changing bit rate after tracking

[fattmudge]

I accidentally recorded my tracks in 16 bit instead of 24. I have the option to change the bit rate to 24, but is that the same as recording in 24 bit?

Thanks

[bennychico11]

first, it's bit depth. bit rate is something different.

and no. You can't gain bit resolution that's not there. Converting it to 24 will give you a 24 bit file, but with a lot of useless, blank information to give you those extra 8 bits. Those extra bits won't do anything but give you a bigger file size though.

There's nothing wrong with your 16 bit file though. Don't worry too much about it as long as it sounds good to your ears.

[fattmudge]

cool... thanks

[Massive Master]

If nothing else, (A) you can record any additional tracks in 24-bit. 16 & 24's can live together just fine as long as they're all the same sample rate and (B) your software is very likely throwing calculations in 32 bit float. Still, 24 bit for next time. But not the end of the world.

[suprstar]

What they said ^^^^^. It's like taking a thumbnail of an image, and blowing it up. It gets pixelly and blocky and blurry. You'll be getting the audio equivalent of that.

[bennychico11]

Originally Posted by suprstar

What they said ^^^^^. It's like taking a thumbnail of an image, and blowing it up. It gets pixelly and blocky and blurry. You'll be getting the audio equivalent of that.

not quite to that extreme. It's not ruining the quality of his recording...it's just not helping anything. To keep your image analogy, it'd be like taking a picture that was taken on a camera phone...opening it in photoshop and saving it as a TIFF file in hopes of increasing the image quality. The only thing it will do is make the file size bigger...you'll still have the original quality you started with.