Layla 24/96 Question...32-Bit Input ???

[mark4man]

Hello...

My old (not really old, but older) Layla 24/96 is being used in a secondary workstation for mastering, primarily to recapture stereo mixes from my primary workstation, post processing. My primary workstation is set up with a Lynx Aurora 8 / AES16 combo...which I recently learned has 32-Bit drivers. My DAWs (SONAR 5 & WaveLab 5) are capable of sending a 32-Bit integer summed stereo output to the audio interface.

So now I'm wondering...can the Layla 24/96 do the same thing? The last 24/96 driver issue prior to going to the 3G...were they 32-Bit drivers; & can the DAC in the 24/96 receive a 32-Bit signal?

If so...what happens at that point? i.e., how is that 32-Bit signal processed internally within the 24/96, prior to being sent to the hardware outputs?

Thanks very much,

mark4man

[Freudian Slip]

You're confusing the driver bit depth and the audio bit depth. They are seperate things.

If 32 bit summed means 16 bits per side of a stereo file then any moden card should handle it.

If you tried to send a 32bit mono audio file through the converters on the layla I'm sure it would have a fit.

So the limitations of the converters are what they are regardless of the sound card driver bit depth.

F.S.

[mark4man]

I'm not confusing anything w/ anything, Freudian. There is no such thing as bit depth as it relates to the drivers...except in the sense that the driver command codes are structured to accept a DAW ouput of a given resolution. My question was asking if the Layla 24/96 accepted 32-Bit at the input (as output by the software); & I received a reply back from Marcel (@ Echo Audio) that it does. I also asked how that signal is then processed within the Layla; & his reply was that it was reconverted to 24-Bit (& I'm assuming that's at a point prior to tha DAC, since there's no such thing as a 32-Bit converter.)

Thanks,

mark4man

[Freudian Slip]

Sorry, I thought when you wrote "can the DAC in the 24/96 receive a 32-Bit signal?" that you maybe thought the d/a converter would play straight 32 bit files because of 32 bit drivers. I should have read further

It would be interesting hear how well the soundcard dithers compared to playing a track dithered by sonar or wavelab.


I was unaware that the layla would dither internaly, but then I never go above 24 bit.

F.S.