Does your sound card matter with DVD?

[kissvid]

Hi all,

ok, I usually know the basics but I am stumped on this one and need a little help. Does anyone know if the sound card used in your pc have any bearing on the quaity of the output when burning to dvd? I do al ot of recitals and I patch into the sound board with my own 12 channel mixer which is hooked up to my digital 8 camera. The sound is good. When I use the headphones live it is so much fuller and richer. I was just thinking if i had a better sound card that this would improve the audio or at least keep it the same quality. Any thoughts? Thanks everyone.

Marc

[guns1inger]

If you are using your sound card to get the audio into the PC, then yes, it plays a large part in final quality. Any component in the chain will have an impact, and if it is a low quality component (eg. cheap soundcard), then that impact will be negative.

Generally, I would not trust onboard sound for capture (never had a good experience), or cheap generic audio cards. The Audiology range from creative are very good cards with low SNR and a nice sound. If you are very serious, then there is pro level kit available as well.

[johns0]

Sound card has no bearing on the actual burning of dvd files,only for listening and capturing.

[edDV]

A DV (IEEE-1394) transfer will copy the PCM audio over to the DV-AVI file digitally so all the 16bit 48kHz stereo quality is preserved to the file.

DVD authoring can also be done with with full PCM 16bit 48kHz or compressed with Dolby AC-3. The entire path is digital.

As stated above the soundcard would affect playback quality only in this senario.

[kissvid]

HI all,

So let me gethis straight. I transfer through firewire like I do and it preserves the audio and frequency. Ok i do that, but are you also saying that the audio card is just for what I hear when playing on the PC and has nothing to do with the quality that ends up on the PC?

Marc

PS. I am serious about having very good audio. Someone told me to hook up a dat recorder to my mixer and import separately for optimum sound....does that sound right?

[kissvid]

that ends up on the PC? I meant on the DVD. Sorry

[MOVIEGEEK]

HI all,
So let me gethis straight. I transfer through firewire like I do and it preserves the audio and frequency. Ok i do that, but are you also saying that the audio card is just for what I hear when playing on the PC and has nothing to do with the quality that ends up on the PC?

Yes,the audio card has no bearing on DVD sound quality if you use firewire.If you want the best audio quality use LPCM,use AC3 or MP2 for best video quality.

[edDV]

What MOVIEGEEK said.

If you keep to DV firewire transfer to the DV-AVI file and then author the audio as LPCM you maintain 16bit 48KHz uncompressed stereo right through to the DVD.

So where is the potential weak point in this chain? It is the connection from the audio board to the camcorder.

In your case this is a Digital8 so you have a potential issue here.

Assuming the audio board is analog, you might want to invest in a Beachtek or equiv balanced 600 ohm (line level or mic level) input adapter
http://www.beachtek.com/dxa2.html
or at least a mic/line level to unbalanced mic input transformer.
http://www.shure.com/accessories/a85f.asp
http://www.nationalavsupply.com/Product.aspx?DeptID=2&ClassID=26&SubClassID=157&ProdID=677
These are single channel and at mic level, you would need two for stereo.

These same adapters could be used with a consumer level DAT recorder so they have multiiple uses.