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Topic: Sb Live! Resampling question (Read 2866 times) previous topic - next topic
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Sb Live! Resampling question

I've heard that the sb live! and it's clones resample everything internally to 48000 Hz. My question is, is this true; and if so if I play a 44100 Hz wav is it then internally resampled to 48000 Hz and then resampled again upon playback to 44100 Hz (or whatever the case may be)? If it does indeed do this, should I just set my programs to output everything at 48000 Hz to avoid resampling again?

I use XMplay which gives me the choice of setting the playback samplerate and since I play alot of stuff sampled at different rates I had been faithfully changing it to whatever the file was originally sampled at but then I begin wondering if even mattered.

Sb Live! Resampling question

Reply #1 –
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I've heard that the sb live! and it's clones resample everything internally to 48000 Hz. My question is, is this true;

Yes it is true, everything is resampled to 48 kHz before it is fed to the DAC.
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and if so if I play a 41000 Hz wav is it then internally resampled to 48000 Hz and then resampled again upon playback to 44100 Hz (or whatever the case may be)?

No, if your source is sampled at 44.1 kHz (or whatever it is) it is only resampled once to 48 kHz prior to the Digital-to-Analogue conversion. The DAC only handles 48 kHz samplingfrequency, i guess its cheapier to make them that way.
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If it does indeed do this, should I just set my programs to output everything at 48000 Hz to avoid resampling again?

Depends if your software has a better re-sampling routine than SBlive's internal. SSRC is considered to be the best (free) resampling routine available. It is built into foobar and there is a plugin for Winamp. Don't know what XMplay is so I can't say anything about that.
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I use XMplay which gives me the choice of setting the playback samplerate and since I play alot of stuff sampled at different rates I had been faithfully changing it to whatever the file was originally sampled at but then I begin wondering if even mattered.

That sounds a bit unnessary, the software should handle that for you. The only reason for changing the output sampling frequency manually should be to handle hardware compatibility issues like the sblive 48 kHz issue. Aren't there an option to use the same output sampling frequency as the source?

Sb Live! Resampling question

Reply #2 –
Thanks, after reading that I think you helped clarify something I had backwards. If anyone could verify this it would be great.

So when I go fiddling with output frequencies in my programs I'm actually changing it before it enters the DAC, for example if i have a 44100 wav and select to output it at 22050, the 44100 to 22050 conversion is done in software, sent to the sblives DAC and then lastly converted to 48000. Right??

Sb Live! Resampling question

Reply #3 –
Quote
So when I go fiddling with output frequencies in my programs I'm actually changing it before it enters the DAC, for example if i have a 44100 wav and select to output it at 22050, the 44100 to 22050 conversion is done in software, sent to the sblives DAC and then lastly converted to 48000. Right??

Yes.