Trouble Opening WAV file for Editing

[cetacean_dreams]

I thought I posted a reply but it does not seem to have made it here. I am glad to have helped, if slogging through this odd bug has helped the developers in some way.

I am a serious music listener, but amateur LP and CD ripper. My primary use for Audacity is ripping my collection of vinyl, along with some cassettes, radio programs, and other sounds, to WAV and MP3 files. I need to find the best and highest settings, that will still burn WAV files to CDs.

44.1KHz/16-bit is what ordinary CDs are based on, as I understand it, and they aren't that great. That's what I started with years ago and I think where my first sound card maxed. When I got my hot new sound card, I tried 96KHz/24-bit but that made files that were too big and my CD burner choked. I backed down to 44.1KHz/24-bit recording, which burned good CDs but left me where you found me. I went to 24-bit because that is what many of the "high-bit remastered" CDs that I have bought in recent years claimed to be, and they sounded very good. My turntable/stereo system is decent but not "audiophile" grade.

I want to rip my vinyl to the best possible sound, but I also want to be able to burn CDRs from the resulting files. It seems that 32-bit floating seems to have been the right choice. What is the advantage of 48K over 44.1K, besides a small increase in rate? Are there compatibility issues with players? Can/should I go for more, since there is no increment between 48 and 96? And I have not known enough about interpolation and dithering to mess with them.

What settings do you guys recommend for my purposes?

Also, send your mailing address to cetaceandreams at gmail dot com and tell me what kind of music you like, and I will send you a cool disc of unusual and obscure stuff for your great help.

thanks again, Harry

[steve]

Standard audio CDs are always 44100Hz 16 bit.
CDs that do not match this will probably not play in the vast majority of audio CD players.

I went to 24-bit because that is what many of the "high-bit remastered" CDs that I have bought in recent years claimed to be,

That will either be referring to the recording process or just marketing hype. The CD itself will be 16 bit.

Some CD burning software will change bit depths and sample rates if required, but if you set a CD burning program to make an "audio CD" then it should always produce a CD with audio at 16/44100/stereo.

For highest quality when making audio CDs, record at 44100 32bit (this is the default in current Audacity releases).
When you have finished all editing/processing, Export as 16 bit. The conversion in Audacity from 32 bit to 16 bit is pretty good with the default settings. You will then have a file that is in the correct format for an audio CD.

48kHz is used on DVDs and allows better high frequency response than 44.1.
If the final destination is CD, then recording at 44.1 is the better option as no sample rate conversion needs to be done.

[billw58]

Harry:
When you export to WAV or AIF, it is always done at 16-bit, and at the current project rate. Setting your project rate to anything other than 44100 will result in files that cannot be burned to a standard audio CD.

Setting your default project format to 32-bit float will result in the highest possible quality recording (limited only by the external hardware, including your sound card), and virtually zero "rounding errors" during editing (such as amplifying, doing fades, etc. - anything that alters the recording in any way).

Audacity always applies dither when exporting, even if you start with a 16-bit project. Rather than put a long explanation here, I'll refer you to this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither

There was some debate here on the forum as to whether or not Audacity should (or even did) apply dither when exporting to a 16-bit file from a 16-bit project.

In Preferences > Quality, in the "High-quality Conversion" section I use "High-quality Sinc interpolation" and "Shaped" dither.

I seem to be less of a purist than some. My standard settings for transcribing vinyl and tapes are 16-bit 44100. There's no debate (as far as I know) about the 44100 setting - you need that in order to produce files compatible with audio CDs. The question remains as to whether you can hear the difference between a 16-bit WAV files produced from a 32-bit versus a 16-bit project. I don't think I can, and I've been an audiophile for over 30 years.

I see that Steve has replied while I was composing this (Hi Steve!) and that he has hit some of the same points. Just so you can see that if you ask several recording engineers a question you will get that many different opinions, I'll leave my comments as I wrote them.

-- Bill

[steve]

Confirmed on Windows XP SP3 with Audacity 1.3.9
No problem on Linux though.

Correction - on looking closer,

Code: Select all

Value 1

  Name:            CopyOrEditUncompressedData

  Type:            REG_SZ

  Data:            copy

The problem occurs in both Windows XP and Linux if "Make a copy of uncompressed audio files before editing" is selected.
No problem when reading directly from the original file.

[cetacean_dreams]

Thanks for all the help.

Here is one cool thing

http://www.sendspace.com/file/pzve4s

this has helped enormously, and verified that I was not too far off base after all.

[steve]

Hi Bill

In Preferences > Quality, in the "High-quality Conversion" section I use "High-quality Sinc interpolation" and "Shaped" dither.

I use "High-quality Sinc interpolation" and "Triangle" dither.
There's very little to choose between them - shaped dither gives slightly more noise at high frequencies and less at lower frequencies whereas triangle gives slightly less overall (but more than shaped dither at lower frequencies). In both cases the level of noise is very low - it just depends which flavour you prefer.

My standard settings for transcribing vinyl and tapes are 16-bit 44100

Again there is not much difference, but the difference can become noticeable if you do a lot of processing of the audio. With 32 bit you don't have to worry about "rounding errors as they are virtually non-existent (you can amplify up and down and up and down to your hearts content and unless you go to ridiculous extremes there will be negligible deterioration of the sound quality). If you just do: Record > Amplify (a bit) > Trim ends > Export, then the difference between a 16 bit and 32 bit recording will be virtually undetectable.

[cetacean_dreams]

Just in case you need something a little more to the left field

http://www.sendspace.com/file/k4ekaf

[Gale Andrews]

Just two comments on side-issues raised here:

I went to 24-bit because that is what many of the "high-bit remastered" CDs that I have bought in recent years claimed to be,

That will either be referring to the recording process or just marketing hype. The CD itself will be 16 bit.

There is another type of CD called SACD which is 1-bit DSD and claims frequency range up to 50 KHz and dynamic range of 120 dB (better than the 96 dB offered by 16-bit, but not as good as the 145 dB that 24-bit theoretically offers). SACDs do often have remastered material. They are usually backwards-compatible if played on ordinary audio CD players but then only produce normal 16-bit PCM audio.

Audacity always applies dither when exporting, even if you start with a 16-bit project

For WAV and AIFF, so directly relevant to Audio CDs, true. But for the sake of completeness, OGGs exported from a 16-bit project don't have dither applied.



Gale

[steve]

There is another type of CD called SACD

True, I've heard of them but I've never actually seen one. (same goes for ghosts and albino tigers).
Also, they still contain 16/44100 data for compatibility with standard CD players and unless you have a SACD player, then it is the 16/44100 CD version that plays.
IIRC Sony also brought out some sort of blue-ray CD format as well - but that hasn't caught on either.

[cetacean_dreams]

I have a couple of SACDs and DSDs. Both sound excellent and I have not had any trouble playing them in odd machines, such as my car, but I may not be hearing more than the base level CD.

What I am hoping for is to rip my vinyl to the best quality that is reasonably available and compatible with as many machines as it can be.