48 vs 44) again makes me wonder the importance of this stuff. If it was important, would they not both be 48 or even higher?
To be honest, these days, I concern myself with this much less than I did in the past. However, it does make me wonder just how much time and energy I wasted on these concerns before.
Now I do more stuff outside the box, these things are far more set in stone. The audio cards I have had for my laptop have offered different sample rates, and I have often reduced the performance of my machine to have the highest possible sample rate; I wonder now if it was worth it.
And . . . if these rates are so important and make such a difference, why do the the boxes we use not have 88khz or 96khz converters? Surely an analog machine like the A4 would need these higher quality converters to allow us to appreciate the analog engine in all its quality?
Sorry if this post is a bit of a mental meander, these are things that I’ve been turning over in my head while my Macbook struggles with 4 instances of Diva while running at 88khz; in the whole scheme of things, does it need to be that way?
You could argue that running some plugins at a higher sample rate gives slightly better sound quality, especially for high notes, but I am pretty sure plugins like Diva have internal oversampling that make this a non-issue.
Don’t worry too much about this. Make music instead.
you dont need more than 44 khz in fact cause youre hearing doesnt exceed 22khz. just if you sample and pitch the stuff lower you will start hearing differences.
I think one should worry about these things only if they’re getting paid sufficiently enough to care. Only they have the resources (time / patience / technical) to spend to care.
Yeah, I care far less about this now than before. It was just, while working only ITB, these things were adjustable and therefore choices had to be made.
In light of working with Elektron boxes where the choices don’t exist as such, it made me consider the impact of the higher quality settings that I was eager to select but were so detrimental to the performance of my machine.
I believe anyone who started out as a consumer and later working with music or at least pursuing some goals in music production comes from the same story. In that we as consumers get sold equipment with higher sample rates with promises of “higher fidelity” and such things. 192khz Is a larger number than 44.1 so it must be better! That’s what we get taught when looking at specs and gear. The fact that it a bit more complicated than that is leaved out because you don’t want to confuse the customer. Just give them good Numbers and tell them that a digital veil has been lifted now that they have the “best” converters available. Sorry for rant! In short, I cared a lot more in the first years of recording and mixing. Now I just try to be around 48 or 44.1. If you search for it you will see that consensus among those who actually know this stuff is that around those numbers are where you get the most benefit (there just aren’t many real benefits of going higher - except like stated above, if you would record things like whale song, where you need to pitch down the sample substantially, although I believe I read one guys paper on this that said he believed the best sample rate would be around 70khz?) vs cost and that the quality of converters lies in other things than the sample rate.
Cheers for your thoughts Prinzabu- I’m intrigued by your comments, especially regarding converters and sample rate . . . doesn’t the fact they are 24bit 44khz diminish the pure analog nature of the A4?
You’re talking about the converters going through overbridge? The sound path in A4 is fully analog in itself but has the ADDA stage for that purpose if I’m not mistaken. I haven’t noticed any particular change in sound going from analog line outs into my FirefaceUCX, to going Overbridge straight to DAW.
You are totally fine with 44.1kHz 24bit.
As stated above: unless you do music for cats, dogs and bats, no need to go higher unless you plan for extreme reduction of playback speed.
Analogy: filming at 120fps while the average screen shows a rate of 60fps. When slowing down, you have a use of the additional captured data. If not, it’s just a waste.
Even in pro systems (commercial TV, Album production) the consens is pretty much recording at 96kHz 24bit, mixing in 96kHz 32bit (sometimes even higher) and final broadcast render goes 48kHz 16bit for TV and 44.1kHz 16bit for Audio productions.
Iirc protools has 40bit mixbus depth when hardware accelerated, otherwise like ableton, cubase and logic 32bits.
Pls correct me if things have changed in the last years, I’m out of pro business for a decade now.
Make great music, take care of high input levels but even more evade clipping and you get decent results.
