Nord User Forum

Hi folks,

Do you think loading on samples (onto the NE6) which are (44.1 kHz and in stereo) exported at: 16 bit-depth or 24 bit-depth make a noticeable/significant difference, please? A studio engineer has offered to create for me some synth-brass samples (5 x octave span) on his 1980's OB8!

I thought I would post on here first because I have never loaded a custom-made sample-before.

Many thanks in advance for any kind assistance offered here...

Best,

Paul David Seaman

If you can get them at 24 bits it is better, but 16 bits are more than enough (CD quality), if you may want read something more detailed about the topic, you may find some articles like this one https://producerhive.com/ask-the-hive/16-bit-vs-24-bit/

maxpiano wrote:If you can get them at 24 bits it is better, but 16 bits are more than enough (CD quality), if you may want read something more detailed about the topic, you may find some articles like this one https://producerhive.com/ask-the-hive/16-bit-vs-24-bit/

That's great Max!

I'll definitely read through the article within the next couple of days...

My question was also leaning towards whether the Nord itself can accept 24-bit?; but judging by your answer it obviously can!

However, would it be possible to load 48kHz samples onto the Nord?; and would they sound significantly better?; albeit would the file sizes be substantially larger?

Cheers,

Paul

monsterjazzlicks wrote:

maxpiano wrote:If you can get them at 24 bits it is better, but 16 bits are more than enough (CD quality), if you may want read something more detailed about the topic, you may find some articles like this one https://producerhive.com/ask-the-hive/16-bit-vs-24-bit/

That's great Max!

I'll definitely read through the article within the next couple of days...

My question was also leaning towards whether the Nord itself can accept 24-bit?; but judging by your answer it obviously can!

However, would it be possible to load 48kHz samples onto the Nord?; and would they sound significantly better?; albeit would the file sizes be substantially larger?

Cheers,

Paul

From some older thread I read that Nord Sample Editor allows (only) 44.1, 48 or 96 KHz Samples so tou can use also 48KHz .wav files, then the discussion between 44.1 vs 48 Khz is similar to the 16 vs 24 bit (and there is plenty of discussion about that on the web... my view: what is highest frequency a man can hear?) + I don't know if NSE would internally convert it anyway, so I wouldn't mind it too much.

maxpiano wrote:From some older thread I read that Nord Sample Editor allows (only) 44.1, 48 or 96 KHz Samples so tou can use also 48KHz .wav files, then the discussion between 44.1 vs 48 Khz is similar to the 16 vs 24 bit (and there is plenty of discussion about that on the web... my view: what is highest frequency a man can hear?) + I don't know if NSE would internally convert it anyway, so I wouldn't mind it too much.

Many thanks Max!

"I read that Nord Sample Editor allows (only) 44.1, 48 or 96 KHz Samples so tou can use also 48KHz .wav files."

Well that's quite a good enough range I would think.

I wonder if 48kHz would steal much more of the Nord's memory than 44.1kHz?

Cheers.

Definitely request 24 bit samples. However, once normalized (normalizing all samples by the same amount, to retain any natural volume differences across the keyboard), nobody will ever be able to tell the 16-bit samples from the 24-bit samples.

48K samples will take 9% more space (disk space, memory.) I doubt anyone can hear the difference, but I'm less aware of studies for this than for 16-bit vs 24-bit, where there have been a number of studies and none that show any measurable observable benefit.

I did see one apparently well-constructed study where listeners could distinguish a much higher sample rate, for gammelon music listened to by people who regularly listen to it, but this study hasn't been repeated.

Hi there,

Been a long time as a lot of things have been happening, and so, unfortunately, I have gotten side-tracked.

My friend created for me some synth-brass samples on his Oberheim, as discussed here last year. I received them a couple of days ago. I have tried one of them out so far.

He provided me with a continuous Wav. at 48kHz and 16-bit. I had some problems with the file in Cubase (which is not really worth discussing here). Anyway, I loaded the Wav. file directly into the NSE; and within 30 secs it had sliced all of the hit-points and flawlessly mapped the pitches to the correct notes! Much easier the Cubase, in my experience.

Now, a couple of questions if I may, please:

When you load a 48kHz Wav. into the NSE, does it RETAIN its 48kHz or is it dumbed down to 44.1kHz? I'm really not sure about this and have searched here to see if I can obtain a definitive answer?, but to no avail.

Many thanks in advance as always...

Ta,

Paul

... in case anyone is interested, here is a very quick demo of one of the four synth brass patches I purchased. Here it is loaded into the Nord's sample-memory:

Hi,

... OK it looks like the NSE will automatically convert everything down to 44.1kHz and 16-bit. So there is no real point in myself compiling a library of samples with higher values because they will only get dumbed down by the NSE?

All of my purchased samples are at minus-6dB (by the vendor). Is there any point in 'normalizing' these?, please. And if so, would you perform this task within Cubase or the NSE, please?

Many thanks,

Paul

If you have the sounds in more than 16-bit depth, I'd normalise them in higher resolution and feed them into NSE afterwards. If it's true what you say, that every sound is converted into 44.1 kHz 16 bit when imported. You should be able to use Cubase or Audacity or a lot of other tools for that job.