At the risk of confusing the issue even more or providing more misinformation: There is a lot of misunderstanding out there about the Live! cards, partly due to the lack of information from Creative Labs on the chipset. The internal clock runs at a fixed rate: 48 Ksamples/sec. All digital data are at this rate for all processes. This means that, for a recording session: The analog signal is sampled at 48 Ksamples/sec. If you store it at 44.1 Ksamples/sec, it is downsampled. When you play it back, it is read from the storage medium, upsampled to 48 Ksamples/sec, the converted to analog. This is why, IMO, it sounds so bad. It has been resampled twice. On the other hand, the card is capable of performing much better than this by working at 48 Ksamples/sec instead of 44.1 Ksample/sec. (48,000 is popular due to the large number of prime factors of two; but 44,100 is 2^2 * 3^2 * 5^2 * 7^2 so also has its advantages.) The Terratec EWX-2496, for example, is not fixed. The internal clock runs at whatever rate you specify. If you specify 44.1 Ksamples/sec, then this is what it runs at. Analog signals are sampled at 44.1 Ksamples/sec, then stored at this rate (assuming you've set it up that way). When they are played back, they are read at 44.1 Ksamples/sec, then converted back to analog. This results in more accurate sound --- what you hear on playback is more like what you heard when you did your recording. (I myself work at 24/96, mixing and all that, then downsample as the last step. I do this because I do a LOT of processing.) Now it is an interesting side effect that if you burn a CD, the Live! mixed result will sound better on another stereo system (one that runs at 44.1 Ksamples/sec) than it did when you were doing your mixing. Has anyone else noticed that? Suddenly things have improved. Well, that's to be expected because the signal was not upsampled. Although some people may be happy with this miraculous result, I myself am dissatisfied with this way of working because it never sounds like it what I heard previously. Playback for mixing sounds worse than what I heard during recording, yet the CD sounds better than the final mix. In summary, the Live! series of cards are providing you with very misleading information about the sounds you are working with if you insist on working at 44.1 Ksamples/sec. You'd probably be better off working at 48 Ksamples/sec, then downsampling. A major problem, though, is that many sample libraries are at 44.1 Ksamples/sec. In this case, you are forced into upsampling for audition and mixing! So... It all depends on what it is exactly that you are doing. This is definitely not a "one size fits all" situation. I wouldn't begin to tell anyone what they should do --- just provide some information about what is happening so they can make their own decisions. Do be careful!! As a footnote, Steve Harris mentioned that the Live! cards resample, even at 48 Ksamples/sec. Well, the signal path may include resampling, but technically, the interpolation algorithms used should reproduce the input exactly. So in fact, there should be no difference. In other words, don't be misled into thinking that resampling is occurring anyway, so you might as well work at 44.1 Ksamples/sec. No, you're worse off, assuming that there are no side issues such as heavy use of 44.1 Ksample/sec samples. Once again, it depends on exactly what it is that you are doing. I do have a Live! Value card myself, but avoid these issues by refusing to use it for serious audio work.
