Audacity Forum

If I use a sample rate of 48000Hz and 32-bit (float) I gather (from what I have been reading) that once I have saved the recording on a CD disc as a WAV file, a CD player won't be able to understand it and play it. Is this because of the 48000Hz or 32-bit (float) or a combination of both? (ie. it should be at 44100Hz and 16-bit)

Can I save recordings from several LPs at 48000Hz and 32-bit (float) and store them onto a single DVD disc (for space as it is 4.7GB) and be able to play them via my PC at a later date? Or do I have to do it all at 44100Hz and 16-bit because that is the limits of all CD/DVD players even in a PC?

Again can I record at 48000Hz and 32-bit (float) and convert to MP3 and be able to play them on MP3 players?

Fine distinction. There's a difference between a Data CD and a Music CD. Also see: Data DVD and Movie DVD.

The data versions look like little shiny hard drives. You can put any kind of file on there that you want; 48000 music tracks, Photoshop pictures, Microsoft Word documents, etc. You need a Music CD Authoring Program to produce a Music CD that will play in your car. You need a DVD Authoring Program to produce a Movie DVD that will play in the DVD player and TV in your living room.

You can get confused by playing disks in your computer. Computers automatically open the application that produced the files and it doesn't matter much what kind of disk it is. The CD player in your car and the DVD player in your living room are a lot more particular.

One of the jobs of the authoring programs is to convert whatever you give them into standard format. In the case of Music CDs, the performance on the disk is always 44100 / 16 bit no matter what you started with. Movie DVDs contain MPEG2 compressed NTSC or PAL video files and it doesn't matter what you started with there, either.


We use data disks all the time to move files between machines that don't happen to be on the same network, or we need to hand someone a big pile of files quickly because they don't feel like downloading them for six hours from our servers.

Koz

Again can I record at 48000Hz and 32-bit (float) and convert to MP3 and be able to play them on MP3 players?

Yes, absolutely.

To answer your first question, the reason a 48KHz, 32-bit wav won't burn to disc properly is the 48KHz sample rate. It's MUCH harder to convert from sample rate -> sample rate than it is to change the bit depth. Most CD burning software (all?) will convert the 32-bit samples to 16-bit samples on the fly. I've never seen any CD burning software that will convert 48KHz -> 44.1KHz on the fly.

But if you're just playing the files on your computer (or converting them to MP3), then go ahead and make them 48KHz. The only problem you'll run into is if you want to burn the files to a CD to play on a regular CD player.

<<<I've never seen any CD burning software that will convert 48KHz -> 44.1KHz on the fly.>>>

If by "on the fly" you mean automatically convert before burning, then you're right, Veritas RecordNow PC software will not do that, but then RecordNow doesn't know what a mono audio track is, either. I think it was included just so Sony could say they had software to make their DVD burner go 'round and 'round.

Everything else I have works fine.

Adaptec Easy CD Creator
Nero Express 6 SE
Everything running iTunes--pretty much all versions.

I strongly suspect any package designed after Consumer DV became popular is going to be able to do this.

Koz

Last time I tried Nero still had issues with 32-bit float files, but you are right support generally is improving. Quality is still open to question, so I would always convert to the right format when exporting from audacity - you can always run another export to higher quality settings if you wish.