I know that's cd quality but wondered why higher bit depth and sample rate aren't recommended.

Mind you with my voice recording quality may not be a positive................

Bob,

The audio files that are provided with BIAB are 16/44.1. This means that if you use applications that convert them to higher or lower bit rates and frequencies, you run the risk of introducing audio artifacts. The more conversions to and fro, the greater the likelihood of sound degradation. A good dithering process can help reduce this.

My plan of attack with my songs is to keep all my BIAB tracks native at 16 bit and 44.1 kHz until I create my final product. This means that if there is a change in quality due to compressing or stretching, the existing BIAB tracks only ever undergo a single conversion.

Regards,
Noel

• my latest song: What A Crazy Thing (cowritten with floyd jane)

Question, why would you bother to converting to 48k unless making the track for video?

Tony

One reason would be if you are using an interface with a native bit rate of 48k (think Creatve/Audigy or others). No 'on the fly' converting needed then.

It is more likely one would rather change to 24 bit as opposed to 16 bit though, which still needs a conversion.

There is more difference between 16/24 than there is between 44/48 (if the using the same 16/24 bit rate on each).
In other words, usually more to gain going from 16/44 to 24/44 than there is going from 16/44 to 16/48.
I don't see where anyone mentioned going to 48, did you assume that? Or see it in a different thread?

As for the original question; why 16/44? That's where RTs started. It was the 'common best' at the time. There are still systems in use that can only support that.

If they changed now they'd have to go back and redo thousands of recordings in order to gain nothing but additional file storage requirements. This may include redoing all the magical markers that make RTs work.

In Noel's post he say he works at 44.1 until the final product I assumed maybe wrongly that he then converted to 48. It was always my understanding one is better off to leave things as per the sampled rate. If sampled at 48 work at 48. If the product is for a CD (music) one is in fact better to sample at 44.1. I understood there is less loss working at the same rate from start to finish. No complex rendering. However I am here to learn.

Tony

Hi Tony,

My apologies for not fully explaining myself.

It would be rare for me to resample 44.1 kHz and convert it to 48 kHz. As you indicate, it's much better to leave tracks at 44.1 kHz.

What I do is to keep all BIAB tracks at 16/44.1 while I'm working on a song. Once the song is done, I render the tracks to a 16/44.1 single WAV file. (I have the Audiophile version of the software and all audio is 16/44.1 wav format.)

When I upload that WAV file to Soundcloud, Soundcloud applies its own compression routines and converts my WAV to 16/128 mp3. Since this compressing by Soundcloud is the first time that any of my BIAB tracks have been modified, the integrity of the original WAV is kept intact as much as possible.

Hope that helps clarify things.
Noel

• a co-write with J&B: I Won Life's Lotto

Thanks Noel, that I understand.

Tony

Tony, to learn more, look up dither and upsample in a book about digital audio.

The sound is less affected when the math is easy. For example, some good digital audio converters handle rates of 88.2 and 96. The 88.2 is twice 44.1 so no errors will creep in when it’s converted to 44.1. Thus that may be a better sounding choice than 96 if the final destination is a CD. And of course ‘CD quality’ is more than a particular rate: it is a requirement that an audio file be 16/44.1 to meet the Red Book standard of audio CDs. DVDs use 48 and that’s why there is also 96.

L.S.,

For my Roland RC-300 looper - according to its manual - all files need to be:
WAV, 16-bit linear, stereo linear and 44.1kHz.

It can’t find where to select a bit rate in biab for a WAV file. Does anybody know what the standard biab WAV file’s format is? Or am I overlooking something?

Thanks in advance!

Hi. 16 bit, 44.1KHz is the standard for CD quality. BIAB for Windows has no adjustment. If you have the audiophile version, it uses .WAV files that are CD quality. If not, it uses .WMA files.

Thanks Matt for the quick reply! I’ve got the audiophile version so this can’t be the problem. I’ll have to look further why the RC-300 plays the WAV files differently from what I’ve recorded.

I'm going to look up what a RC-300 looper is.

Can you tell us more detail? How is it connected? What happens? Especially, what does "plays the WAV files differently" mean?

You said Roland. But is it this? https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/RC300--boss-rc-300-loop-station-3-track-looper-pedal?gclid=CjwKCAiAz-7UBRBAEiwAVrz-9U09SYtksyrEO1LpRdJXvJCORnziIdeB3Pxi5vpR6s1JT62n5ZDquxoCJNMQAvD_BwE

Thanks for thinking with me! It’s Roland’s RC-300 looper. The WAV files are transported from my computer to the looper through a USB cable, exactly as described in the loopers’ manual. It’s kind a hard to describe how it sounds but it’s quite far from what I’ve recorded, maybe “speed up swirly” describes it a bit.
I suspect it can have something to do with the looper settings. So I’m going to dive a bit more deeper in the settings. I hope I will find the answer there. Thanks again!

Edit: you’re completely right, I should have said BOSS RC-300.

Speed up swirly does sound like a setting on the looper, though I have never used one (at least, not since an EchoPlex in the early 1970s).

A frequent complaint of sound that seems 'sped up' occurs when the sample rate is 48KHz, not 44.1. Check that.

'Swirly' could be from the pedal, as chorus, or flanger.

I thought 44.1kHz was the standard in a biab WAV file (or did I misunderstood?).
How can I check if it’s 44.1 or 48 kHz? Thanks again!

It is.

I'm suggesting that your pedal may not be set correctly.

Are you exporting your song project from Band-in-a-Box as a WAV file then importing the WAV file from your computer USB port to the USB port of the Boss Looper?

Have you checked Band-in-a-Box's audio settings to make sure the audio setting is 16 bit / 44.1 Khz sample rate? The program may have defaulted to different settings and maybe converting and you don't know that it is converting.

also...

It's possible that 'speed up swirly' could describe audio artifacts that are created when an audio file is stretched or compressed too much.

These artifacts arise when audio is used too far outside the tempo at which it was created.

Thanks to you all! No problems anymore, it must have been the tempo setting on my RC-300. So now I can continue playing.

Maybe I’m telling something already known, but for those interested: by right clicking on my .WAV file and after that clicking on “properties” I learned that the data rate is 1411 kbps which equals 44.1kHz in stereo (2 (stereo) x 16bits x 44.1 kHz = 1411 kbps (kilobits per second)).

So I seem to be lucky going for the Audiophile edition with my RC-300 (which was a bit mean, cause as an audiophile I simply couldn’t go for the other versions; clever people at PG Music Inc.).