Does a Computers sound card influence dsnd quality.

[eyerichards]

Hi everyone, Happy New year 
This may sound like a silly question, but I have been wondering if a computers standard sound card in my case an imac has any influence on dsnd productions from the likes of SD2. Do  or would you get better sounding results from using a better quality external soundcard/interface. Does it make any difference ?
Your thoughts would be much appreciated. 

[edtc]

No there will be no difference ,as the rendering is purely digital ... only change is the quality of what you hear when you tweak your sounds in sd2 ... but nowdays soundcards have all a decent sound quality ...

[espen]

I think this is a suitable topic to ask this.
When you creating dsnd files, does your samples sound just similar than in vst instrument? To me the answer is no. This can be heard especially from snare files. The sound in 2Box is somehow less smooth than in vsts. The transients are harder and the sound is somehow more hollow. It's not a big difference but clearly audible. I don't know is the problem in 24 to 16 bit rate conversion or in the module.
I use Reaper for rendering. Have you noticed any difference if rendering straight to 16 bits compared to 24? Or, do the dithering and/or noise shaping have some effect when rendering.

[edtc]

The overall resolution of the module is 24 bit , but the Dsounds are in 16 bit as far as ive understood....

so it would make sense to render the Dsounds in 16bit ...  I ve heard some Dsounds that have a strange "distortion hiss" at their decay , but i dont know why it does this...  it could  be perhaps a dithering problem but i m not sure about this ...

[eyerichards]

I think this is a suitable topic to ask this.
When you creating dsnd files, does your samples sound just similar than in vst instrument? To me the answer is no. This can be heard especially from snare files. The sound in 2Box is somehow less smooth than in vsts. The transients are harder and the sound is somehow more hollow. It's not a big difference but clearly audible. I don't know is the problem in 24 to 16 bit rate conversion or in the module.
I use Reaper for rendering. Have you noticed any difference if rendering straight to 16 bits compared to 24? Or, do the dithering and/or noise shaping have some effect when rendering.

I agree There is a difference after converting to 16 bit. The resulting dsnd's lack the vibrancy that you hear when using the vst. Especially snare drums. Any members eq/processing tips to compensate for this would be helpful. I've just been using the ezplayer to render the wave files. I see you can get reaper for Mac maybe that would give me better results.

[fishmonkey]

you should always apply dither when reducing the bit depth down to 16 bit...

[eyerichards]

you should always apply dither when reducing the bit depth down to 16 bit...

Not sure what dithering is. Can you please explain that a bit more for me and any other dithering idiots out there 

[espen]

you should always apply dither when reducing the bit depth down to 16 bit...

But is it a better approach to make the 24 to 16 conversion while rendering the samples, or let Dsoundtool do it? I have tried different ways: dithering, no dithering, 16 and 24 bit rendering. I haven't noticed any differencies when the sounds finally ae in the module. If I have understood right EZDrummer has 16 bit rate and this kind of 24to16 conversion does not exist. The problem is still present. So, the reason must be either in Dsoundtool or in module. 

[fishmonkey]

Not sure what dithering is. Can you please explain that a bit more for me and any other dithering idiots out there 

there is a good straightforward explanation here:

http://productionadvice.co.uk/when-in-doubt-dither/

But is it a better approach to make the 24 to 16 conversion while rendering the samples, or let Dsoundtool do it? I have tried different ways: dithering, no dithering, 16 and 24 bit rendering. I haven't noticed any differencies when the sounds finally ae in the module. If I have understood right EZDrummer has 16 bit rate and this kind of 24to16 conversion does not exist. The problem is still present. So, the reason must be either in Dsoundtool or in module.

does DSoundTool change the bit depth of the samples? if it does reduce 24 bit samples down to 16 bit ones then it should dither, however there is no mention of that in the manual.

how are you comparing the sound quality? if you play the sounds using the 2 Box editor on your computer, do you still hear a quality difference?

in any case, if you are comparing the 2 Box module output with the sound of the samples from EZDrummer running through a good audio interface, it wouldn't surprise me if the output of the module is slightly lower in quality.

[Louis]

there is a good straightforward explanation here:

http://productionadvice.co.uk/when-in-doubt-dither/

does DSoundTool change the bit depth of the samples? if it does reduce 24 bit samples down to 16 bit ones then it should dither, however there is no mention of that in the manual.

No, DSoundTool does not dither as of today, thank you for this interesting link.

Louis

[espen]

how are you comparing the sound quality? if you play the sounds using the 2 Box editor on your computer, do you still hear a quality difference?

It's a bit complicated to compare them because the difference is most audible when doing rolls and other sequences on snare. Not that much on single hits.

in any case, if you are comparing the 2 Box module output with the sound of the samples from EZDrummer running through a good audio interface, it wouldn't surprise me if the output of the module is slightly lower in quality.

I believe this is the thing.

[fishmonkey]

there are many possible contributing factors, including the polyphony limit (which has never been disclosed as far as i can tell), the quality of the audio processing inside the module (which is limited by processing power), and the quality of the DACs.