In my sound card settings, where I select 'audio creation mode', I can select the sampling rate, what does this do exactly? I can select 44.1 khz, 48khz, 88.2, 96khz. Will this have any positive effect on audio playback, or is it just for recording? I'm referring to the creative console.
the sampling rate is basically the amount of times the sound level is recorded per second. because sound is an analogue wave you can never reproduce it perfectly in digital form (think of a smooth curve compared to one made up of tiny steps). but, the more times you record or 'sample' a wave, the closer you will get to the original wave shape. 48khz is essentially sampling 48,000 a second, whereas 96khz is double that.
One other question, on the sound monitor, I get levels. Green, then yellow, then red. I previously had it set to max the line out at the yellow bars, should I really have it maxing out at the green? Will obviously be getting smaller output. Or is it just a case of setting it to just before the sound starts to distort?
You want it just clipping 0db, red is bad, yellow is getting high. All green with peaks clipping yellow should be optimum. If you're recording for CD use 44.1 (as it'll save resampling before mastering)
