What sample resolution are most of you recording at in Live?

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guest

What sample resolution are most of you recording at in Live?

Post by guest » Sun Aug 03, 2003 3:24 am

just curious

noviomatic
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 04, 2003 9:21 pm

Post by noviomatic » Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:31 am

always 24-bit (off course)
and 44.1 or 48kHz (48kHz sounds better when transposing down)

Guest

Post by Guest » Fri Aug 08, 2003 12:36 pm

noviomatic wrote:always 24-bit (off course)
and 44.1 or 48kHz (48kHz sounds better when transposing down)
what do you mean by transposing? do you mean converting,
I just posted a thread on the reason forum asking similar thing, someone said higher sampling rates reduces latency, I'm wondering if it's worth using 24/48 with live/reason or if too much CPU drain??

noviomatic
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Aug 04, 2003 9:21 pm

Post by noviomatic » Fri Aug 08, 2003 1:13 pm

no... I really meant 'transposing': playing back a loop at a different pitch.

Advantage of using 48kHz source samples, even when you have Ableton Live running at 44.1kHz: you can play back the 48kHz sample up to a halve octave lower, and still get 44.1kHz-like bandwidth (meaning a frequency responce up to the full range of 22.050 Hz!). When playing back the sample at even lower pitch, you still will experience improved high-end fidility compared to a 44.1kHz sample, providing these higher frequencies were available in the source material in the first place.

I've done a couple of tracks that feature my real TR-808 sampled through pro-quality A/D converters at 48kHz/24 bit, and they sound considerably tighter and brighter when playing them back at a lower pitch when compared to 44.1 kHz (my TR-808 has a frequency response that goes up beyond 35 kHz, according to a 96kHz frequency analysis I performed).
I'd subjectively describe this effect as a less 'grainy' sound.

Similar benefits are to be expected with recording other analogue equipment like synths.

I have never tried loading 96kHz-samples in Ableton Live (don't know if it even supports this frequency), but I will try this next time. If it works, it will allow for some very interesting effects when changing the pitch of hi-bandwidth samples (like analogue synthesizers or acoustic recordings)

Regarding your question about using 48kHz as internal sampling rate (as opposed to using 48 kHz samples, even at 44.1kHz); in my experience this will add a couple procents to CPU usage, but I'm one of those fools that can hear the difference between 44.1kHz and 48kHz so sometimes I do this (especially when most of the source samples are at 48kHz, for example when loading tracks from DAT) despite the CPU usage.
Depending on the driver of your soundcard, the latency will indeed improve by some milisecs

hope this helps

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