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DanielB
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October 4, 2012 - 4:30 am
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Audacity (or any other modern sound software I'm familiar with) isn't the big problem when it comes to things like sampling rates and etc.  I have additional soundcards in my machine, and what sampling rates and options are available depend on which soundcard I am using. 

On most computers just as they come from the store or dealer, the soundcard is on the mommyboard and the main cpu basically has to pause in whatever it is doing when it needs to process sound (or video, for that matter).  On even a machine with good specs, that is going to cause some bottlenecks sometimes and if they are bad enough you can actually hear the "hitch" as a short "stumble" in the sound.  The default sound section on the mommyboard is basically made to be more than enough to cover "you've got mail", "beep", or doing a reasonable job when you're watching the latest lolcat vid clip on something like youtube.  If you are actually doing anything demanding really good sound, even a modest separate and dedicated soundcard will usually do a better job.  Then your main cpu just passes the data to the soundcard instead of having to pause in it's usual processing to actually render the data into sound.

It is similar to what almost any gamer knows happens with graphics cards.  A computer may have pretty good specs, but when it comes to rendering 3d graphics on the fly while trying to compute and store other things, system performance suffers.  Even a fairly cheap graphics/video card will usually do a considerably better job than the one that came on the mommyboard.  If someone comes into any game or other video intensive thing (like a flight simulator) forum and complains of the graphics looking crappy or not being smooth, the first thing they'll usually be asked is if they have a graphics/video card.

If you actually do multi-track on a computer, there is yet another difference, since two soundcards can do a better job than one.  For all that most soundcard companies will talk about how good their card will do at "full duplex" operation, the simple truth is that a soundcard will do better if it is not trying to play back AND record at the same time. 

If you've had to set the preferences in any sound software you work with, you may have thought it was kind of weird and redundant that a lot of software has you set the record device and playback device options separately.  But this is why.  Somebody who is trying to get even semi-pro results won't expect to get them with a stock "mom and pop" computer.  It will be ok up to a certain limit, but to break that limit will take a bit more hardware.

 

@Oliver:  A stand-alone device is made to do one job, and so it will usually do it better than a general computer that had to be engineered to be useful for many things.  Also stand-alone devices can be much better for the portability.  Their drawback is that when you want more capability than they were made to deliver, you can't just add a card to get more (except for storage space, usually). 

I don't keep up on camcorders much, but I have never met one personally where I felt the mic was much better than what one might use to record a birthday party or something for "home movies".  To actually get a really good production, I'd think that most likely approach would be to set up a computer or other device and some good microphones and use that for the audio and only use the audio track on the video recording device as something to synch the better soundtrack to.  Same way as the movie making industry has been doing things for decades.

And sooner or later comes the sad realization that after you put a lot of thought and effort into getting a somewhat professional result, that the average person in your "target audience" may only ever see what you did via a low-spec "stream" off the internet, and may well be listening to the audio you spent hours fine-tuning through the default speakers on their laptop or a set of dollar store headphones.  Oh well.  LOL

"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman

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Worldfiddler
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October 4, 2012 - 4:31 pm
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Just thought I'd chip in (no pun intended!)

 

For the record, I try not to use Audacity for final production, because it will record all the other noise from any of your PC components while in record mode. It's great for general stuff, though .. and free :)

 

Here's how I do my vids : I use a Sony Handycam TRV-620E (old by today's standards) on a tripod, and I record the audio separately using two AKG C1000S mics, to a digital recorder. I use Cyberlink Powerdirector to edit the result, and sync the audio with it. I mute the video cam's audio, because it's usually crap. I do a final export to high-quality MPEG4, and this is what goes up to YouTube.

On my early YouTube vids, the sound is pretty grim, but that was before I recorded the audio separately.

I think the results are OK for a "home" recording :)

 

Mr Jim  dancing

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DanielB
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October 4, 2012 - 5:40 pm
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Worldfiddler said

For the record, I try not to use Audacity for final production, because it will record all the other noise from any of your PC components while in record mode.

 

Could you clarify that a little?  You mean like some sort of electrical sound from the graphics card or hard drive spinning up, or?

dunno

 

Sounds like you've got a sweet setup going, though, and your vids always do sound good, Mr Jim.

"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman

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Worldfiddler
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October 4, 2012 - 6:24 pm
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Thanks :) I do my best ...

 

""Could you clarify that a little?  You mean like some sort of electrical sound from the graphics card or hard drive spinning up, or?""

 

Well, anything that make a sound. If the input is mic, then there's the sound of vibration, fan, etc. If the input is line, then there's a fair amount of electrical noise from anything in the electrical pathways within the PC.

 

Not that you'd notice it much using "home" equipment, but it's there all the same - and on subsequent copies and re-generations of the recording, the noise can actually get quite noticable, esp if you play the recording on high-end audio equipment, which can be quite unforgiving :)

 

Mr Jim dancing 

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DanielB
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October 4, 2012 - 6:38 pm
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Ah.  Ok, thanks, Mr Jim.

I usually do noise reduction on anything I record analog anyway, to clean up the track before using it in a mix.  If one doesn't it adds up fast when multi-tracking. 

I feed the line input from my mixing board, since the computer's mic in always has it's own pre-amp and a bit of tone shaping for a computer mic and that won't be what I'll want. 

Yeah, there's always going to be at least some base noise when recording direct on a computer, since most of them aren't really designed for recording like a good professional digital recorder should be.  Still, home recording has come a long way since the days of the little home cassette 4-tracks. LOL

"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman

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