Audio sample scale question

Hi all!

I just got my Asus Essence soundcard installed and noticed that the sample scale goes from 44.1, 48, 96 and 192 khz. While the highest sample scale in arma is 112 i just wounder what settings i should run on my soundcard? I heard that running different scales on the card and in the game, the soundcard is forced to convert the sound wich is 'bad' (sorry dont have any info on why this is)...

Right now im having the card on 96 and 96 in arma... Can any audiofile clearify more of this

Thanks!

The frequencies indicate how many frequencies are locked into a sound file. If you have a 22.5 Khz file, it has a poorer quality, since all frequencies are reduced to only 22500! If you have a 192kHz file, there are 192000 different frequencies, and which provides for a richer sound. The best example is the introduction of the MP3 file in 1995. Why is it smaller than a WMA? Because all the frequencies that can not heard by human ears be removed during the conversion.

Well, at least its not really possible to let a soundcard convert a sound from 22.5kHz to 192kHz just because you set up some settings. At least the Soundcarf cannot be getting broken because of such "unlikely" progress...

So, just set it up to 192kHz and lets play a game. If you have any peformance hit at all, you know probaly why this is. But there should be no performance hit.

The Asus Essence soundcard is a high quality and a up-to-the-minute hardware, it should normaly set up the kHz scale automaticly... so there should be no problem setting up the card to 192kHz...

Jarhead

Thank you master lordjarhead!

The frequencies indicate how many frequencies are locked into a sound file. If you have a 22.5 Khz file, it has a poorer quality, since all frequencies are reduced to only 22500! If you have a 192kHz file, there are 192000 different frequencies, and which provides for a richer sound.

Uhh...I don't think you understand the concept of sampling rate...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate

Doesn't have anything to do with "number of frequencies". You're correct about a higher sample rate being better quality, but totally mistaken about why.

EDIT: In response to the initial poster, I think you also misunderstand what is going on with sample rate and the setting in ArmA OA. Sample rate setting on a sound card is related reproducing sounds that are already sampled at a given rate. I.e., if a sound file is sampled at 48 kHz and the sound card supports up to 96 khz, it is able to reproduce the sound at full quality. If the sound file is 192 khz, however, the sound card would have to downsample and thus reduce quality.

The setting in OA (AFAIK) has to do with number of simultaneous tracks able to be played at once (128 sounds being the max)

Both of these things really don't have anything to do with each other. You can check your sound card specs and see how many "voices" it is able to produce at once (usually 128+ for newer cards), and that's what you would be setting in OA.

A soundcard wont do anything more unless the source sound is of a higher frequency, so currently 44.1khz 16bit is the norm (and less becuase its compressed).

All audio and music is still scaled to this unless its cinema based or blue ray options etc. Mainly industry to industry raw samples use the full hi rate hz, but they all scale down for mem/disk and buffer balancing on consumer rigs.

Running it a 44.1khz in Arma would be completely fine, most cards will detect and switch anyway if it has the option.

As the poster above mentions voices is the main thing (how much can play at once) but that's mainly dealt with engine wise under the audio settings which you can up and lower how many channels you set in arma2/oa.