16 vs. 24 bit recording - what's the difference?

W

westermane

New member
Here's a question for those of you who have a digital multitrack (or know about them):

I've been looking into getting one of these machines (maybe the Korg D12 or D16) and they say (for instance with the D12) "The D12 allows 12 track simultaneous playback for 16 bit or 6 track simultaneous playback for 24 bit playback." What does this mean? Does this mean that this 12 track recorder is only really a 6 track recorder if you do not want to compromise quality? And how much is the difference in quality between the 16 and 24 bit?

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
hi,

It seems like that is exactly what it means. 6 tracks playback at 24 bits seems like a big limitation.

The difference between 16 bit recording and 24 bit recording is like night and day. I recorded the same song in 16 bit and 24 bits, and after volume changes, and eq changes and what not, the 16 bit song sounds dirty compared to the 24 bit song.


peace
 
I think it really depends on the system. With adats I record in 16 bit although they are 20 bit machines. In 20 bit, I lost some top end and a good deal of stereo spread. I thinks thats just the fault of alesis, but you should definiatly demo it and see if that's true on that machine because I havent even used one.
 
Here's a simple way of comparing 16 bit to 24 bit.

It's like the difference between throwing or bouncing a tennis ball around an empty classroom and throwing/bouncing that same tennis ball around a large empty gymnasium.

The classroom has a limited amount of room in which you can bounce that ball around... (floor to ceiling, wall to wall).
But, in the gym, your limitations are greatly expanded.

Of course, all commercial CD's are 16 bit. But the music is "dithered down" from a higher bit-rate, from which it was originally recorded.

"Dithering" (to explain it simply), is like taking a 9" X 12" picture and reducing it down to a 5" X 7" picture to get it in a 5" X 7" frame.
You still get all the details of the original picture, but it's using less space.

If you take a 24 bit recoding and digitally feed it to a commercial-grade 16 bit CDR through a S/PDIF cable, you would then "truncate" your recording.
"Truncating" would be the equivalent of taking that same 9" X 12" picture and using a scissors to cut the picture down to 5" X 7" (not reducing it) therefore, losing portions of the original picture.
The optimal technique for digital recording is to record at a higher bit-rate (24 bit) and then "dither" it down to 16 bits.

CD recorders like the Tascam CDRW700 and the CDRW5000 have converters that dither down a 24 bit recording to 16 bits. There is software for your computer that will do the same thing.

As for digital recorders, the Akai DPS-16 will record up to 10 tracks at 24 bit, and is a GREAT digital recorder.
I personally own one and have achieved EXCELLENT results from this unit.
You can check it out here......

www.akaipro.com

Buck
 
yo buck62:D

have you tried playing back more then 10 tracks at 24bit? The reason I ask is because I have played back 16 tracks recorded at 24/48 on several occasions.

The usage meter shows about 66% when playing back 16 tracks. I was expecting the OS to give me an error message or just not play, but it seems to work just fine.

I have had all four effects going and few eq's as well, and it still played. I am still using version 1.11 and I am a little scared to upgrade because I like being able to playback 16 tracks at 24bit.

Any ideas?
 
I don't see how the upgrade would affect your playback abilities.
I haven't tried doing more than 10 tracks in 24 bit, so it's still uncharted territory for me.
But, if you say it works, then maybe they just give you the "10 track" limitations just to keep it from locking-up or something.
That happened to me once (so far) with this unit. It just "locked-up" for no reason at all.
I just turned it off, then turned it back on again and it worked just fine. Computers are strange animals.
 
It's a bandwidth limitation that must be inherent to the design. If the machine can do 12 tracks at 16 bit, it _should_ be able to do *9* tracks at 24 bit (assuming that the limitation is in the data path to the disk drive, and not in the processor firmware that packs and unpacks the data on its way to the disk).

Hearing that they chop the number of tracks in half when you are only moving 50% more data sounds like a software issue to me- whatever processor they have in there must be cranking like mad in trying to pull the data off the disk and reassemble it into the audio sample stream for the D/A without munging the timing.

You may very well be able to get more than 6 tracks at 24 bit, almost all of the time. However, if the disk gets fragmented by editing and so on, you may start experiencing clicks, pops, or dropouts as the internal processor runs out of steam trying to get the data off the disk, or the disk runs out of steam trying to seek to the next data block. You may well be able to do 10-12 tracks most all of the time, in fact. But to me, this sounds like a bit of ass-covering by the manufacturer: their way of saying "If you do this, you're on your own!". The thing that would be very sad would be to get the perfect take of the perfect tune, but have the data structure on the disk get into a condition where you can't *play it back* without a click in measure 49...

I'm not that familiar with the Korg, but manufacturers don't typically put that sort of a limitation in the manuals without a pretty good reason.
 
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