› Forums › Music › Sound Engineering › Recording from a lower bit rate to a hgiher bit rate
- This topic has 21 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated March 11, 2011 at 1:01 am by Gylfi Gudbjornsson.
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March 10, 2011 at 1:35 am #1050543
If my sound card’s max bit rate is 96KHz and I record a tune I made in 96KHz WAV format @ 320KHz will this affect the sound In a negative way as I’m sure it sounds much much crisper when I record it at 48KHz (I’ve not tried 96Khz yet as I’ve only just noticed a diferance).
March 10, 2011 at 1:38 am #1236136when i was mixing i’d fiddle with the sound rates, 48 is crisp like a dorito
March 10, 2011 at 1:40 am #1236125Surely it depends on the bitrate of the sorce file tho?
March 10, 2011 at 1:44 am #1236137true, i mix minimal and alot of the time the tracks were copied at 256kbps+. so 20mb file for 3-4 minute song, i should have converted them to WAV. but i didn’t have the space on my hdd for that kinda ting….plus my laptop was a heap of shit anyway
March 10, 2011 at 1:49 am #1236126The sample rate Khz and Bps are same thing right, or is there some funky math involved in converting them like divide by 2? (Just a hunch)
March 10, 2011 at 1:57 am #1236138think so, i did/do notice a big difference between lower kbps files and higher ones
March 10, 2011 at 2:02 am #1236127yeah I do too … but for some reason the 320Khz version sounds shitter then the 48Khz vertion – I was listening to it from my sequencer (@ 96Khz) and then from the 320Khz WAV recording and thought it sounded better stright from the sequencer. Now I’ve re-recorded it in 48Khz it sounds alot more like what was coming stight from the sequencer. Hence my original question. 😉
March 10, 2011 at 2:05 am #1236139hmmm my knowledge is very limited with this, maybe the sound is unstable at higher frequencies, hence it not sounding as nice at 320Khz
March 10, 2011 at 2:08 am #1236128well what I’m thinking is that the sound is getting “stretched” or something simila to make it become a higher bit rate. Not sure stretched is the right word … but expanded in some way making it lose fidelity.
I should really check my sound engineeing manual … I paid a fuck load for it and hardly use it … >.<
March 10, 2011 at 2:13 am #1236140yea, destruction manual is the best bet i’d say
March 10, 2011 at 2:15 am #1236129Doesn’t look like it explains it in the book I’ve got … Time for google …
March 10, 2011 at 2:28 am #1236130Right, X KHz is the sample rate and X Bps is the encoding rate I’ve found out.
Has nyquist got anything to do with it? Or is that purely for sample rate to dif sample rate conversions?
gah this is doing my head in lol.
March 10, 2011 at 2:31 am #1236141haven’t a clue, i only mix couldn’t produce if my life depended on it lol
March 10, 2011 at 8:45 am #1236121oversampling; Oversampling – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
March 10, 2011 at 1:14 pm #1236131Close – but the sample rate is 96Khz @ 32 bit float which is fine it’s higher bit rate that seems to effect the sound in a negative way. The sample rate is staying the same in both 48 and 320 Bps recordings. Am I missing something?
March 10, 2011 at 1:17 pm #1236132Wait – I’ve confused my self – I’ve recorded at both 96Khz and 48 Khz from a 96Khz source (my sequencer) and the 48Hz seems to sound crisper. Wth is that about? surely it should sound better/closer to what I’m hearing in my sequencer the other way round?? Ignore the shit about 320KHz/Bps That’s got nothing to do with it.
March 10, 2011 at 1:23 pm #1236122read more
March 10, 2011 at 1:33 pm #1236133I’ve read oversampling/undersampling/upsampling and downsampling, and I’m not sure any apply as It’s a first recording and that seems to apply when converting from an allready recorded source. However if “downsampling” does apply to what I’m doing It would explain the slight loss of bass in the lower sample rate (does anyone know if cubase automaticaly would lowpass when recording at a lower sample rate then the project is in?). But still doesn’t explain why it sounds crisper alltho it sounds like there’s less noise – would this be a factor of the downsampling process?
This is really confusing me lol …
March 10, 2011 at 10:57 pm #1236123Sample rate and bitrate are two completely different things.
The sample rate is the number of samples per second in a digital audio stream (we’re talking uncompressed PCM audio, like WAV). E.g if you record a guitar into your computer at 48kHz, the analogue-to-digital converter in your soundcard takes a “snapshot” of the analogue audio signal from the microphone 48000 times per second. The sample rate determines the highest possible audio frequency that can be recorded in the system – it is always half the sample rate (in the case of 48kHz, the highest audio frequency that can be represented is 24kHz). This is the “Nyquist” frequency you mention. In practice, everything above 24kHz would need to be filtered off prior to sampling in order to eliminate some very weird sounding alias components.
The bit depth (again different from bitrate), is the accuracy to which each sample represents the analogue signal at that moment in time (this is really easy to show on a diagram, but hard to put into words). With a bit depth of 8 bits, the value of each sample is 8 binary bits long, e.g. 10010110 or 00010101 etc (if you know about binary this means that the sample could have 2^8, or 256 possible values – not particularly accurate. With a bit depth of 16 bits (e.g. 1001101000110111) the sample could have 2^16 or 65536 possible values – allowing for much greater detail. In practice, recording at high bit depth gives you more dynamic range (or headroom, depending on how you look at it).
The bitrate of a digital audio stream is the number of bits per second. This is easily derived from the sample rate, bit depth and number of channels. E.g. for a 16-bit, 48kHz, 2-channel stereo audio file, the bit-rate = (48000 samples per second) of (16 bits each) for (two channels) = 48000 x 16 x 2 = 1536000, or 1536kbit/s. Note this is for uncompressed digital audio, and is considerably more than the 128kbit/s typical of MP3s.
March 10, 2011 at 11:07 pm #1236124Btw CDs use 44.1Khz 16-bit and are good enough for most people. Professional audio equipment such as DAT has traditionally used 48kHz. A sound card that can do 96kHz won’t make a magical difference to your mixes (and will sound comparatively worse than a well-engineered professional converter running at 48kHz).
March 11, 2011 at 12:56 am #1236134Right I actualy understand that, thanks! … fucking wiki gives such an overly complex explination.
I think I figured out why it was sounding shitter at 96Khz; there was too much going on at certain frequencys so at 96KHz it was picking up all the coudyness alot more then at a lower rate (I think). I’ve EQ’d most of it away now so sounding alot better at the higher rate. 🙂
March 11, 2011 at 1:01 am #1236135I’m just uploading the track that’s caused all this greif – I’ll stick a link to it on the forum when it’s finished (it’s taking ages as I recorded it at 96KHz – 32 bit float, it’s about 320Mb for a 7 minit tune lol – I’ll size down once It’s properly mixed and mastered)
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› Forums › Music › Sound Engineering › Recording from a lower bit rate to a hgiher bit rate