On Mar 19, 2008, at 3:35 AM, Stephen Arndt wrote: > David Tayler recently recommended recording at 48Hz/24-bit. As far > as I can tell, the Edirol R-1 that I use will only record at > 44.1Hz, though it can be set to 24-bit. The trebles sounded a > little distorted to me, and I am wondering whether recording at > 48Hz would give a truer sound. David also recomended the Fostex FR2 > LE. It costs about the same as the Edirol R-1, and I am considering > buying one. Can anyone tell me whether I would be getting much of > an improvement over the Edirol for the price? Any information would > be welcome.
Both 44.1 and 48K are more than twice the frequency of the upper limits of human hearing of people with excellent hearing. This is more than enough for average hearers and overkill if you are making an MP3. The sampling rate needs to be more than double the hearing range because of some technical reason. Just Google something called the Nyquest frequency to find out more. I have an Edirol and like it a lot. If you are using the internal mics, one or another of the several new digital recording devices may be better than another. Manufacturers keep leapfrogging each other, so I would guess, everything else being equal, generally the latest thing has a better chance of being better than something a couple of years old like the Edirol. I would look for comparisons of the Fostex and others on tapper or audiophile sites. If you want a noticeable improvement to your sound, the best investment IMO would be a very expensive microphone (or pair). Digital recording is of such a high quality today, even with a cheap device, it is not going to be the weak link in the chain. People will go on and on about preamps, mics, converters, cables and even connectors. I say find a quiet place to record, experiment with position, edit to taste and work on getting the best performance possible. PS. Mastering engineers say that if you are going to manipulate the sound in any way, including change of gain, you should use 24 bits so that there are plenty of bits to play with before the final mix to 16 bits. Again, if your final destination is MP3, why worry about it? Read it again, I think I made a point somewhere in there. Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
