Hi,
I’ve not done any recording for ages and in the meantime I’ve changed PCs and although the new one is much better, it’s running Vista for which there are still no drivers for my Audiophile delta 24/96 soundcard.
I would quite like to get back to doing a little recording occasionally so, to get me going whilst waiting for M-audio to come up with the new drivers, I thought I might try using n-track in “16 bit mode” - which should be compatible with the pc’s own soundcard.
Trouble is, I can’t see how to get it to be a 16 bit version - is it something to do with registration OR do I have to download a different version.
Any help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks
Mike
The 24 bit version is the 16 bit version with 24 bit support added. All you need to do is set up the input and output formats as 16 bits (click the little hammers…maybe somewhere else, too?). Keep in mind that some ASIO drivers won’t work in anything but one format, and that could be 24 bit only, but I don’t think that’s you problem based on your question.
Thanks Phoo,
I think I tried this once looong ago with the same result.
It seems to get around the soundcard problem, ie no error messages and sound is getting through from n-track master output to pc speakers, BUT, the sound is horrible and unrecognisable, possibly just grossly distorted.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Mike
As I understand it, when an audio file is converted from 24 bits to 16 bits, dithering (adding a small amount of random noise to the signal) should be performed to reduce the effect of artifacts arising from truncating the bit-depth of the audio. At least it is clear to me that dithering should be performed when the bit depth reduction occurs as the last step of the recording process, i.e. when the bit reduction is being performed to reduce to the 16 bit format needed for CDs.
When I do a bit depth conversion with other recording software, I use a dithering VST plugin as part of the conversion. I was about to suggest that you might want to dither your audio during conversion to 16 bits, but then I realized that I really don’t know if dithering is desirable if you want to process the bit depth-reduced audio further. I had always assumed that N-track dithered automatically.
So my suggestion has turned into two question to more knowlegable N-track users. (1) Should dithering be performed on Mike’s files if he expects to process them further, and (2) does N-track dither automatically during conversion, or do you need a plugin to do it?
By the way, I’m not suggesting that this would cure gross distortion. I’ve used N-track to convert sample rates many times without problems - that has to be a problem with settings.
T
The soundcard for the new pc should support 24bit, I had a Realtek come on the new pc, it worked in 24bt, but had sync problems with starting rec and playback at same time.
Thanks YazMiester,
My first thought was, "didn’t he read my question, my computer’s soundcard is 16 bit!!!"
But you made me think. I went into “sounds” in control panel and, lo-and-behold, it IS 16 bit - but only because it’s set to 16 bit. I just changed it to 24 bit.
Thank you soooo much YazMiester!!!
I will try it out in the morning
Mike
Glad it helped Mike. Have fun!
I also have a M-Audio Delta card, and M-Audio support in France promised me that the Vista 32-bit drivers would be available at the end of July. To be fair they also promised the beginning of June at the latest, so I’m not exactly holding my breath.
(jmccullo @ Jul. 20 2007,06:40)
QUOTE
I also have a M-Audio Delta card, and M-Audio support in France promised me that the Vista 32-bit drivers would be available at the end of July. To be fair they also promised the beginning of June at the latest, so I'm not exactly holding my breath.
I understand on that one, E-Mu has beta drivers out for select devices. Public release sometime in late Sept. (or so they say) The beta's are a little buggy. I lose playback about every 4th day.
Vista's released, takes 2 years before everything else catches up, what then? Another OS system?
Ah, it still doesn’t work.
This is probably a silly question but - would you expect v4 to work with Vista?
Mike
Which version of nTrack are you running Mike?
Your topic post said 16bit v4, so you are already using v4? What’s not running, soundcard, ntrack, what?
I have v4 & the v5 demo; both respond in the same way.
I have the audiophile delta 24/96 soundcard installed in the pc but I’m using the onboard sound that came with the pc as the vista drivers are not yet available for the audiophile card.
I’ve tried all the available options in the n-track “devices” section but it always refuses top work.
I think I’ll just wait until the audiophile vista drivers are available.
Thanks for your help with this.
Mike
No problem Mike, sorry you couldn’t get it working.