rerendering wave audio files- any loss?

musman wrote on 9/7/2004, 11:24 PM

I'm still trying to get a handle on Vegas's Media management and would like to break into individual takes a whole DAT tape's worth of VO work. I have already captured the tape and was wondering if I'd lose any quality by rendering each take to it's own .wav file. Of course, if there's a better way to do this, I'm certainly open to that as well.
Thanks for any help!

Comments

farss wrote on 9/8/2004, 12:01 AM

Done this many times, no, just the same as for video, all you are doing is copying data. That is so long as you don't apply any FXs, change the sample rate or level. Bigger question is how did you get from that DAT to the PC? If you did it via SPDIF (the audio eqivalent of firewire) then what went into the PC is a bit copy of what is on the tape. You need to make certain your clocking is at the same rate as what's on the tape though, most things will have a bit of a dummy spit if it isn't.

From what I can tell Vegas does as good a job as can be done on sample rate and bit depth conversion. I've only done 16/48 to 16/44.1 myself and it sounds just fine.

One thing to watch for is Vegas does add a 10mS fade at the cut, if that's in somewhere logical like between words then not an issue. If you need to make cuts VERY closely SF is the way to go.

Bob.

musman wrote on 9/8/2004, 12:09 AM

Man, farss, you are everywhere. Thank you again! I used an Edirol USB adaptor of some sort, so it is all digital and all happy with the sample rates as well, unless something weird happened like someone switched setting on the DAT when I wasn't looking. It was 48Hz recorded, and captured as the same.
I actually like the way vegas does the audio fades. It helps a lot with glitches in edits. But sf is the way to go for at least part of this job when I try to remove the breaths etc of the VO talent.
Anyway, THANKS!

farss wrote on 9/8/2004, 2:19 AM

There's absolutley nothing wrong with the fades, a video NLE doesn't have any choice in the matter and is MUCH better than some NLEs I've been given stuff out of with nasty audio glitches on just about every video cut.
SF has nice features like Snap to Zero Crossing and Match Waveform (or some name like that) which means you can join tiny bits of audio together without introducing nasties. The last thing you want to do with audio is join a negative going edge to a positive going edge! The little fades that Vegas uses avoids these nasties.

Bob.