Hi all,
I have a few questions on 96 khz recordings. Are any of you doing any 96 khz recordings ?

If so, do find a major difference in the sound quality? Describe the differences you hear.

I know the DA7 does not support 96khz. If you are making 96khz recording, which functions do you still use the DA7 for?

Thanks.

Armrest???

I've done some things in SADiE and Sonic Solutions at 96k and, IMHO, the extra HD space required isn't worth the difference. The BIGGEST difference to my ears is from 16-bit to 24-bit. After that, I'd have to go with 192k for the next major jump in quality.

Eric,

That beggs the question, what do you hear at 192?

I hear the 'air' that only shows up on 1/2" 2-Track Studer A-80 @ 30ips...

That's where this is all heading, you know? A friend of mine has the new PTHD stuff and won't do 192k on it until he gets massive amounts of storage added. It really is absurd how much it takes!!!

I regularly record to 2 trk on the Masterlink at 24/96. Don't hear a significant difference over 24/48, however the clients love it!

Oh, I see,

I R&D'd the first Otri 1/2", I still wanta hear a 1" 2tr like I have heard George Martin had (has?).

So your sayn' all I need to do it is all new digi gear with up to 5 gigs per song, 50 gigs per project and at least 900 gigs for backup and storage

I guess it could be worse...

I'm still trying to figure out why at 192 Khz it only has two points that it plots the curve with, ampiltude and frequancy, that seems bad and wrong for a tempered scale.

Have you seen the 2" modification for the Ampex ATR-102? Oh my gosh!!!

The only difference I hear is $Ca-Ching$.
All the manufactuers know if they push new formats and make users believe thats where its going then they make money and we the users pay for taking the technology there, Then they come up with something else and its a vicious circle. What difference does it make mixing down at anything higher than 16 bit 44.1 unless your burning DVD or SACD?
Can you honestly say you hear the difference between 44100 samples and 96000?
24 bit 48k is just fine for me for a long time,
I'm only burning cds and that is suffient.
Go GO Golden Ears!
Give in now then theres no end!
Rich

In terms of 96K benefit, most of it occurs at A to D when you move the Nyquist further away from audio and employ a gentler filter. Therefore, you can convert said recording to 48K (or from 88.2 to 44.1), mix in and master in 44.1 or 48 with your DA7 (using sample converters like Z systems or DCS to feed the ins) and still derive a slight, but audible benefit. I agree with Restes that once you're in digital, mastering at 96K from a 48K source is a waste of time and resources, however.

I can hear a not so subtle difference at 96K. I would describe it as a deepening and widening of the soundstage. Of course you wont hear it with a thrash band but for music with space around it and nuance it really sounds better.
I think that if you have recorded on a digital medium for a long time (or as the only type of recording) you get used to the sound it has and while you can hear improvements in the sound, they're always based on the digital gear that proceeded it. So its only when you hear a great analog recording that you realise what you're actually missing with a digital recorder. Depth and three dimensionality are what digital lacks when compared to analog and 96K does get you closer. Whether or not you need it is dependant on the work you do. Modern pop/rap/dance types of music will probably benefit least while stuff like jazz/classical/acoustic will benefit the most.
As far as hard drive space goes, 80 gig drives go for what 40 gig drives went for not to long ago, so the extra space doesnt bother me...and its only going to get cheaper and faster.
The great thing is that really great 2" 16 and 24 tracks are going for stupid cheap, so I will finally be able to have both soon. Then the bands that can play their instruments will go to analog, and the bands where I need to 'shine the turd' will go into the workstation. The best of both worlds!

Eric,

2" 2tk? Holy moly - I'm still woundering about 1" - I'm starting to feel like Rip Van Wanker or is it that a missing time thing, yea, thats it, the last thing I saw were those lights, then when I found myself back at home in the lab everything had gone to 192 sampeling and 2" analog and my nose hurts, must be an implant, no, no, wate, thats my nose ring, when did I get that?

Sorry, it's here www.atrservice.com/atr/atr108c.htm and it's a 2" 8-track or 1" 2-track.

it STILL blows me away that those motors can handle the weight of 2"!!!

Eric and H . the problem that these guys have run into is that they are running out of machines to do their mods on. I geuss the demand for what they are doing has outpaced the flow of machines they can purchase.They are looking at the feasability of using some of the other Otari decks like the 1/2 in.8 and 1/4 in.4's to see if they can handle those heads.Between this SACD and masterlink I geuss my $1K dat will be worth 50 cents by next year. :rolleyes:

Vin,

I'm sure Eric is on it here the moters on the deck are the thing that matters most, then azmeth, that is a lot of wieght on those parts. The bias is just resistance and can be upgraded very easily. 2", wow, I gotta check that site out, thanks Eric...

Yeah .I understand that the motors and azimuth are important.The problem is like I said, they are running out of decks to do their thing on . Get it ?

