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Please advise the best practices for recording vocals in terms of sampling rate, bit depth etc.

We use equipments that support latest standards such as - Digi 002, Sony PCM-D1 and such.

We will be recording spiritual discourses / speeches that will be digitally distributed, stored for long time to come. These recordings will be the originals (master copies).

Thank you.

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Codemonkey Mon, 09/22/2008 - 10:57

Digital distribution to me means 44.1KHz, 16bit blasted into lousy mp3s.

If it's just speech and nothing else, is there really any need for higher than 44.1? I know a lot of people on here argue for both sides.

You could go to 24 bit however, I fail to see the benefit. You use up 50% more storage space for what? Making sure that sound of granny farting in the back row of a concert hall gets into the final recording, which will be dithered to 16bit for CD anyway?

anonymous Wed, 10/01/2008 - 10:47

If you have the hard drive space I would recommend 24 bit. That way you can set your input level to -10dB or -20dB and still have a good noise floor when you normalize and compress for 16 bit CD quality.

If your input level is that low, you are going to need good converters. The Digi 002 would fit the bill. Also any other audio interface with balance inputs and a similar SNR.

I agree with Codemonkey about 44.1 sample rate unless your target medium is video. Then you should use 48k.