Good morning,

(my current setup:
AMD athlon XP 2400
512mb ram
40gb HD
Soundblaster (16bit 44.1khz)
Sonar 2.2
Standard MIDI keyboard
)

I have a dilema,

I want to include vocals in my projects, but I am on a budget.

I have seen some offerings by M-audio for around 100-150 (fast-track) that offer
an XLR in and pre-amp, and interface with my PC via USB, so there is no A to D conversion.
However when the audio is transfered, it is truncated to 24bit and 48kz. Since I eventually want to purchase a soundcard that supports 24bit 96khz audio, this pre-amp will eventually be inadequate.

My question is: which would be the lesser of 2 evils:
(Assume that I'm recording vocals on a good mic, the soundcard supports 24bit 96khz audio, and ideal environmental condictions)
1. recording vocals through a good anologue mixer, into the analouge input on my soundcard.
2. recording vocals through a usb pre-amp that turncates the audio format from analouge to 24bit 48khz audio

So, if anyone has any helpful advice, please let me know!

--Joshua

this would probably be better off in the production forum.

moved

___________________
MUGGETS

There is always A to D conversion when you're recording to a computer, as this medium is per definition digital.

Either you use the USB route, and then the A/D conversion is done by the preamp unit, either you use the analog in of your soundcard, and then it's the soundcards converter that will be used.

Eventually, everything will come down to the weakest link in your chain.

If your soundcard has bad converters (24/96 doesn't necessarily guarantee the converters are good...), it will limit the sound quality, even if using a good preamp. The opposite is true also, it's no better using a good converter with a crap preamp.

So, both need to be good.

The other question is the samplerate. The gain of quality from using 96 kHz will be very minimal, and to most people even inaudible. And frankly, not worth the effort considering the extra space it takes, the ratio is not favorable.

More than excellent results can be achieved in 44.1 already, and unless you are using the best mics, best preamps and best converters, you'd be hard pressed to hear the advantages of 96 kHz.
Personally, I find the bitdepth to be far more important.

One advantage a 24/96 converter can have is that it's build to more strict requirements. So using a standard 24/96 converter "below" it's maximum performance (say 16/44.1 or 24/44.1) usually results in better quality than using a converter built for 16/44.1 use (of course, talking about standard appliances here, of course a 3000$ 16/44.1 converter has more chance to beat a 100$ 24/96 one).

So I'd say, to answer your questions, it mostly comes down to the quality of the mic and the preamp you'll be using.