They ant gona run out of decks, twenty years ago every studio had a 2 tk, most had ATR's. A fezability on other decks is fine but there are a lot of 2 tk's out there, not to mention 4 & 8's that could handel it. :p

O.K. H. You go ahead and call these guys and
tell em you know where all these decks are so they can stop spending all their ad money trying to find them. :rolleyes:

P.S. obviously not everyone is getting rid of their big tape machines like people think.

Keyplayer: There's probably something painfully obvious to everyone else that I'm missing. But woudn't it be easier and far more cost effective to just track your data analog in the first place, then transfer your "airy data" to your DAW at 48K or even 96K and just work with the data from there?

In the early days, we budding audiophiles were taught to find the hottest level on a virgin vinyl record and then record that album straight through to tape (preferably Cassette & RTR simultaneously).

We were to then shelve the LP and only play the tape for listening enjoyment. Since the record's sound quality would start to deteriorate after 20 playings. The tape would supposedly go about 5 to 10 years with no ill effect, depending on how much you played it. So you could easily make your LP last a lifetime.

It seems to me that this is pretty much the same thing. All those engineers who pine for that Analog depth and Air should just track that way and then transfer the results to their DAW for mixing, editing, and printing. Then you'd have the 192K sound without the 192K storage requirements. Or am I completely off on this?

I just finished working on a project that was done on the new ProTools HD stuff. We did mix to 1/2" 2-track with Dolby SR then transferred the analog back into PT to create the CD. The transfer retained all of the 'meat' gained from the 1/2"... so YES Key, it does work.

Keyplayer: Did you save at 48K or 96K? BTW, what was the project, if you don't mind my asking?

Do those 2" 2 trk machines do 96k? Stop laughing, i'm axing you a question!!!!!

Key, the point isn't that analog ADDS anything like air, it just preserves what's there in terms of sonic subtlety and depth of mix. 96K does a pretty deceny job of this too largely because of the decreased aliasing artifacts in the converters. Transferring off analog at 44/48 would be no better than recording that way except you'd could hit the tape hard and you'd get a slight boost (known as "head bunp" around 42Hz (at 15 ips)). The point is, as long as your CONVERTING at high-sample, your converters sound better, even if you drop-sample rate convert at 2:1 and only STORE at 48K. Y'see?

Key,

Tape wears out to, and a trained ear can start to hear it as soon as 5 passes. Vinal on the other hand is being scrapped by the needle just as bad as the tape heads and guides but on the vinal it is more important not to play the record more than once a day and hopfully only one side per day. It has something to do with the heat generatted by the friction of that needle.

Of course that is just more useless info that won't get any of us further along in our 'budding' recording biz, but it was interesting when it was explained by a great mastering engineer at the now defunct record manufacturing plant Monark in LA.

Jeremy, the frequancy response of analog stops being flat at like 20 or so Khz, Im sure 96K does get some sort of a repersention as it is basicly only two octives higher than 20+K but each octave is only 25% of the fundamental,as a harmonic, so 96K would be 25% of 25% of like that 24K signal that is rollinf off at like 12 or 18 db per octave.

So to answer your question, yes analog does do 96K, how well it does 96K is an issue that probablly shouldn't be debated.... snicker, snicker

Rupert Neve puts 120K chokes on his gear because his crew can hear the differance in some psyco-accoustical relm that I think only alen halfbreeded human/dog eared souls can deal with. I hear something up there, but I couldn't guarntee it is audio.

Key, the concept was "who knows where digital will be in 2 or 3 years", so we mixed analog. This is STILL the BEST form of archiving for the long term!! We blew it back into PT at 44.1/16-bit so we could do CDs. If we ever decide to release it DVD-A or SACD then we'll blow it back into a DAW at the current sampling rate. The 1/2" analog is the best, safest format we could currently put it on.

Bart:
I'm with you, Digitrax. Where were you the last time this came up--when I said the same thing?

Jeremy, I can't help it--I'm still laughing.

Jeff, if I went to 96K, I would still keep the DA7 for my monitor system. If you can tolerate a small amount of latency in headphone monitors, a DA7 with a pair of AD/DA cards for the direct-outs used in conjunction with the Furman 16 channel headphone system is a great combination. Actually, that Furman system is next on my list of things to get and this is precisely what I intend to do in the near future. All the DA7 inputs are high impedance so it should work well.

I'll be keeping my DA7 for quite a while. This thing is cool!

Bart-

So has anyone else noticed the irony of the big industry push? On one hand it's implied that soon anything less than 192K will be less than pro quality while at the same time consumer gear is heading towards compressed storage systems like MP(empty)-3's that would seem to negate any gains made by the higher rates.
As I already have "debts no honest man can pay "I'll be locked into 24bit 44.1 for the near future at least. Hopefully my clients won't start screaming for 96 for another year or two.
Don't get me wrong, if I were king I'd have two 2" studers and the best convertors at the highest sample rate that money could buy but at this time I only have one loyal subject and that's my blind dog...............
Hopi

Those of you doing 96khz work. How would choose to down sample and go to 16 bit? Any software you would recommed or would you go thru your DA and back into the AD

Jeff,
Look at this thread -> Mixing higher resolution files: A Question
Bart-