Symphony I/O operates at the complete range of standard sample rates from 44.1kHz to 192kHz. So, what’s the best sample rate to record your project at? It’s a good idea to avoid unnecessary sample rate conversion stages, so the answer may be determined by the sample rate of media on which you plan to distribute your recording. If the final distribution media is CD, you may choose to record at 44.1kHz. If the media is video or TV, most often 48 kHz is the best choice.
Recording at higher sample rates allows a wider audio bandwidth to be recorded. For example, frequencies up to 48kHz may be recorded when using a 96kHz sample rate. Whether this extended bandwidth is useful, or even perceived by the human hearing mechanism, is a topic still open to debate. A higher sample rate may provide better results when performing certain DSP operations, but requires twice (or four times at 176.4-192kHz) the storage space. In the end, we encourage you to experiment with different sample rates to determine the benefits versus the cost for your projects.
If you’re part of a larger production chain, and aren’t sure, ask whomever is responsible for assembling the final product - they’ll undoubtedly appreciate the forethought.
It’s an accepted “best practice” of most audio software providers that audio files should be recorded on a hard drive other than the Mac’s Startup drive (i.e. the drive on which the operating system is installed). You can probably get away with recording a few tracks to your computer’s Startup disk, but for the best performance of your Symphony I/O Recording System, record onto a separate ATA/IDE, SATA, or FireWire drive whose spindle speed is at least 7200 RPM.