Quality audio CD production

#1

Dear All

I have recently purchased a soundcard that records in resolutions up to 24-bit 96KHZ, and I am using this to record high-quality analogue sources.

I have three questions:

1: When ‘burning’ an audio CD from a recording, is the write format fixed, ie 16-bit 4100KHZ, or is it possible to produce something of better quality? I will be replaying on a hifi CD player rather than a computer, but would be happy to buy something more appropriate.

2: If write format is fixed, is there much to be gained from recording at a higher resolution (forgetting the question of archiving for future use for now)?

2: The soundcard is a USB Soundblaster, and was around £50. Is this well-regarded as far as sound quality goes?

Any comments would be welcome

Andrew

#2
  1. The stantar audio cd format is fixed at 44100 Hz 16 bit.
#3

That’s that then - thanks

Andrew
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#4

If you are making any adjustments, and have the space to tolerate filesizes 50%, 117% or 226% larger than their CD quality size, than it may help if you master at better than CD quality, while carrying out any equalization, normalization, noise reduction or compression operations, downconverting to 44.1k 16 bit as a final step (with last bit dither, possibly).

The other side of the equation, sample rate conversions are never perfect, but if 96k is the native sample rate for the device, any other rates might be provided by internal sample rate conversion anyway.

If it can do unconverted sample rates, working at 44.1k / 24 bit may be preferable, and certainly faster to handle.

The problem with 96k to 44.1 conversion, is it’s 2.18 samples to 1, so each 44.1k sample is the average of two, with the remaining 0.18 fudged in somehow.

#5

Thanks - The files do get a bit big at 96, especially when recording from radio. I won’t be doing any processing, preferring to take it as it comes, so 44.1/24 would seem to be a sensible option, and I will use that.

Andrew