On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:58:44 -0000, "Keith G"
wrote:


I have just completed a swap round with my computers, involving a disk
upgrade and moving my soundcard, which raises a couple of questions (and
also leaves my recent emails, address book and Favourites stranded 'offline'
atm):

The soundcard has digital input and outputs and offers both 44.1 KHz and 48
KHz output sampling rates. Selecting either of these seems to sound fine and
I can't say that I can tell the difference. (I cannot lay hands on the spec
sheet for the DAC atm, but I suspect it's happy either way.) Which output
should I select to be 'right' or 'best' for playing WAVs, MP3s and CDs from
the computer?

What soundcard?

Next, the hard disk upgrade (200Gb) means I am better able to record music
and save it as WAVs which, I have to say, sound pretty convincing played
through the DAC. The question here is whether or not this the 'best' thing
to do - I can play them or make CDRs from them and so on, but is there a
'better' way to save the music for any reason? High bitrate MP3s or summat?

A compressed format isn't going to sound *better*. But a high bitrate
MP3 may sound imperceptibly worse, and save a LOT of disk space.

I'd burn "audio" CDs. You get plenty on a disk, it's uncompressed
wav format (give or take a header or two:-) and doesn't restrict you
to computer playback.