Ableton Forum

is there any benefit to using this if I'm doing a track with most likely 44.1k samples + Operator + NI Komplete + Waves 5 + microtonic????

if you plan a good mastering for the track, 44.1 k should be more than fine .
the advantage of higher sampler rates is if you want the megapure sound .
i tend to go for a 192 k sample rate when i record live instruments ,any electronic sounds or samples need so much cpu that i go down to 44.1 & use more external analogic processors to make the sound a bit more organic .

Going to 96kHz on the Multiface seems to cut latency in half.

However it takes a lot more CPU and on my system I can't really run much
in the way of synths before it starts glitching.

-Ben

not to mention space. Remember - it all ends up 44.1 16bit in the end.

Basically, the higher the sample rate the more dynamics you will get out of the conversion. From negative infinity to 0dB will have many many more steps compared to 44.1 16bit - however, I have never felt the urge to go any higher than 48k 24 bit even when recording a full band. Can live even take a sample rate that high?

also - you will have to upsample everything else that you are working with in order for your soundcard to play all the samples. So if you take a snare from a CD for example, you will need to upsample it to 96k, otherwise its gonna sound horrible if it sounds at all.

If you are one to worry about such things...

24-bit 96khz technically will give you more headroom and reduce the noise floor for introducing artifacts and such when mixing 16-bit 44.1khz sounds together. So even though your source material may be lower quality, the mixing process would technically be fractionally better...

That being said, I don't know of many people who either prefer the sound of mixing at a higher quality or who could consistently tell the difference when using lower quality source material. Personally I wouldn't worry about the space usage so much as the CPU usage... as was mentioned, your CPU usage will be greatly increased and trying to maintain a low latency at 96khz will either drive your CPU usage up, or worse only allow you to use a fraction of your CPU before you start getting pops and clicks.

On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for keeping your source material high to begin with until the very last possible point to master down to 16-bit 44.1khz, but that wasn't the question

Greg

Greg

forge wrote:Operator + NI Komplete + Waves 5 + microtonic????

Forgot about this part... assuming that all of those run at 96khz when you put live into 96khz mode... then all of those instruments will actually render audio at a higher quality... the only place you would be lower would be the samples you use... but any fx processing you do would be at 96khz as well...

Of course the best way to do it would be to try it and see if you like what you hear...

Greg

I ain't gonna spew here like I'm some kinda expert, but I once heard that...

The biggest advantage of 96 Khz has over 44.1 Khz is the "shape" of high frequency waveforms.

For instance, if you upper limit of hearing is 22.05 Khz (it's not - in fact it's slightly lower, but let's imagine it is for now) then at the upper limit of your range, all the sounds are square wave pulses - on/off, with no transient between them. Because most people don't actually hear up to 22 Khz (if any do at all) this problem is lessened, but it still exists.

When all your highest freqs are square waves, it's effectively a severe form of distortion at the upper limits of human hearing. However, this distortion can apparently cause listener fatigue with high frequencies very quickly.

The advantage of 96 Khz is that these square waves are not as serious - you can actually get a semblance of a "wave" in four steps rather than two, which lessens the listener fatigue and harshness of high frequencies.

Won't make a lick of difference on your bassline though.

thanks all

I'm interested to know if operator is at all affected by it

AFAIK the NI stuff supports those sampling rates, so in theory it should make a difference

It puts a big load on with the CPU but I'll give it a go with a track with loads of vstis and see if it makes a difference to make it worth rendering at those rates

MrYellow wrote:Going to 96kHz on the Multiface seems to cut latency in half.

However it takes a lot more CPU and on my system I can't really run much
in the way of synths before it starts glitching.

-Ben

You're kidding me, right ???

Why would 96k go half the latency?
That would be .....great !


BTW, forge, I like your penguin.

This has been discussed alot on the digidesign forums, one thing to look out for is that when you go from 96k to 44.1 you have to convert and requantise every sample, most people on that forum seemed to think that the sound was being degraded by the conversion process. The recommendations from these threads suggested using 88.2kHz sampling if you are delivering 44.1 and 96kHz if you are delivering 48, that way the conversion process has less room for error as you are doing straight division by 2.

> Why would 96k go half the latency?
> That would be .....great !

well, if you have a latency of 128 samples,the time for them to race past at 96k is less than half than it would at 44.1k

bensuthers wrote:> Why would 96k go half the latency?
> That would be .....great !

well, if you have a latency of 128 samples,the time for them to race past at 96k is less than half than it would at 44.1k

ASSUMING your CPU can handle the 96kHz... You'll cut your latency by more than half and more than double your CPU load.

smart1123 wrote:This has been discussed alot on the digidesign forums, one thing to look out for is that when you go from 96k to 44.1 you have to convert and requantise every sample, most people on that forum seemed to think that the sound was being degraded by the conversion process. The recommendations from these threads suggested using 88.2kHz sampling if you are delivering 44.1 and 96kHz if you are delivering 48, that way the conversion process has less room for error as you are doing straight division by 2.

Yes! Any perceived benefit of working at 48KHz will be lost when quantization
errors are formed during the down-sampling to 44.1KHz. But, working at
24 bits is extremely useful. It is not sampling rate but Bit Depth which provides
a greater dynamic range. It will also allow for a more accurate rendering of
the waveform.

Any signal less than 22,050 HZ will be rendered/recorded accurately at 44.1KHz and 24bits...not considering jitter of course.

boomklik wrote:
Any signal less than 22,050 HZ will be rendered/recorded accurately at 44.1KHz and 24bits...not considering jitter of course.

Not necessarily true. There are inaccuracies below half the sample rate.

Imagine a sine wave at 22,050 hz - it is no longer "sine", it becomes "square" at that freq since it's being sampled only twice a cycle.

At mathematically significant ratios there is noticable "squaring" of the waves. Waves at 11,025 hz and again at 5,0012 hz are "squared off" too. Additionally, if you are sampling exactly once every 1.5 cycles, you get a square wave too - therefore at 33,066 hz you'll get squaring (though it's out of audible range so it's not a big deal).

There are other feeqs that behave like this as well; at 14,700 hz (within audible range) you'll get three samples per cycle - very "stepped", and could actually lose volume, if the sampled captures the wave at the zero crossing, you'll never take a sample of the maximum amplitude.

Same for other mathematic multiples - 8,820 Hz, 7,350 etc. The problem diminishes as you go lower in frequency, and once you're below 5-7Khz the problem is almost completely mitigated.

What does all this sound like? It manifests as a slight harshness and a "tinny" sound in your high end.

Will your audience notice? no. Will another producer? Maybe. Will a mastering engineer? Absolutely.

For what it's worth, I still work at 44.1 KHz just cause it's easier on the CPU and it sounds good enough for Live work.

montrealbreaks wrote: For what it's worth, I still work at 44.1 KHz just cause it's easier on the CPU and it sounds good enough for Live work.

what about studio mastering to CD?