[comp.sys.mac.misc] Digitized audio quality questions

dasay@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Devin N Asay) (05/17/91)

Our office is doing more and more CAI projects that employ digitized
audio. We have a good recording studio (with analog-only equipment
at our disposal, but have achieved only mediocre results when
digitizing the analog recordings or when recording directly to the Mac
through the digitizer.

We have used both the SoundWave/Impulse and SoundEdit/MacRecorder
packages with Mac II's to do our digitizing, and find that, when
listening to the audio playback through headphones, there is a
consistent, bothersome static noise in the background.  (I know, I
know, we're using *low end* digitizing equipment.)

My question is this:  is there any way to filter (either during
initial analog recording or during digitizing) the audio signal to
eliminate this background noise?  Would we be able to filter some of
this out by slapping an equalizer into the line between source and
digitizer?

This is the bottom line:  can we get good-quality results with our
MacRecorder or similar product?  Or will we have to bite the bullet
and invest in higher-end equipment (such as Sound Accelerator or
Audiomedia)?  Or is this an analog-to-digital problem and will our
recording studio have to invest in digital recording equipment?

Any ideas or experience you can share with us would be most
appreciated.

Devin N. Asay 
Asay.1@osu.edu 
Center for Teaching Excellence
Computer-Based Instruction 
The Ohio State University