Recording audio vs virtual instruments

[uptowners2010]

i have a question about recording audio vs working with midi and virtual instruments. ok so the they say that 24 bit is better then 16 bit and that is very true. but what i am wondering is how would the audio quality of a recording be if you just work with midi and virtual instruments at 16 bit. would the audio quality make that much of a difference if you record internally then working with audio. i know that recording instruments with audio at 24bit is amazing at 24 bit over 16 bit. but what about recording midi/virtual instruments internally through my mbox or something.

[zedhed]

Your Bit rate is chosen when creating a session. So Audio & VI's done within that session will be processed at the Bit rate chosen. Bare in mind, Virtual Instruments are using Audio Samples to produce sound.

There are two things you should be concerned about when creating your audio files; those are sampling rate and bit rate.

Sampling rate represents the sound frequency range. The higher sampling rate the file is, the wider the frequency range is. In other words, higher is better quality. Your lows will be lower, your highs will be higher. Lower rates can dampen the highs and lows so that audio quality is lower. You won't notice that much on a cheap set of headphones, but on high quality ones you'll notice a huge difference.

Bit rate defines how many "bits" of space the file takes per second of audio. Obviously the higher the bit rate, the higher quality audio you'll have.

So for best quality, you want high sampling rates and high bit rates. Sampling rates do not affect file size as much as bit rates do, so if space is at a premium (like on an expansion card) a good tradeoff is to create high sampling rate files with a lower bit rate, or use a variable bit rate (VBR) with a moderately high "base" setting, like 128kbps.

[musicman691]

There is no such term as bit rate; properly it is called bit depth. The higher the bit depth the bigger the dynamic range (signal level).

The reason a higher sample rate gives 'better' sound is the extension on the high end of the frequency spectrum so you get more overtones. You may not hear them due to age and hearing problems, but if they weren't there you'd notice a very dull sound.

Back on topic: as to virtual instruments a lot is going to depend on whether the vi is resident on the same computer you're doing recording on or not. If the vi is on the same computer you have to see if it has options to change the bit depth and sample rate - not all do. If the vi in question is a sampler or sample player then your bit depth is dependent on the bit depth of the sample set. Some vi's give you the option to use a 16 bit or 24 bit sample set - this depends on what is installed on your computer. Companies do this because they recognize not everyone has large hard disk drives to hold the large sample sets.

And the audio I/O doesn't matter until you render the MIDI track into audio. Until then you're not actually recording anything through your mBox (the MIDI string is digital).

[daeron80]

The internal audio path in PT9 is 32-bit float. The output of VIs will be converted to that bit depth regardless of the session settings. As long as you keep them virtual all the way to mix down, the session bit depth will make no difference to their sound. However, if at some point you print a VI (record it to an audio track), that 32-bit float signal will get converted to the session bit depth in order to write the file to disk. In that case, a 24-bit session will yield superior resolution. If you're only using VIs, the computer won't use any more resources for a 24-bit session than a 16-bit one, and if you record anything to audio, 24-bit will be better. So, why not?

[zedhed]

Bit Rate/Bit Depth

Tom_ate_oes/Tom_ar_toes

Depends what part of the world you come from

[Craig F]

Originally Posted by zedhed

Bit Rate/Bit Depth

Tom_ate_oes/Tom_ar_toes

Depends what part of the world you come from

no,
Bit Rate involves a time component
Bit Depth is the size of the bit word

a 24 bit word at sample frequency of 48kHz has a bit rate of 1,152,000 bits per second

[ThunderKyss]

Even though VIs have been out for a while now, I think that frontier is still wide open.

Questions like these shouldn't need to be asked. You have the gear, try it out. See what it do. If you like, then go with it. If not, stop wasting your time.

Interesting question though.

Ω