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Sound quality question.
Hello good people
I have a question about sound quality. I love to write music , but my technical understanding of sound is GARBAGE.
I have been making loops within AUM and exporting these to Koala, and finishing these off in Ableton (maybe adding better bass, little touches really). I export everything from Koala to Ableton.
My question is, are the synths, drums - general audio quality of IOS synths good enough sound quality if I were to want to release something?
Or Should I be re doing everything within Ableton with VSTS? Or do IOS synths/sound sources (Zeeon, quanta, Fluss, Drum machine etc) stand up in their own right as legitimate sound sources?
Again, I'm clueless when it comes to sample rates and technical audio quality, never mind knowing how to gauge it. Just wanted some thoughts from people a bit more in the know than me!
Thanks guys
Comments
The simple answer is yes. There is no fundamental difference in quality between iOS instruments and desktop ones.
That's good news. Saw a lot of debate about this on an old Reddit post and it made me doubt things
Some apps have much higher quality core sound than others. Can't speak for the others but Zeeon is quality
My advice would be to record loops in the iPad at 24 bit and 48Khz for further processing in Ableton / DAW.
Have also seen comments about this on other threads as well, IOS stuff sounding thin etc.
Would there be any technical reasons to back up these views? Could it be unconscious bias or similar reasons?
Obviously a fair few people feel this way so interesting to know why.
I have a question: When you record your audio in 16bit and want to further process/master it in Cubasis, does it make sense to convert it first to 32bit to avoid quality loss, or does that make no sense?
Interesting question, I'm curious too. My gut instinct is to say that it makes sense to upsample if you're going to do destructive editing of the waveform, but won't make a difference if you're sending it down a chain for processing and re-recording.
If I'm not mistaken Cubasis always works with 32-bit floats internally regardless of the source format...
...so 'upsampling' the file to 32bit would not increase the quality but just pad the bits and take up more storage.
This is my thinking aswell. I worry I could be biased toward IOS sounds because it's an iPad and not a computer. But at the same time, if there was a way of knowing I'd be quickly satisfied.
Much if the initial sound quality discussion was heavily focused around recording the iPads output using the built-in 3.5mm jack and comparing that to the output from other instruments...
When using the same audio-interface with both the iPad or the Computer the only difference left is the DSP code the apps use.
Good to know, thanks Samu.
Interesting, I had a feeling Zeeon was of a decent standard
Makes sense. I imagined they were using the internal speaker. 😆
Adding some details to the already correct answer:
No one can hear any „quality“ difference between 16bit or 24bit audio (32bit is just the same plus some math tricks, simplified), if it‘s been sampled and later played back by the same converter in each case.
A proper 16bit signal covers sounds as low as -96dB, most gear has a noise floor way above that level.
If you capture synth sounds in 16bit, you don‘t perceive a difference to a 24bit version because the digital source is essentially noiseless.
For analog signals (in particular microphone recording) it‘s a bit different because a 24bit signal has a super convenient amount of headroom. It covers everything from a whisper to a scream. But you can‘t use that raw signal in a final mix, because the (typical) playback system has a much lower dynamic range plus listeners expect a certain kind of „dynamic“ in audio.
So low (loudness) levels may be expanded, while high levels may be compressed to achieve a proper dynamic range.
That range (in contemporary music) is well within the bounds covered by 16bit.
Remark: this assumes you use current gear with 24bit converters, which most interfaces have today.
Except budget devices that use (so called) USB-Codecs where the converter is part of the chipset and labeled 16bit. These devices only capture 16bit signals in theory, in real world they deliver rather in the 12bit range, and due to their simple design usually quite distorted.
(distorted not in the sense of a guitar amp, but the signal has more noise or is kind of flat sounding)
Of course also high quality USB Codecs exist, but those are usually 24bit devices.
Disagree. Reverb tails, cymbals, other artifacts are definitely clearer and more precise with 24 bit.
You didn‘t notice the bold „same“ in context with converter.
The converters resolution is identical, if you snip off the most significant 16 bits of a 24bit data word.
ps: I‘ve written „sampled“, but this of course also applies to playback. I‘ve added this to the post above.
If you compare a device with 24bit converter to another one with 16bit converter, you‘ll hear a lot of difference, simply because it‘s 2 different devices.
I make a slightly different assumption. We all know 16-bit sound at least from cd records. If the iPad reproduces the sound from a CD disc correctly, there is no reason to assume that the sound extracted from digital synthesizers will be of inferior quality.
Fundamental to the transition from digital to analog sound is the DAC, meaning the interface.
I don't see the slightest reason to have doubts about the quality of sound coming from an iPad.
Levelling and gain staging is the key.
Cheers
P.S. I remember my first gig with the iPad. It was 6-gen, and I used audio jack. Soundman complaint (sp?) the low level. I inserted my cheapo active DI-boxes and it was allright then. Some time later, when I first tried using an audio interface, I never went back to using a 3.5mm audio jack. I still have one iPad with an audio jack, and I very much enjoy using it to listen to the audio feed of sports broadcasts.