Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50% of

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Marco
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Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50% of

Post by Marco »

Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50% of your DSP Power? :-?
:wink: out and about for music production. Are you still configguring your Studio :lol: music first!
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garyb
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by garyb »

that is for you to decide.
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dante
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by dante »

You are asking the wrong question.

The question should be: How can I combine Native and Scope to run what I need to do at 96Khz ?

I run XITE-1D at 96khz and it runs 4 mastering plugins and proWave at 4 voice poly. My 3 DSP cards can then run another synth @96Khz. Everything else is done Native - and whole system runs at 96Khz.

And to answer the obvious next upcoming question 'will it sound better' - well you wont know without at least a couple of weeks trial, because it wont necessarily be obvious straight off the bat.
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pollux
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by pollux »

it all dépends on what you do.

The whole 44.1/48/96 KHz has to do with the audible range and Nyquist frequency (sampling rate / 2).

The CDs are 44.1KHz because we cannot hear anything under 22KKHz, so they chose the smallest possible frequency allowing to sample and reconstruct signals up to that point, so that processing needs would be as cheap as possible. (ever thought about why the movies are 24 FPS?)
Thing is that the closer you get to that frequency, the more artifacts appear when you do signal processing, so i.e. EQing the higher higs can potentially sound like crap, and it's the kind of crap that you don't want...

To avoid this, they increased slightly the sampling frequency to 48KHz whiwh allowed for a decent processing within the hearable range, yet remaining cheap, then downsampling the finalized signal to 44.1KHz for CD printing.

After that, Digi looked at the sky, looked at people's wallet, counted 2+2 and said, "48 KHz is for wannabes. if you want to go pro, you need an HD system that can go to 96 KHz" (I thing their latest version can do 384KHz.... otherwise how could they make any money from upgrades?) People watched "This is Spinal Tap" and said "wow, goes to 11!".. End of the story :)

If you do a lot of signal processing using chains of plugins, you might hear a slight improvement due to less artifacts around the highest hearable frequencies (yet you can easily check it with a phase cancellation test), and it will mostly depend on the quality of the processing algorithms.
I don't think that you can hear any difference with synths (I never did), yet you can also do the phase cancellation test and see for yourself.

Bottom line: crap in, crap out... The sampling frequency won't make any magic with bad recording, bad playing, bad <whatever>.... Give John Paul Jones a shoebox and a string, he'll make music.. give me Abbey Road Studios and well.... .... ....... see my point?

HTH!
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garyb
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by garyb »

exactly.

by the way, it's not just killing 50% of the DSP power to run 96k, it's also killing 50% of every other resource in the computer.
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Marco
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by Marco »

Very cool answer, so for me the 44khz is better than a 50% castrated scope and PC. Better you have a good sounding preamp!
:wink: out and about for music production. Are you still configguring your Studio :lol: music first!
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astroman
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by astroman »

while high frequency processing is improved with 96k (and above) the main reason is to avoid aliasing artifacts
(those are unavoidable anf fall beyond the audible range, starting at about 70k sampling rate)
that's what Dante wanted to point out with 'it may not be obvious immediately'

in the analog domain it needs very good microphones/preamps to take advantage of the effect...
otherwise 'weak' gear will be pictured even worse - not just crap but very detailed crap :D

a smart approach is to operate critical processes internally at a higher sampling rate (oversampling)
the Minimax filter is an example and known for it's smooth operation - that's due to 96k internally
this is quite a common method - many plugins do it
iirc you have DIVA - that's also based on oversamplig

but not always cool: in some cases 'digital grit' is appreciated as a sound character
early EMU/Akai Samplers are highly regarded for their 12bit sound...
or the original Creamware A16 converter, which has a slightly coloured sound to it
a very popular example in this debate has been the Vectron
just listen to the difference in 96k and you get an idea what aliasing is about
from an objective viewpoint it sounds better - regarding sound character it's just crap ;)

cheers, Tom
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53E7
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by 53E7 »

The reality is most will listen to your finished work as an MP3. I find 16/48 works for me. I'd try out 96 for my own personal enjoyment if I had access to some beautiful monitors though.
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vascomusic
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by vascomusic »

To me, the Scope system at 16bit 44.1Khz sounds better than many other systems at higher sample rates.

Besides, there's whole generation consumers raised in the mp3 and streaming age, do they even know what high fidelity audio is? 95%+ won't hear the difference, nor even care. Higher sample rates won't let you make better music..
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by petal »

I've had interesting results running FM-modular patches at 96khz and you could deffinitely hear a difference between 96khz and 44.1Khz.

