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Others will just work as a converter such as the Avid HD I/O, allowing you to convert up to 16 channels at a time with the use of external preamps.The simplest Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) can be constructed as shown in Figure 1. Some converters work as an audio interface such as the Apollo Twin, which have built in preamps as well as AD/DA conversion. It is often preferred to match the number of inputs and outputs. When looking for which is best for your studio setup, be aware of how many channels of audio you want to record at one time, or how many channels you will want to send back to an analog desk. Bit depth is the number of bits of information in each sample, and directly corresponds to the resolution of each sample, the higher the bit depth, the clearer the audio will sound, also allowing more headroom and less signal to noise ratio.Ī/D converters come in all shapes and sizes, from two channels, 16 channels, and beyond. The higher the sample rate, the more accurate the digital recording will be to the analog source.
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The standard sample rate is 44.1 kHz, but can rage all the way up to 384 kHz with the highest end converters. The sample rate is how many “snapshots” of audio the computer takes in a second. The A/D converter is what sets the sample rate and bit depth of your digital recordings, and determines the accuracy of your recording. You can have the best microphones, preamps, cables, compressors, etc, but if they are all going into a low quality converter, all the processing in the world won’t make the audio sound as good as it did before entering the computer. When building a digital recording rig, it is very important to find the best converter to fit your budget.
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