need advice re96/32float recording

[frybyte]

Hello- a very long time user of cooleditpro/Audition 3x normally record at 96 using 32float. Thought I'd give Audacity a 'new' try (tried it in Linux in pre 0.x versions unsatisfied)
So installed newest stable 2x version yesterday on win7pro 64bit machine. That went fine. Set up preferences for recording at preferred sample/bit-s and fired up the program. Brought in my band for rehearsal and began recording- it 'looked' find (hate to even say this about audio) but playback was all choppy (not distorted by volume) distorted jittery etc- opened the wav in Audition 3 same problem. So is this a set up issue, a software issue-????just need some pointers.

Audition 3 is old and current versions are more and more attached to video production it's also crash/computationally intensive so if I can get Audacity to work I'll be able to uninstall A-3......

Thanks in Advance
Jay

[steve]

Did you try it with default settings before you tried with your custom settings?
If not, try resetting preferences (reinstall and select "Reset Preferences" during the installation), then try recording with default settings.

What hardware are you using?
Which exact version of Audacity (look in "Help > About Audacity")

[frybyte]

there's no point (unless you can explain the point) in trying the default settings as I would never use those.
As for exact version 2.1.1, soundcard [email protected] the rest of the set up is outside, two presonus preamps (tube) a FP10 interface all going into a soundcraft Spirit M8 stereo outs into [email protected]

The .wav opened in both Audition 3 and Audacity 2.1.1 with the same sound issues.
Basically I can see that the signal from the mixer. I immediately recorded same set up into Audition 3 to make sure there was no problem and it recorded it fine.

So some hint's please? If the only way to troubleshoot is to use the defaults this is sort of a dead end.

Jay

[DVDdoug]

You might try increasing the buffer size (Edit -> Preferences -> Latency).

It's probably a driver issue. Are you using the same drivers in Audition?

there's no point (unless you can explain the point) in trying the default settings

There's also no point in recording to 32-bit floating-point since you don't have a 32-bit floating-point ADC. Your drivers are simply converting the audio data stream to 32-bit float before the data is saved.

Like most audio editors, Audacity works internally at 32-bit floating-point and there are good reasons for that.

[steve]

there's no point (unless you can explain the point) in trying the default settings as I would never use those.

Trouble shooting.
We know that "something" is wrong, but we have no idea what is wrong, so we need to narrow that down.
You may have changed a setting that is now causing the problem. We could all stab in the dark, throwing ideas of what the problem may be (tweaking the buffer size is a reasonable guess, but the default buffer size normally works well on Windows), but if we start from default settings then we all know where we are starting from.

Do you have a better idea of how to approach resolving your problem?

[cyrano]

Hello- a very long time user of cooleditpro/Audition 3x normally record at 96 using 32float.

You are not recording at 32 bit. There is no audio hardware that has >24 bit output. There's also no reason to.

The DAW will convert internally to 32 bit. They all do. That's because the higher precision (and floating point) is far better for calculations and that's what the DAW does.

I suspect more people have wrong settings because of the fact that this internal 32 bit is shown in the interface. It's beginning to be my personal pet peeve with Audacity. It's simply confusing. And it's only "better" for those that do not understand, but believe that higher numbers mean better audio.

Also, what's the reasoning behind using 96 KHz for a rehearsal recording?

[Gale Andrews]

explain the point in trying the default settings

For example if you did not get the "choppy" recording at default 44100 Hz Audacity project rate, it suggests that other devices (or Windows) have 44100 Hz settings and you are removing the mismatch, and/or that you don't have the computer resources to record without dropouts or glitches at 96000 Hz.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Windo ... mple_rates
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Manag ... nd_Drivers


Gale

[Gale Andrews]

You might try increasing the buffer size (Edit -> Preferences -> Latency).

Doug means the Edit > Preferences: "Recording" section then the "Audio to buffer" setting.


Gale

[frybyte]

I'm back and now have read all your responses and thank you for taking the time.
I'm not going to respond to the snarky comments or get into the bit rate flames but I do now understand why to try a reinstall and just run it.

At first the suggestion about buffer didn't make sense until Gale explained that the buffer rate is dependent on software not on my settings globally.

I will do this today and get back to you with the results.

Thanks
Jay

[steve]

I don't think there was any intention for the comments re. sample rate and sample format to be "snarky". Rather there is a lot of mis-information (mostly derived from sales hype) that encourages people to use much higher sample rates and formats than is actually required. I would venture to say that "most" professional studios usually record at either 44.1/24 or 48/24 (depending on whether they are working audio only or audio+video).

Anyway, good luck with the tests. Let us know how it goes.