[linux-audio-user] Ardour and DAT

[Greg Wilder]

On Wed, 2005-07-20 at 10:37 +0530, ISh wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> I am editing a radio programme on ardour and the whole project has to be 
> delivered on DAT (Tape)format to the Radio station. As I am using a lot 
> of music made by myself and other friends the music and a lot of 'field 
> recordings ' that are on cd format(16 bit, 44Khz Audio). I am using 
> 'Soundblaster Creative Audigy ZS'. Now there are a few issues/points 
> that were coming up regarding resampling, recoring on DAT etc.
> 
> 1. Now a lot of field recordings and Music in on Cd (16bit ,44Khz) 
> format. And I am working with 48Khz ,16bit on the jackd(deamon) and on 
> ardour. Now if I oversample/ ‘resample at a higher rate’ in ardour by 
> importing it in the 'Auditions' region i.e. basically from 44Khz to 
> 48Khz. Will I loose out on quality. Is the Ardour re-sampler good enough 
> to handle this conversion.
> 
> 2. Or, should I work with 16bit-44Khz setting (on jackd/Ardour) and 
> export the final mixed session once finished to 16bit-48Khz(DAT) . So I 
> can take the dump of the final session on DAT tapes. Will this way be 
> better than the point(1) above in which all the audio is individually 
> re-sampled at
> 
> 3. I have a 'Tascam DA-P 1' DAT recorder on which I have to dump the 
> final edit. So how do I go about this. Should I play the audio in Ardour 
> only and the send it to the DAT recorder. Or should i play the exported 
> file in a player like Alsaplayer/ Audacity(which plays audio rec at 
> 48Khz ‘?’) and then take the dump through SPDIF out into the DAT 
> recorder. Is this possible to do the above mentioned process(s) any 
> other way, which might be better.
> 
> Basically Im dealing with a lot of audio at 44KHz which has to mixed 
> together and the final output will be on 48Khz(DAT Tape). What could be 
> the best way to deal with it so that there is no or very little loss in 
> quality. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Because it will affect sound quality, you'll want to resample as few
times as possible.  From the information you've given, I assume this
means that you'll want to resample at the end of the mixing/mastering
process.

Given the quality of the converters in your sound card, I would
definitely recommend that you use SPDIF to transfer your final mix to
the DAT.

Best,
Greg