M-Audio Dman 2044 [25/36] About digital recording

buttons which allow you to select which input pair (1 and 2 or 3 and 4)

you wish to use as your inputs. You may now click on the desired pair

and close this panel.

4.) You can now go to the Panels pull down menu and select “Audio

Inputs”. You should now see the stereo input pair you have selected.

(Either “Analog 1-1” and “Analog 1-2” for inputs 1 and 2 or “Analog 2-

1” and “Analog 2-2” for inputs 1 and 2).

NOTE: The input pair displayed in the Audio Inputs panel is your active

stereo input and the other pair is NOT active. So make sure the signal

you want to record is plugged into desired inputs and that these inputs

are correctly selected.

Changing Sample Rates

The Mac driver for the DMAN2044 supports two sample rates: 44.1 kHz

and 48 kHz. If you are using Cubase 4.xx and wish to switch between

these rates, do the following:

1.) Under the Cubase Options menu go down to Audio Setup and in the

expanded menu to the right, select System. This will bring up the Audio

System set-up dialog box.

2.) At the middle right of this screen you will see the "Sample Rate:" call-

out. Pull the menu down below this and you can now select the desired

sample rate.

About Digital Recording

If your only previous experience is with analog recording, you are in for

a treat. If you have done digital recording before, you can skip over this

section (our feelings won't be hurt).

As taught in high school science class, sound is composed of waves of

changing pressure (level) and frequency (pitch). Analog recording cap-

tures these waves in their entirety and records them as variations in mag-

netic flux (tape) or variations in depth (good old fashioned vinyl). On

playback, analog recording adds noise to the recorded sound (tape has

background hiss, vinyl has surface noise); it therefore causes a low sig-

nal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Because this noise level is comparatively high,

the dynamic range (ratio of loudest audio to softest audio) of the record-

ing is decreased.

On the other hand, digital recording samples the sound waves periodi-

cally (a typical rate is 44,100 times per second) converting it to numeric

(digital) data. This digital data can be stored on a hard or floppy disk,