Audio Interface: 24-bit/96 kHz --- Sound Card: 16-bit/96 kHz

[Ilkka Pouhakka]

Help me guys! I'm having this dilemma...

I have built-in sound card in my PC's motherboard which is capable of 16-bit / 96 kHz.
I also have Audio interface (sound card), which is capable of 24-bit / 96 kHz and plugs straight into the USB port.

Now, I set the sampling in Audacity during recording to 24-bit / 96 kHz but I just can't help it, but to think that is the audio in fact 16-bit instead? Since whenever I go to Control Panel/Sound and check the recording properties of my audio interface, it tells me 16-bit / 96 kHz and there is no possibility to go higher.

Microphone plugs via XLR into the Audio Interface, which then plugs into the USB port of my PC.

[Seth Bloombaum]

There are a few possibilities here.

What is the name/model of the USB interface? Are you using current manufacturer's drivers for it, or just plug and play? If PnP you should probably look for the manufacturer-supplied drivers & mixer utility.

It's quite common on Windows that using the USB interface as the system sound hardware can lock it in to a lower standard than you want. The solution is to go into the Sounds control panel and turn off all system sounds, and/or designate your motherboard sound as the system's resource. Then restart.

Now, you go into Audacity and set it to use the USB interface, not system sound. If it does that, it's been a long time since I used Audacity.

[Rick Reineke]

Are you recording, playing back or transferring audio from a camcorder/recorder?
For video, 48k is the standard sample rate.. acquisition and post. Most cameras only record @16bit. Most sound mixers record 48k/24. (music and S/FX is another story)
Consumer sound cards are notoriously noisy and poor sounding (in or out). especially the MB integrated ones.

[Ilkka Pouhakka]

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

What is the name/model of the USB interface? Are you using current manufacturer's drivers for it, or just plug and play?

It's Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. Very basic interface.
I do have drivers installed for it.

Originally Posted by Rick Reineke

Are you recording, playing back or transferring audio from a camcorder/recorder?

I have Blue's Yeti Pro microphone going into the interface via XLR and then the interface itself is plugged into a USB port.
Microphone is used to record speech.

It just sounds weird that it would have to go through the motherboard's own sound card because nothing that I use right now is plugged into it... Even the headset that I currently use is plugged into another USB port and I can play everything just fine.

XLR goes from microphone to the interface which then is recorded by Audacity, which is set to 24-bit / 96 kHz.


EDIT: Wait a second... My sound card seems to be 24-bit / 192 kHz capable! I re-installed my Windows last year and due to the fact that I have used USB headset (I know, not the best choice but audio editing is very new thing for me, I'm mostly a gamer so this hasn't been an issue so far... Maybe I'll invest into proper monitor speakers someday) for a year or two now, I haven't had anything going into the sound card itself and therefore I had no drivers installed for it.
Well, I went to Realtek's website, downloaded their latest driver for the on-board sound card and now it gives me Digital output all the way up to 24-bit /192 kHz. However, this is pretty much useless since I don't need this right now. Recording is input, not output and it still remains the same, 16-bit / 96 kHz within the Control Panel/Sound/Recording/Line In/Properties.

I read on other forums where people are kinda asking the same thing. Others say that I should just ignore it, and set the DAW properly and it will record in 24-bit / 96 kHz, no matter what the Control Panel's Sound properties say...

[Rick Reineke]

Typically, both interfaces should be available in Audacity's audio device settings. (though I'm not that familiar with Audacity). However if you're using the Focusrite Scarlet interface, the internal Realtek should be disabled as conflicts are common with two active interfaces .

Not sure it's relevant to the issue, but 96kHz is overkill for dialog and in some software, it can cause problems having clips of different sample rates and/or bit depths.
BTW, Audacity's project attributes should be set the same as the card; typically 48k/24 for projects with picture.

[Ilkka Pouhakka]

Well, I went to Focusrite's website (which was down while I wrote my previous post) and there is this info.

Could you please tell me what is this ASIO driver? Is ASIO4ALL the same?
Sorry, I'm still very new to this... Yesterday I learned that Audacity is actually only an editor and not a DAW.
I was wondering that why I can't move any audio pieces within the editor like I can with Vegas and Premiere. lol.

[Rick Reineke]

ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) support is useful for overdubbing and such. 'ASIO4ALL', I think is a universal ASIO driver.
ASIO may not be necessary for simple recording and playback, the 'Windows Classic Wave Driver' or 'MS Sound Mapper' will usually suffice.
Don't know much about Audacity.. except it's free. I always assumed it was a multi-track recording/mixing application. I use ProTools, Vegas Pro and Sound Forge Pro

[Fran Guidry]

Originally Posted by Ilkka Pouhakka

Well, I went to Focusrite's website (which was down while I wrote my previous post) and there is this info.

Could you please tell me what is this ASIO driver? Is ASIO4ALL the same?
Sorry, I'm still very new to this... Yesterday I learned that Audacity is actually only an editor and not a DAW.
I was wondering that why I can't move any audio pieces within the editor like I can with Vegas and Premiere. lol.

It is entirely possible to move sections of audio within Audacity. Perhaps you might visit the Audacity forum or look for some Audacity tutorials.

Fran

[Ilkka Pouhakka]

Originally Posted by Rick Reineke

Don't know much about Audacity.. except it's free. I always assumed it was a multi-track recording/mixing application.

I did some research last night and it looks like Audacity is unable to record in 24-bit when running on Windows, because it cannot use ASIO driver due to licensing issues. I'd need to purchase myself some software which has this driver built-in if I want to record in 24-bit.

Originally Posted by Fran Guidry

It is entirely possible to move sections of audio within Audacity. Perhaps you might visit the Audacity forum or look for some Audacity tutorials.

Thanks for the heads up! It seems that you are correct.
Previously I just cut and pasted everything within the editor...