Sample Rate Conversions - hosts compared!

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Sample Rate Conversions - hosts compared! 2006-02-08T08:37:23+00:00 There's been some interesting independant research into the quality of sample rate conversion in popular hosts, audio editors, and specialised plugin applications. The most surprising result is that there seems to be considerable difference between the sample rate conversions in the different applications tested. Considering that digital audio consists of "1"s and "0"s, I guess that I would have expected otherwise. Having said that, there are some who for years have disregarded digital audio and plumped for old school analogue equipment, claiming better results. So perhaps we should not be too surprised. Also there have been a fair few threads here at KVR where it has been argued that one host "sounds better" than another, and it seems to me likely that issues such as sample rate conversion might ultimately provide some possible answers to these questions and debates. The research is presented here: http://src.infinitewave.ca/ To see the full results for each application you need to toggle between "Display Modes", of which there are four: * overall response * 1 khz tone * Passband * Transition To see each application click the "Next" button under "Navigation" and scroll through the software they tested. Sequencers generally did not fare too well in these tests. Sequoia (Samplitude) performed the best, followed by Pro Tools. Nuendo (and CUbase SX) performed poorly, but Logic and Sonar were even worse still. This is surprising when you consider that those two are so highly regarded by the pros. The message appears to be, don't do sample rate conversions within your sequencer - use an audio editor or plugin... Audio Editors generally performed much better than the sequencers. Bias Peak acheived good results on the mac platform, while on Windows Adobe Audition clearly did better than either Wavelab or Soundforge. In fact Soundforge did rather poorly considering its reputation. Meanwhile Goldwave was the worst performer of all the software tested, by quite a margin! Other Programs tested included a new 64-bit SRC application coming from Izotope, which overall acheived the best results on test. r8brain Pro (from Voxengo) performed well in all tests except the 1khz tone, where it was behind some of the others. Weiss Saracon (and we're talking mega-bux here!) performed well overall, but not so well in the "Transition" test. Your thoughts?... headquest https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=32002

nuisance sonore nuisance sonore https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=40314: KVRian; 1088 posts since 11 Sep, 2004 from 45° 31' 60N 73° 28' 60W

Post by nuisance sonore » Fri Feb 10, 2006 8:06 pm

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jasonsantiago wrote:
also, these tests mean just about nothing to me. If you can't hear it, who cares?

That's one way of looking at it. I'm different thought, I like to read test like theses, and audio discussion in general, because it help immensely in broadening my understanding of audio process; so the next time I listen to the output of my sequencer or video editor and go "Wouach, I don't like that! What happened?", I can more rapidly pinpoint where something went wrong.

Quote of the day: "If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names."--Elbert Hubbard 1856-1915

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