16 bit vs. 24 bit Question

savedbygrace

New member
Somewhat of a newbie – I currently use a SB512 card, Audio Buddy, Shure BG4 condense mic, Roland JV1080 with Cakewalk Home Studio – I mainly do MIDI with 3 or 4 audio guitar tracks (acoustic and light Telecaster) – I understand that by recording in 24 bit it goes back to 16 bit anyway for CD – Question – Do I really need 24 bit (I’ve heard different opinions)? Will the 24 bit card give me noticeably better recordings considering the simple recordings I do now? Or, if 16 bit is fine then will getting the Audiophile 24/96 give me noticeably better 16 bit recordings than my SoundBlaster 512? Surprisingly enough, I get nice sounding projects now with the above setup but want to improve a bit – just a hobby to me. Also, thanks to all for the great info from this forum for I know it takes time to answer some of these simple questions and the forum ahs helped me get a much better acoustic guitar sound on my present system. P.S. I also posted this question on another site - thanks
 
savedbygrace said:
Will the 24 bit card give me noticeably better recordings considering the simple recordings I do now? Or, if 16 bit is fine then will getting the Audiophile 24/96 give me noticeably better 16 bit recordings than my SoundBlaster 512?

Using the Audiophile in 16bit will be a big improvement over the Sb and recording in 24bit will be a HUGE improvement.
 
Re: Re: 16 bit vs. 24 bit Question

TexRoadkill said:
Using the Audiophile in 16bit will be a big improvement over the Sb and recording in 24bit will be a HUGE improvement.
I will second that !;)
In addition 24 bit will give you more headroom when applying effects.
 
16 bit vs. 24 bit

I thank you Texroadkill and Stealthtec for your simple and honest feedback. I thought that there was a difference but the adjectives you used, "big" and "huge", and the "I'll second that", have provided me the push I needed to go ahead and order the Audiophile. Thanks again for any others who choose to provide any more helpful feedback - later!
 
When thinking about the 16 and 24bit question try and keep in mind that this has to do a lot with processing accuracy as well as headroom. If you are just recording files and playing them back without a whole lot of processing (bouncing, effects, remixing or mastering, etc.) you probably won't benefit much from 24bit.

If it was me and I was that concerned about using 50% more memory, I would say it's time to get an additional hard drive. It's a no brainer as cheap as computer stuff is these days.
 
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