Audio Capture Tool in GS3

[Todd Miller]

Does anyone know if using the Audio Capture Tool to create wav files uses the d/a and a/d converters on your soundcard? I assumed this process would keep everything digital until I got to the part in the manual where it tells you that you need to enable your hardware outputs on the Hardware settings page (p. 138 in GS3 manual). This made me suspicious that the digital signal might be sent through the d/a conv. and then is 'brigded' to the a/d conv. before being written to disk as a wav file. I don't know if soundcards have this kind of architecture (with a 'bridge' between the converters). I'm using the M-Audio Ozonic as my soundcard, which only has analog outputs, so I just thought, "Why do I need to enable my analog outputs if I'm doing something that is supposed to be entirely digital?". It is probably just some kind of dependency in the code, but I was just curious if anyone knew anything about this. Obviously, I don't want to lose any quality if I don't have to. Thanks for any info. -Todd

[JonFairhurst]

The audio capture is entirely digital. The Giga engine works at the Kernel level, and it uses the audio card driver to bridge it to the user/application level, where it can be written to the disk. I'm not sure why they didn't just write their own bridge, or virtual driver, to allow you to capture more streams in parallel, regardless of the audio card on board.

BTW, if your card has multiple outputs, analog or digital, you can do multiple parallel captures. Just enable the masters to record, route things appropriately, and multiple channels will be recorded to disc - all digitally.

-JF

[Todd Miller]

Thanks, Jon! That makes sense. -Todd