Major Mixing Down Problem--plse help!

[madroad]

Cakewalk Pro Audio 9

I have been trying to get my audio to CD, and everything works fine (creates the wave file and everything seems normal) at first. But when I try to play the wave file in windows media player it gives me the error message "An invalid media type was specified". It does this with every file I try. The file should run in media player because it's a normal wave file, right?

Really frustrated here.....your help would be greatly appreciated!!

email me at sochek@hotmail.com

[dachay2tnr]

Are you recording in 24 bits? If so, when you export the wave file, it will be a 24-bit wave file.

Media Player won't play 24 bit wave files. You have to step the files down to 16 bits before Media Player will play them.

[madroad]

Thanks dachay2tnr! Problem solved. However, I would like to know what effect changing the bit depth has on the quality of the recording. I changed the bit depth both in the file bit depth and the audio. Should I always keep those two matched up on bit depth?? Why would I need to change the bit depth (i mean, when would I want to go back to 24 bit?)?

Thanks again dachay2tnr, i am eternally grateful.
Will

[dachay2tnr]

Lowering the bit rate lowers the quality. However, if you are going to burn to CD you have no choice. CD's by definition must be burned at 16 bits and 44.1 sample rate.

Therefore you should do your recording and processing in 24-bit, and only drop to 16 bit as the last step before you burn to CD.

Generally I do all my work in Cakewalk/Sonar in 24-bit. I then export a 24-bit wave file, which I open in Wavelab for additional finishing, and lastly dithering down to 16-bits to burn to CD. This way my Sonar project files remain 24-bit, in case I need to go back and do additional work on them.

[madroad]

Thanks again, dachay2tnr. It makes sense to me now.