Mixing down to Audacity - any sound quality loss?

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

"stuben" <stuben_baines@yahoo.com> wrote

> Rather than buying an expensive program, I was planning to just use
> Audacity for the recording. I won't be applying any processing to the
> wav files once they are in my PC. Just saving them and handing off to a
> mastering engineer.
>
> Is it a bad idea to use a free wav editing program for this or is
> recording wavs the same no matter what program you get? My guess is
> that you're paying the money for the effects processing and multi-track
> features of things like Pro Tools and Soundforge. Am I correct with
> that assumption?

Yeah.

If your sound card is bit accurate, then it is bit accurate(?)! If
Audacity is stable and your hardware is stable, it doesn't matter an iota
what program you use to transfer the bits to a hard drive. I've seen cheap
programs like audacity work better on cheap systems than more expensive
programs, specifically Cool Edit on more expensive systems. This always
puzzled me as I've never had any recording problems with Cool Edit ay home,
but I have heard of several cases where there was a problem. In one of
those cases, there were no problems when recording with Sound Forge instead.

If your hardware is happy, you can probably use any old software to record,
but... don't take it for granted until Audacity has earned your trust.

Julian

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

stuben wrote:

> I'm going to be mixing down from 8 track reel to reel to my PC. I'm
> going through Mytek A/D converters through a RME soundcard and will
be
> recording at 24 bit/96khz.
>
> After mixing down I'll hand-off the 96khz files to a mastering
> engineer. I was wondering how the audio recording software I choose
> affects the sound, if at all.

The software itself does not effect the sound unless there's
some problem.
(OPINION: 96k may be overkill for this purpose)

> Rather than buying an expensive program, I was planning to just use
> Audacity for the recording. I won't be applying any processing to the
> wav files once they are in my PC. Just saving them and handing off to
a
> mastering engineer.

What ?, no compression, limiting, or effects ? ; -]
If you're not going to use any digial processing,
why not just mix in the analog domain and record
2 track into the software ?

> Is it a bad idea to use a free wav editing program for this or is

It's a great idea, but ...
Audacity does not use any .wav file type as a native format.
It uses a proprietary file type *.au, wav files must be imported
or exported to/from the .au filetype. If you want to output .wav
files they can be exported but it is more time/steps/drivespace.
This is one of the reasons I have stopped using Audacity
for the time being, but I am strongly in favor of the concept
of open source. I'll try it again after a few more version updates.

> recording wavs the same no matter what program you get? My guess is
> that you're paying the money for the effects processing and
multi-track
> features of things like Pro Tools and Soundforge. Am I correct with
> that assumption?

Pro tools is multitrack, as is Audacity.
Sound Forge is 2 track only.
Maybe I'm not clear on what you are doing.
Do you need all 8 tracks seperate in the software
or can you use a 2 track stereo file ?
Either way Audacity will do what you need, it will
just take a few more steps than the same operation
in (for example) Forge.

I suggest you download Audacity and give it a try
anyway, the price is right and I think you can get
what you need from it.

> Dennis

Good luck
rd

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

stuben wrote:
>
> Sorry for not being clear on this, but I will be mixing in the analog
> domain. I am using the PC just to capture the 2 track mixes. All
> effects and fades will be done from the board.
[snip]
>
> Yeah, all I'll need is a 2 track recording software. I wasn't planning
> on using any of Audacity's multitrack abilities, just record a stereo
> file coming out of my analog mixer. If there are other free or low-cost
> 2 track recording apps, I'm open to suggestions.

The software shouldn't make no difference at all to the sound quality.
If you are going analog into the PC, the critical factor is the quality
of the PC sound card. Sound cards differ in susceptibility to noise and
quality of A-D conversion. I'd guess your RME should be OK, though at 24
bits I'd expect several of the lower order bits to be occupied with
fathfully reproducing tape noise :-)

After A-D conversion it's all just numbers and files and there's no loss
of information. If you were doing *processing* (e.g. compression, EQ) on
the mix with Audacity/a.n.other then you might need to be discussing
quality in connection with the software.

Having said that, latency and overruns are a possible problem with any
PC recording setup, but that has a lot to do with the operating system,
device drivers, what other tasks are running etc.

Anahata