I believe George Blood is on this list. George, could you share your test results? I'd be interested 
to know your methodology. Given all the bit-mangling that seems to go on in various hardware and 
software, I will say that at first glance I am not surprised, unfortunately. But I'd like to know 
the science behind the claims.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 10:33 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The Hope of Audacity Was--Re: [ARSCLIST] Seeking recommendations for oral 
history digitization equipment (fwd)


> At 09:14 AM 2008-08-17, Mike Hirst wrote:
>
>>However, reading Goran Finnberg's comments re the work do[n]e by George Blood, I am surprised to 
>>find that different combinations of software and hardware can produce different results. Am I to 
>>understand that Adobe Audition, for example, will capture audio differently when used with an 
>>M-Audio card, for example, than it would when combined with an E-MU or SoundBlaster card? does it 
>>then follow that the same card combined with different software would produce different results? 
>>Is this something I should worry about? What is the extent of this discrepancy and how best can I 
>>avoid it?
>
> Hello, Mike,
>
> I, too, found this interesting. It lends some credence to the comments from a friend of mine that 
> he thinks Samplitude sounds better than WaveLab -- a result I don't (yet?) hear. He has a 
> Benchmark D-A converter and I have an RME Multiface (now version II on the main channels, though I 
> did the original listing on an original Multiface).
>
> On another note:
> I am actually glad that I invested in WaveLab as it does some things that Samplitude doesn't. The 
> tools that I have used several times are:
>
>   - compare to audio files: it will not only say if the AUDIO is the same or different 
> (independent of the metadata) it will also attempt to clarify the difference, so that would be 
> easy to detect the 0.2 dB level shift that was commented on earlier in this thread.
>
>  - split WAV files on cue marks. With Samplitude working in a virtual mode, CDs come out as one 
> file with track marks. It is convenient in WaveLab to break the one long file into individual 
> files for distribution of individual selections on the Web. I then run a batch MP3 convert in 
> Samplitude to generate the individual MP3s, but it's faster to take the marked WAV file into 
> WaveLab to do the split than to do it in Samplitude.
>
> The reason that I invested in WaveLab was that version 6.0 refused to read some files that 
> Samplitude 10.0.1 produced and it seems that there were errors on both sides as WaveLab 6.1 read 
> the files that 6.0 could not, and Samplitude 10.1 appears to have fixed the BEXT chunk errors that 
> were causing the issue with WaveLab 6.0 (a terminating CR/LF pair or something like that was 
> omitted by Samplitude). Between the cost of WaveLab and my time, that was probably a $1500 
> software glitch for me!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
>
>
> Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
> Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.