So I got my emu 0404 USB this morning, and I've set it up with Ableton. Now, I want the ability to play say something from Winamp while working in Ableton, to adjust my ears during mastering, and I set that up by using a spdif passthrough from my onboard soundcard to the 0404 device, and using the direct monitor function.

I found that when Ableton is opened, it forces the 0404 to the samplerate set in ableton, which was 44.1. Apparantly the passthrough signal is at 48khz and it refused to play as long as ableton was running, so I switched the samplerate in Ableton to 48khz aswell. This seemed to work fine except.. the main melody of my track in ableton has "completely" changed, it sounds alot thinner and clearer than before.

Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but from what I've heard I didn't believe there would be such a difference.. It really does sound different than it does at 44.1khz, the "huge" atmospheric sound and ambience is completely gone.

Reading what people say about producing at 48khz, and even up towards 96khz makes me wonder how they keep track of how it'll actually sound at 44.1kh. I'm also wondering why you would use a higher rate, except for when recording, as it'll almost always be downsampled anyway, and probably sound different?

And this also leaves me with a problem, should I do all my productions at 48khz, or is there a way to downsample the spdif passthrough from my onboard soundcard to 44.1khz ?

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Last edited by ezet on Apr-21-2009 at 13:04

Most soundcards has a sample rate LOCK setting, which forces everything to stay at the same sample rate.

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Well, I can't figure out how to get sound from the winamp passthrough when ableton live is running at anything else than 48khz.

Having it at 44.1khz now, the emu config says:
Sample Rate: 44.1khz
Sync Source: Internal (Locked)
Digital Input Status: 48khz

And the Sync Status (EXT) led keeps blinking unless I set Ableton to work at 48khz, like if it isn't able to lock/sync the internal and external input, (INT) has a steady light.

Am I doing something wrong? Also, is it correct that I need to use a second soundcard to be able to play from 2 different sources using the emu asio drivers? With Ableton running Winamp simply gives me a "bad driver" error when trying to play anything through the emu.

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I know that you cannot use the ASIO driver in more than one application at a time.

If you want to use both, you have to set Winamp to use MME drivers or something like that.

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Bah, can't seem to find a way to let Winamp let me select the specific drivers to use with the 0404.

The easiest solution would be to produce at 48khz, but the difference in sound shocked me.

Is it normal to hear such a difference? How do you do it when producing at higher samplerates, complete the mix & master and hope for the best when downsampling ? I'm confused.

I'll post some wav samples if needed.

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Just, when u make progress in a track, keep rendering wavs dithered down to 44.1 and check it that way, you will just have to get used to it. But, I don't think it would hurt u to produce at a higher rate, just keep bouncing and checkin at 44.1 , adjust as needed.

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Okay, I'll give that a try. Would exporting sound different than simply changing the playback samplerate of ableton down to 44.1khz for referrence?

quote:

yeah 44.1/24 always unless i've got a sample in 16 bit. But for most cases 24 bit.

from a different topic. Does having 1 sample at 16-bit and the rest at 24-bit mean that I should do it all at 16-bit for best quality ?

I'm sorry for asking all these "noob" questions, but there's alot to learn.

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why dont ya play pro tracks inside ableton for reference when mastering instead of using winamp?

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haha. Good question, and I don't really have an answer. No idea why I didn't think of that.

I like the clarity higher samplerates gave, now I just need to figure out exactly what rate suits my needs. Thanks for the help, feel free to check out the track I mentioned above at http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...&forumid=74&s=.

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quote:

Originally posted by G-Con why dont ya play pro tracks inside ableton for reference when mastering instead of using winamp?

The G in G-Con stands for Genius I don't know why I didn't think to give that answer and that is actually what I do I need to lay off the icky sticky, its starting to make me dumb.

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quote:

Originally posted by ezet Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but from what I've heard I didn't believe there would be such a difference.. It really does sound different than it does at 44.1khz, the "huge" atmospheric sound and ambience is completely gone.

There shouldn't be any audible difference at all. You probably have a faulty VST. I know Synth1 behaves weirdly at 96kHz for example.
You shouldn't hear a difference unless you're a dog or a bat.

quote:

Originally posted by Eldritch There shouldn't be any audible difference at all. You probably have a faulty VST. I know Synth1 behaves weirdly at 96kHz for example. You shouldn't hear a difference unless you're a dog or a bat.

Exactly.....but if you produce at 24bit and 96k on a studio system that is capable of letting you hear the difference then you will notice it. an emu soundcard with home monitors isn't going to make a shade of difference at all.