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Topic: Sound Card/CD Player A-D & D-A converters |
Ray Minich
From:
Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra
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Posted 20 Jun 2005 8:41 am |
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I have a half dozen different CD players in my studio. I have a TEAC that does 4X oversampling on playback, and, I seem to hear "sweeter" more defined playback thru this player than the Sharp or the Scott that don't have the 4X oversampling. Maybe it's just my ears or the mixer channel. Has anyone else ever encountered this effect?
Also, are all PC sound card's analog to digital conversion systems the same? (For creating .wav's from analog input) Or are there preferred cards to use for "studio" or semi-professional work? What's the current best chip to employ? |
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Jack Stoner
From:
Kansas City, MO
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Posted 20 Jun 2005 9:07 am
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There are several factors in a "high quality" sound card. One is the Analog/Digital bit rate conversion. The higher the bit rate the more accurate the digital representation will be of the analog signal. Same way with digital back to analog. However, CD sound is only 16 bit. I have a SoundBlaster Audig2 Platinum EX (has the external I/O console) and it's 24 bit.
Latency can be an issue and unless the recording program you are using (e.g. Sonar or some simlar) can compensate for the latency, one with a very low latency is preferred. However we are talking of multichannel recording, if you are just going to convert Lp's, Tapes, etc into digital (wav) for recording that doesn't become as important an issue.
Signal to Noise ratio is another measure of a sound card.
There are several other parameters but unless you are going to get into multitrack recording they are not as important. Suffice to say a SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS (current models) are more than adequate for high grade recordings or playback.
If you want to do multitrack recording (e.g. 4 or more tracks) then you will need to consider a sound card that has the multitracking capability and the connections for mic's and musical instruments, as computer sound cards are designed around a higher level input signal than either a microphone or musical instrument is capable of producing (that is why a P.A. mic will not work or work properly on a PC).
If you do a search on google for recording or sound cards, etc you will get a lot of info (actually probably info overload). The soundblaster site also has some info on the various specs for their cards, and their standards compliancy.
I suspect the CD players you have with "oversampling" sound better because they are artificially creating a higher bitrate through the oversampling and as mentioned the higher the samples per second the more accurate (better fidelity) the conversion will be. e.g. if you have 4 bits to represent the signal it can sample the AC sine wave at 15 different points or conversely it can take 15 different digital representations to create the sine wave (AC or music sound). However if you have 16 bits for sampling you now have 2 to 16th power (approx 65,000 if my math is correct)differnt points to sample in one cycle and thus more accurate representation of the signal. |
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Ray Minich
From:
Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra
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Posted 20 Jun 2005 12:58 pm
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| Jack, thanks for the summary. I have an Audigy card in my studio rig so it looks like I have good enough single channel gear for the moment. Thanks again. |
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Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
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Posted 23 Jun 2005 1:32 pm
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| Quote: |
| Some A/D converters have look forward abilities |
Does that mean that it can start to digitize my note before I decide what note I will play? |
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