Save as WAV causes staticy audio SF11.0

johns-keck wrote on 9/2/2019, 7:41 PM

Sent someone an audio file recorded at 44.1/8 bit/mono. Just recording voiceover with a RODE NT1 mic and a Focusrite Scarlet into SFPro 11.0.build 345. When rendered as a WAV file, the audio during the words was scratchy and horridly unusable. But if I did an "UNDO" on the render/save as, and then did SAVE AS MP3, even at 192 kbps, the file was fine. On Win7 Pro with a 6-core12-thread i7--5930K CPU idling @ 3.5HGz, and 32GB of RAM, plenty of horsepower. Anyone else noticed an issue with the WAV codec? Or is it some combination of my sample rate and bitrate that doesn't play well with a WAV render? It's really weird. Thanks for any ideas.

Comments

emmrecs wrote on 9/3/2019, 4:20 AM

@johns-keck

is it some combination of my sample rate and bitrate that doesn't play well with a WAV render?

The simple answer, Yes.

8 bit is a very low resolution audio file. Assuming you then rendered it as, say, 44.1kHz 16 bit, then those audio artefacts you heard are inevitable! The additional 8 bits contain no audio, only digital noise.

The golden rule in audio is to always make the original recording at the highest possible quality and then render to your final "Production/Release" format as the very last stage in the process.

HTH

Jeff

Win 11 Pro 64 bit, Intel i7 14700, 16 GB RAM, NVidia RTX 4060 and Intel UHD770 Graphics, MOTU 8-Pre f/w audio interface, VPX, MEP, Music Maker, PhotoStory Deluxe, Photo Manager Deluxe, Xara 3D Maker 7, Samplitude Pro X7 Suite, Reaper, Adobe Audition 3, CS6 and CC, 2 x Canon HG10 cameras, 1 x Canon EOS 600D, Akaso EK7000 Pro Action Cam

rraud wrote on 9/3/2019, 10:02 AM

I do not think this is a Sound Forge issue.

Avoid eight bit!. It not only has inferior quality even under 'normal' playback conditions, most pro and semi-pro sound cards/interfaces are not designed for that low a bit depth. If it needs to be normalized to a higher amplitude, the noise floor is increased dramatically. Another issue could be the sample rate. There are some NLEs that cannot even playback 44.kHz audio. If it is for video, use a sample rate of 48kHz with a minimum 16 bit depth. The A/V acquisition 'standard' for dialog is generally 48kHz/24 bit PCM (even on block-buster productions).