I’m multisampling my hardware synth and putting some of those in my plugin.
After a lot of experimenting with synth volume, and Sample Robot, I’m getting my samples in at 192k 24 bit. And I plan to convert them down to 44.1khz FLAC (or 48k..not sure yet)
Anyway, this noise floor question is one I’ve been wrestling with. My synth sample I am high passing at 48hz, and low passing at 18khz.
I am normalizing to -3dB, and then LP HP, and my noise floor is -73dB. Is this acceptable? I took a profile of the noise in Izotope RX (7 Standard) and if I apply a -3dB noise reduction my noise floor is -80dB. Trouble is, I don’t want to take any good frequencies out of my sample body, so might not bother with the spectral noise reduction.
Just wondering what you thought of my workflow (my target 44.1 or 48 bitrate(??), normalizing to -3db, and noise floor etc.)?
My plugin won’t stack sounds, its more like a mono arp kind of thing.
I guess that depends on how noisy the original synth is. Some classics are quite noisy.
A -73 dB noise floor corresponds to a sampling bit depth of about 12 bits, which isn’t uncommon for older gear.
I don’t know about the -3 dB noise reduction. If this is for a synth, it probably won’t sit at full volume in the mix anyway.
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I’m recording at 192k, 24bit. But distributing down to 48k (or 44.1k) FLAC 24bit. To lower the noise floor I set my hardware synth master volume to around 80%, my audio interface to about 10% volume, and my SampleRobot midi trigger note to 120 velocity. This seems to give me the best noise floor.
Just wondering if distributing FLAC 24bit 44.1k or 48k is preferable?
The sounds are short plucks (from hardware synth) and percussion short hits. Normalized to -3db.
I think -73db noise floor is OK. The sounds won’t be stacked really, so the noise floor won’t pile up.
Your workflow looks solid. Normalizing to -3dB and high/low passing at 48Hz/18kHz is a good approach. -73dB noise floor is acceptable, especially for a mono arp plugin, and unless you’re stacking sounds, it shouldn’t be a major issue. The noise reduction to -80dB is optional—if it doesn’t affect your sample quality, it might be fine to leave it at -73dB. Overall, it sounds like you’re on the right track!
And distributing at FLAC 24 bit, 44.1k or 48k ?
Distributing at FLAC 24-bit, either 44.1kHz or 48kHz should be fine. 44.1kHz is standard for most audio, especially for music, while 48kHz is often used for video. Since your samples are short and you’re not stacking them, either format should work well. It’s mostly about the intended use — if it’s for music production, 44.1kHz is a safe choice, but if you expect to work with video or multimedia, 48kHz might be more appropriate.
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I’ve started manually ripping out the emdashes when I let ChatGPT write my email replies, and I recommend the same to everyone. Unfortunately, even if you instruct it to avoid emdashes in the first place, it will still happily unleash the power of emdashes unto you all the freakin’ time.
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I’d rather people just don’t use LLMs to reply to forum posts. If OP wanted the opinion of an LLM they could have asked it themselves.
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