Topic by sandalholme

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  • sandalholme
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Topic: Audio recording question

I have PT Standard and set my PT recordings to max: 48000, 32 bit. I then process them through Audacity and have been exporting them at 48000, 32 bit floating WAV. As I am about to transfer a cd collection to a streaming system, I experimented with flac instead of WAV to save space. Audacity has a max of "8", whatever that means, and 24 bit.  Listening to a test recording it sounded a bit thinner, but that might have been my imagination.

Two questions: anyone know what "8" means - higher or lower than 48000 and therefore is an 8/24 bit flac recording likely to be inferior to a 48000/32bit WAV recording? Secondly, is the sound quality of PT Pro - up to 192000, presumably at least 32bit - significantly better than Standard?

Reply by EvilDragon

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  • EvilDragon
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Re: Audio recording question

sandalholme wrote:

Listening to a test recording it sounded a bit thinner, but that might have been my imagination.

FLAC is lossless compression format - when you convert it back to WAV you get 1:1 identical copy of the original WAV you made the FLAC from (well except in your case not, since you're reducing it down from 32-bit FP which FLAC doesn't support. I suggest you to start with 24-bit WAVs when you encode to FLAC.)

"8" is compression level for FLAC, it meaning best compression. It has no relation to sample rate of the original WAV the FLAC file was made from - FLAC retains the sample rate of the original file.

Also, regarding 192k, the sound is the same, really. Pianos don't have a lot spectral energy above 10 kHz anyways.

Last edited by EvilDragon (03-02-2017 10:52)
Hard work and guts!

Reply by sandalholme

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Re: Audio recording question

Many thanks for the reply and information. Apologies for the delay in acknowledging: out all day yesterday.  Must get back to the piano .........