So in that situation it made sense for me to use a higher samplerate.
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by JoPo »

Vascomusic --> +1 ! I'm unable to make any difference. And I really believe it's not worth it : you sacrify 50% of processing power ! And I 100% agree with Pollux : now, it's 348kHz ! There no more reason to work at 96kHz than 348kHz and even more ! In this case, I believe it's much much better to work with 100% analog signals.

The sampling frequency rate increasing fashion is a bit the same as TV size and resolution : you must buy a new one every 3 years.

Maybe it's worth it with very soft classical piano music ? But I'm not sure. Or scientists who record univers signals, for them, right : resolution in high frequency is important because they are not listening to those signals but they are analysing them, like if you take digital photos in which you plan to zoom deeply, you should choose the biggest resolution your camera can give you.
But for music as I do, I don't see any benefit : people will listen to it on soundcloud which process sound files ! :roll: And nobody will zoom into it by listening to only high frequencies to check if they are able to hear some distorsion...!

Petal --> I'd like to listen to an example to check if I'm abble to hear any difference. Is the difference so big that you must record on 96kHz ?
> > > > > > > > > > > > --- Musica --> here ! ---< < < < < < < < < < < <
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Marco
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by Marco »

359khz will let a xite play a Minimax with 2 voices... Then your at the end! Haha, thats what people could Do 20 years Ago with pulsar 1 4dsp card and you hear No Differenz . Halleluja now i know what you mean with kHz Fashion. :D

Nice Marketing Strategy

And yes, your nice Music succs in the Internet with mp3 players and Multimedia hifi Boom speaker... Not for me

Yes there is a slight Differenz between 96k and 44k and my cat and maybe my dog will hear the Differenz, but try dont care, me too
:wink: out and about for music production. Are you still configguring your Studio :lol: music first!
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by petal »

JoPo wrote: Petal --> I'd like to listen to an example to check if I'm abble to hear any difference. Is the difference so big that you must record on 96kHz ?
It was a project I did years ago, so unfortunately I don't have any examples to show. My point wasn't that 96khz was better, just clearly different in the results I got, and I decided that the results produced with 96Khz suited my needs better than 44.1Khz could.
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by Mikael-R »

I did test with profit 5. The first seconds is 96 the rest is 44 kHz. This is proof that 96 kHz sounds different even on synths that oversamples.
It's easy to try different patches and see how bitrate affects the sound as long as you don't have the daw connected.
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by hubird »

thanks for that one, first part is richer and more vivid, the attacks especially.
Even as mp3 :o 8)
It's like when you try someone else's glasses which are a tiny bit stronger: wow, those leaves at the trees overthere...
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vascomusic
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by vascomusic »

Even on my laptop speakers I can hear clearly the difference.
The 96Khz example sounds clean compared to the 44khz example.
It sounds like the 44khz example has more chorus.
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astroman
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by astroman »

it's a good example how clock-syncing may affect a synth engine
but in no way related to what the one sound will reveal if processed in different samplerates
(the phasing in the 2nd part is a clear indicator)
possibly the time offset is too short in 96k, so it melts to a fuller sound, while in 44.1k the displacement becomes noticable

cheers, Tom
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53E7
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by 53E7 »

Not to comment about 96 vs 44 but I liked the phasing in the 2nd one.
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pollux
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by pollux »

Mikael-R wrote:I did test with profit 5. The first seconds is 96 the rest is 44 kHz. This is proof that 96 kHz sounds different even on synths that oversamples.
It's easy to try different patches and see how bitrate affects the sound as long as you don't have the daw connected.
It would be interesting to test 96 / 48 / 44.1 on the same conditions :) I Wonder if the gap between 48 and 96 is as big as the gap between 44 and 96.
did you record two wav clips and then merged them?
did you downsample or upsample for rendering the file?

a nice test would be to play the synth at 96 on one box, then plug the audio out to a second box, and record the same signal at 48 and 96, to see if the sound difference comes from internal processing / artifacts on the synth that benefit from a higher sample rate at the source, or if the whole chain at 96 is actually better. :-?
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Re: Is it worth to use scope boards with 96khz and kill 50%

Post by Mikael-R »

After some more testing I have concluded that the chorus/flanger effect doesn't work in 96 kHz. That explains the difference, I couldn't hear any difference when I removed that effect.

So 96 kHz might be a waste of power if you are using oversampled devices, and some parts of the synth might not work properly. Regarding non-oversampled devices I haven't tested enough to have an opinion. I'll guess I'll have to go back to some of my earlier post and edit them with the correct information.
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