I wanted to share my experience, in case it is helpful to anyone with similar hardware.
So I upgraded from Windows 7 Home 64Bit to Windows 10 Home 64Bit this week. I have an ART USB PhonoPlus Project Series USB Phono Pre-amp connected to my machine to record from my turntable. I had been using Audacity 2.05 to record tracks at 44KHZ then exporting them out to 320KB 44KHZ 16 Bit MP3 files. I say had because after upgrading to Windows 10 and Audacity 2.12, Audacity would no longer take input from the preamp, either I got no sound coming through to the software, or it sprayed out the error opening device suggesting problems with the driver, and or device. After some investigation I found that the windows 10 driver provided by ART does not seem to pass through the audio if it is set at 44KHZ even though the hardware is rated to do that, I’m not sure whether that is a driver problem, or an Audacity problem. The advance tab for that sound device is missing when the driver is set to 44KHZ, when I set it to 48KHZ 24 BIT output in the driver everything looks okay (and the advanced tab returns). I set the project Sampling rate to 48KHZ, and then the default sampling rate to 48KHZ 24BIT to match the device.
After resetting the record levels to 100% (Windows 7 previously required it to be set to only 4 otherwise it was way to loud)
So everything is working again.
Because of the higher sample quality I am using the ‘resampling’ option to resample the audio track back down to 44KHZ, then setting the project RATE in the lower left corner back to 44KHZ, once I’ve done this I export the audio and it looks to show up correctly in my MP3 player at 44KHZ, I found that If I didn’t also reset the project rate to 44KHZ the MP3 would still export at 48KHZ.
I contacted ART directly on the phone when I was still having issues and they confirmed the driver should output at 44KHZ (the option is there) or 48KHZ, they have had no reported issues with their driver, they did offer to RMA the unit, and investigate at their end. Their Windows 10 driver was created June 2015 so I did wonder whether some changes within 10 had rendered parts of the driver non functional.
My one question is: Does the resampling cause any audio issues with the MP3 files, or are they pretty much the same quality as they would have been in the previous set up where I was importing the audio at 44KHZ and exporting out at the same bit rate?
Version numbers are important for us to know what you are talking about and to ensure that you are using a genuine version of Audacity and not a re-packaged version (there have never been versions 2.05 or 2.12)
Yes apologies Steve 2.0.5 and 2.1.2 are the correct version numbers.
The Windows Sound Control Panel is missing the ‘Advanced Tab’ for the ART USB Phono Plus Device when the ART driver is set to 44,100HZ, however it is present when the driver is set to 48,000HZ (though the default format is greyed out and you cannot change the value in the field)
I’ll rephrase my one question a little.
What I need to know is once the re-sampling is done from the 48,000HZ 24 Bit audio track down to 44,100HZ, the track still remains at 24Bits, and not the 16Bits for CD quality audio, so when it is exported an encoded with LAME to MP3, will there be a noticeable sound issue with the MP3, or is there a setting within Audacity that I need to change to make sure the MP3 Encode is 16Bit and not 24Bit?
My one question is: Does the resampling cause any audio issues with the MP3 files, or are they pretty much the same quality as they would have been in the previous set up where I was importing the audio at 44KHZ and exporting out at the same bit rate?
No, but there’s no problem with a 48kHz MP3.
I found that the windows 10 driver provided by ART does not seem to pass through the audio if it is set at 44KHZ even though the hardware is rated to do that
This a guess, but if you are using WASAPI drivers there is a WASAPI mode that won’t resample, so if your hardware is running at 48kHz and it the hardware-clock can’t be changed it will only work at the hardware rate. (I’m not sure how to select/deselect that driver mode.) MME and DirectX drivers will happily resample and you usually don’t know what the real hardware sample rate is.
…then exporting them out to 320KB 44KHZ 16 Bit MP3 files.
Windows DirectSound API has a partial Exclusive Mode as I understand it, that won’t resample but will upconvert to 32-bit float before Audacity receives the audio.
You don’t need to Tracks > Resample… . Export will resample from the track rate to the project rate.
By the way “44 kHz” is totally non-standard. Set project rate to 44100 Hz (44.1 kHz).
