Does rendering a digital track in DAW or audio editor depend on the sound card

[Eyal11223344]

Hi,
I use Reaper as my DAW and Audacity as my audio editor. I am wondering:
1. Does rendering a midi track with its VST instruments and effects to a file depend on the sound card ? does it
use the sound card at all ?
2. Same question with digital audio track instead of midi ?
3. Does it make any difference which DAW or audio editor is used in this regard ?

[Chapelle]

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[LawrenceF]

Well... to be accurate...

1. Q(a): No Q(b):Yes. If you're rendering in real time it obviously does need the sound card and driver and clock.
2. No
3. No.

For offline renders only... "No, no, and no."

[Xenakios]

If you're rendering in real time it obviously does need the sound card and driver and clock.

Right, but I guess the hidden question is "does the sound card affect the render sound quality?"... (Which it maybe could if some unusual routing etc was done, but those would be very uncommon circumstances...)

[LawrenceF]

Yes. The other implied question is... "Does your sound card affect the final audio quality? ... which is ... yes and no.

If a crappy sound card affects what you hear in some negative way it will affect the final result (same with monitors actually) which affects final sound quality, because your decisions are based on what you hear ... but in this day and age you'd have to skimp pretty badly to get something that sounds like crap or whose converters just plain suck and have you EQ'ing against them or something.

It doesn't - directly - affect (or even touch) what gets printed but it can certainly indirectly affect it in one of those maybe rare corner cases where you are just using a really crappy sound card. For example, if your cheap $50 USB card has it's phones outputs polarity inverted from the mains because nobody at the Widget factory does QC, it might affect the quality of all of your recorded vocal tracks in some way (the performances) ... which is why audio engineers always check that stuff when they open the box. You'd be surprised.

[Eyal11223344]

What I meant was doing rendering to a file, which I understand from your answers does not need the sound card. It sounds logic to me because the digital samples should be processed digitally without any need for digital to analog conversion. By real time rendering do you mean converting the digital processing to analog in order to hear it in the speakers in real time ?

I wasn't sure at first about the part of the sound card at rendering, but now things are more clear. I would like to sum it up and see if I understand:
1. Offline rendering (rendering to a file) doesn't use digital to analog conversion and therefore the sound card has no effect on the digital audio quality.
2. Online (real time) rendering use the digital to analog conversion of the sound card and therefore affects the quality of the analog
sound that comes out from the sound card to the speakers amplifier, but it still doesn't affect at all the digital processed audio that is
output to digital to analog converter of the sound card.
3. Sound card main job is to convert digital samples to audio samples and vice verso. It does not give any digital processing power like a
GPU has on pc graphics rendering.

Is that correct ?

[LawrenceF]

It depends on what sound card you're talking about. Some of them do have DSP, reverb, eq, comps, etc.

Don't spend much time thinking about it, just make your music. Most of the other stuff is just a rabbit hole that might get you spending time on stuff that has no real influence on your music.

[stardustmedia]

Hi,
I use Reaper as my DAW and Audacity as my audio editor. I am wondering:
1. Does rendering a midi track with its VST instruments and effects to a file depend on the sound card ? does it
use the sound card at all ?
2. Same question with digital audio track instead of midi ?
3. Does it make any difference which DAW or audio editor is used in this regard ?

No

No

Yes, but as far as I know only when bouncing a whole mix. E.g. Ableton sounds pretty different and not so good.

[Eyal11223344]

Thanks

[Papagi]

Hello
Close to topic so i ask if preferred driver (Asio-wasapi)effect on sound which i hear?
I use wasapi becouse it have OUT to Realphone systemwide, that not provide if i prefen Asio. In the end Same card , difference driver model.
And I don’t understand why Asio cannot provide me with identical outputs like wasapi does.
also asio show not much but bigger buffer size

2wwww.png

[jancivil]

Well... to be accurate...

1(b): Yes. If you're rendering in real time it obviously does need the sound card and driver and clock.

Would you mind explaining this to me?

Ok, don't, no problem. Evidently Cubase will render something with "No Driver" as the driver, in which case the point is not mooted. One supposes here is a clock vs no clock, so pardon me for the assumption there must be a clock because there is a host.

[scalawag]

AFAIK, it's a big NO.
Unless you are rendering and LISTENING at the same time. Soundcards are only used to play.

[jens]

Well... to be accurate...

1(b): Yes. If you're rendering in real time it obviously does need the sound card and driver and clock.

Would you mind explaining this to me?

Yes, I am all ears too...

The way he says it, it sounds to me as if the signal would somehow miraculously go through the DAC... and his subsequent explanation does not really make it much better either...

For the record: I don't think the audio-interface can in any way directly affect any render, be it realtime or offline, except you send it theough its outputs and back in, while at least one of those two directions has to be analog.
But I think the driver may perhaps cause problems such a dropped samples and things like that?

Or is the interface's clocking device used and that way its hardware does indeed potentially affect the audiio quality? Maybe that's what Lawrence meant?

[EnGee]

Yes, but as far as I know only when bouncing a whole mix. E.g. Ableton sounds pretty different and not so good.

Any sources or further readings for that?

[xx JPRacer xx]

I'd prefer to render at 44.1 KHz but in Bitwig with WASAPI my soundcard is limited to 48 and 96 KHz. So the soundcard do impose some limits.