novacainestudio Posted April 18, 2008 Share Posted April 18, 2008 This topic is to discuss what would or would not be better about recording at 96K vs 48K. Recently I switched my system to a MBP and have been working at 24/96KHz... its cool but I'm thinking that I'd probably get a lot more power from my cores at 48KHz. The reason I think this is because my 3 year old Dual G5 2.5 actually could handle more tracks/plugs at lower buffer rates than the MBP... but it was running at 48KHz. I've noticed an audible change in character of my recorded sounds when switching to 96KHz, however - I also switched from a MOTU system to a Apogee system - so I'm thinking that maybe the sonic changes are more due to that than due to an increase in the sample rate. Finished product for me are tv commercials - all mixes and splits go to post at 24/48. Is it correct thinking to state that working at 96KHz takes 2X the amount of CPU power as working at 48KHz? MBP 2.4 4GB RAM Symphony Mobile Rosetta 800 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcel72 Posted April 18, 2008 Share Posted April 18, 2008 I also switched from a MOTU system to a Apogee system This was probably the source of the quality difference you noticed. A better comparison would be between the Rosetta running at 48k and the same Rosetta running at 96k. IME, you won't be able to discern much of a difference. To my ears, the quality of 96k does not justify the added buffer sizes, drive space, and processor headroom required to make it functional, but if you're doing a lot of sound design with heavy plugins, YMMV. I like 48k, but I record rock music... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ski Posted April 18, 2008 Share Posted April 18, 2008 96K means doubling the cost of everything... double processing power, double the hard drive space, double the time for backups. Double = half in some cases, i.e., half the track count, half the bandwidth available from your hard drives to deliver audio as compared to 48K. In addition it means spending additional time having to dither down to 48K for delivery to your clients; so you now have twice as many final files to keep track of -- the 96K version and the 48K version. At the end of the day, no one -- particularly your clients -- are going to care that you made your recordings at 96K because they'll rarely if ever get to hear it. If the increase in bandwidth is indeed noticeable to you, then all of that added cost will serve you alone in the enjoyment you'll get from hearing that sound while you're tracking; and that's worth something, unquestionably. But is that enjoyment worth the cost? Personally I don't think it's a good trade-off, but then again there are no rules to what one likes and doesn't like to do, for whatever reason. HTH, Ski Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sayenex Posted April 19, 2008 Share Posted April 19, 2008 I usually work at 48k, but about a week ago, I decided to track a song at 96. it wasn't worth it to me. I know it's supposed to sound better, but the only difference I noticed was the fact that for the first time, my mac pro was actually struggling to process the audio towards the end of the project. from here on out I'll be doing things at 48, probably until I get a new 10GHz 32 core Mac Zeus Pro when they come out in 2012. Evan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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