Friday, March 14, 2014

6 months into the 96K adventure…

By Tim Dolbear - www.timdolbear.com

6 months into the 96K adventure…

So a lot has happened in the last 6 months.  I am still loving 96k!  I upgraded all my converters, now I am strictly Apogee A/D, Mytek D/A, and I am using a RME HDSP 9652 and 9632 together for all my ins and outs. But a few procedures have become the norm around here.

New website:  www.timdolbear.com
Also, check out Eclectica Studio's revamped website: www.eclecticarecordings.com/  


SRC.  

For my first blog all SRC (Sample rate conversion) was done inside Sequoia, which as we all know has a very high quality of SRC.  At the urging on of a few friend and for my own curiosity, I wanted to test simply running the 96k mix out the Mytek D/A at 96k and back into the Apogees and capture at 44.1, then compare to simply SRC the mix at mixdown in the box.  

The 2 different ways of SRC sound very close on the surface but once you listen into the mix you start hearing big issues.  The version converted by way of D/A – A/D and captured at 44.1 sound very close to the original. Most people would never hear a difference and I struggled too.  The SRC done in the box had an issue with sound that was further back in the mix. i.e. the snare drum,  it now sounded like a blanket had been placed over it,  hi hats were dull and more distant too, but the snare was a big surprise.

So now all my mixes are run off at 96k 32bit float in Sequoia.  From there I can SRC down to 44.1 by playing the song out the Mytek D/A via its own USB interface at 96k from one instance of Sequoia and then capture back in through the Apogee to the other opened instance of Sequoia running at 44.1 through the RME setup.   Simple and sounds wonderful. And I have 96k mixes that I can also master from and make hi-res WAV and MP3s

Mixing projects that come in at 44.1.

So I am now up sampling everything to mix at 96k.  The plugins and EQ sound so much sweeter and better at 96k.   My favorite channel strip, the UAD NEVE 88RS used to bother me in the high end.  I could never get the ‘AIR’ I wanted out of it.  At 44.1, high end EQs up sampled to a higher sample rate to be able to handle the highs better, at 96K there is no need to do this, the UAD NEVE 88RS now has this benefit and sounds absolutely wonderful.   Other are also benefiting greatly.

That’s It.  :-)