Riches Return

[stuartb@...]

I had Audio Creation Mode set on my XP install, can't remember about bit-matching.
 Noticed that my new WIn7 install had reverted to Game Mode so perhaps the last few tapes were set to that. Also, in the driver settings, it said that the Shared Mode default settings are 24-bit 48kHz. Then just a bit down, there is a section called Exclusive Mode, and there is a tick box for Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device. And another one, Give exclusive mode applications priority. Both ticked
  
 Does that mean that Audacity was taking control of this and change the A/D sampling to whatever it is set to?
  
 I've now ticked Bitmatching on record and playback, re-enabled bitmatching, changed Audacity to sample at 48kHz to match the X-Fi shared mode setting. Don't know if that will make a great deal of difference bearing in mind I will only ever be converting from tapes to 320kbps mp3 or flac.
  
  
 The following from the wiki page suggests that 48 to 44.1 isn't as bad as it would have been on my older Audigy 4.
  
  
 A big improvement in the X-Fi DSP over the previous Audigy design, is the complete overhaul of the resampling engine on the card. The previous Audigy cards had their DSPs locked at 48 kHz/16-bit, meaning any content that didn't match this format had to be resampled on the card in hardware, which resulted in serious intermodulation distortion. For the X-Fi, Creative completely rewrote the resampling engine and dedicated more than half of the power of the DSP to the process, resulting in a very clean resample.[citation needed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed] Furthermore, in "Audio Creation mode" with "bit-matched playback" option, the X-Fi can work with real 44,100 Hz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44,100_Hz sample rate without any kind of resampling or other signal processing.[citation needed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed]
 The audio processor on X-Fi was the most powerful at its time of release, offering an extremely robust sample rate conversion (SRC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_rate_conversion) engine in addition to enhanced internal sound channel routing options and greater 3D audio enhancement capabilities. A significant portion of the audio processing unit was devoted to this resampling engine. The SRC engine was far more capable than previous Creative sound card offerings, a limitation that had been a major thorn in Creative's side. Most digital audio is sampled http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(signal_processing) at 44.1 kHz, a standard no doubt related to CD-DA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-DA, while sound cards were often designed to process audio at 48 kHz. So, the 44.1 kHz audio must be resampled to 48 kHz (Creative's previous cards' DSPs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signal_processor operated at 48 kHz) for the audio DSP to be able to process and affect it. A poor resampling implementation introduces artifacts into the audio which can be heard, and measured as higher intermodulation distortion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodulation_distortion, within higher frequencies (generally 16 kHz and up).[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Fi_(audio_chip)#cite_note-1 X-Fi's resampling engine produces a near-lossless-quality result, far exceeding any known audio card DSP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signal_processor available at the time of release. This functionality is used not only for simple audio playback, but for several other features of the card such as the "Crystalizer", a technology that claims to improve the clarity of digital music through digital analysis (supported by all X-Fi models, including the Xtreme Audio and X-Mod).
 

---In peel@yahoogroups.com, <peel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 heyhey!  I'd suggest that the "32bit-float" sample depth is perhaps what audacity is using for calculation or file storage, but *not* what was used for conversion. The converter itself (a chip on your creative X-fi card) definitely doesn't run at that bit depth (none do - like i said even 24bits has higher signal-to-noise ratio than ANY analogue electronics can manage).. I think it's capable of decent 24bit A/D conversion (looks like it uses the  Wolfson WM8775 chip which can go up to 24bits and up to 96khz) so you'd have to find out what it was set to do in your driver settings... (16 bit or 24bit)
 

 The main thing to watch for with creative cards is I know it still by default does their strange sample-rate-conversion (ie it runs natively at 48khz and then smushes it around to present a 44.1khz stream to audacity) that creative always used - it does leave artifacts in the sound, even if they claim it's 'transparent'. 
 

 It can be disabled with that card I believe .... by chosing (I quote from wikipedia): "Audio Creation mode" with "bit-matched playback" option, the X-Fi can work with real 44,100 Hz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44,100_Hz sample rate without any kind of resampling or other signal processing. 
 
 I believe "audio creation mode" would allow other sample rates too..
 

 So that would mean you were sure when you quote 44.1khz that it was actually that and not creative's silly 48khz-converted-to-44.1 madness.
 

 also I'd turn off whatever other 'crystalizer','3D' or other DSP-based nonsense they'd have you believe was ace...
 
 

 sorry if this technical babble seems relentless.. as usual I prescribe a rennie and a pinch of salt. And by all means ignore this all because the main thing is to get the tapes heard, everything else is secondary!