bewildered
New member
20 bit and 24 bit? is their a noticeable sound difference when recording?
The difference between..
- Thread starter bewildered
- Start date
Chris Shaeffer
Peavey ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've never noticed one.
I use the 20 bit convertors in an ADAT xt-20 to feed the lightpipe i/o of a Digi002. The rest of the session is at 24 bit. On the way in I don't do anything and it sounds fine.
On the way out it sounds good if I don't do anything. To cover my bases, though, I dither the outputs of the tracks going through the ADAT back to the board down to 20 bits. I've never really listened to see if it makes a huge difference, but casual listening has never turned one up. Dithering is just the right way to do it, so I do it that way. If you're not mixing analog, then I don't think it makes much difference.
Just my experience. No noticeable difference. Or at least what little difference there is isn't noticeable with my set up.
Take care,
Chris
I use the 20 bit convertors in an ADAT xt-20 to feed the lightpipe i/o of a Digi002. The rest of the session is at 24 bit. On the way in I don't do anything and it sounds fine.
On the way out it sounds good if I don't do anything. To cover my bases, though, I dither the outputs of the tracks going through the ADAT back to the board down to 20 bits. I've never really listened to see if it makes a huge difference, but casual listening has never turned one up. Dithering is just the right way to do it, so I do it that way. If you're not mixing analog, then I don't think it makes much difference.
Just my experience. No noticeable difference. Or at least what little difference there is isn't noticeable with my set up.
Take care,
Chris
Ethan Winer
Acoustics Expert
> is their a noticeable sound difference when recording? <
Rather than ask for opinions, I suggest you record both ways and see if you can hear a difference!
--Ethan
Rather than ask for opinions, I suggest you record both ways and see if you can hear a difference!
--Ethan
mshilarious
Banned
bewildered said:
The big difference as technology progressed was converters got quieter. Thus, since 20 bit converters are likely to be 5 years old or more, a new 24 bit converter could be 10 or even 20 dB quieter.
Switching between 20 and 24 bits on the same converter is probably not a big difference, if noticeable.
mshilarious said:
Good point. I'll counter with the possibility that those 20 bit converters *may* sound more musical than a givin 24 bit converter with higher S/N ratio. So, I'd do some recording with them in a quiet room, do some critical listening and noise analysis, and see what you've got. The old rule applies - if it sounds good, it is. The exception is if you're selling your services, and equipment list. Then customers may turn thier nose up at 20 bit.
-RD
mindbuzz
New member
my 2 cents
Your average run-of-the-mill CD will only play at 16 bit resolution. Anything higher than that you'll have to dither back to 16 bit and try not to lose detail. The POW-r 3 dither the latest version of Sonar uses -- it's pretty amazing at maintaining the illusion of the same detail as 24 bit.
But you have to consider first, why do you need that much resolution? If you make a recording with that much detail you're going to hear every rustle of fabric from your clothes moving over the background drone of your CPU cooling fan. If you make any mistakes at all -- accidentally tap your foot on a weak floor board, spin slightly in your swivel chair, or maybe the foundation of your house decides to settle a little bit during one take -- you're going to hear it.
I usually record straight to 16 bit at 44.1 khz, the same rate it plays on my CD's, without a really noticeable difference. And in a lot of cases, a lesser resolution gives me more control over the sound when I want to move it to another place and create the appearance of a seamless take.
If you really want to hear your CPU fan in the recording for some reason, then go 24 bit all the way. Me, I'm happy knowing that if I really need the extra detail I can record it, but for most everyday recording purposes 16 at 44.1 is just fine.
Your average run-of-the-mill CD will only play at 16 bit resolution. Anything higher than that you'll have to dither back to 16 bit and try not to lose detail. The POW-r 3 dither the latest version of Sonar uses -- it's pretty amazing at maintaining the illusion of the same detail as 24 bit.
But you have to consider first, why do you need that much resolution? If you make a recording with that much detail you're going to hear every rustle of fabric from your clothes moving over the background drone of your CPU cooling fan. If you make any mistakes at all -- accidentally tap your foot on a weak floor board, spin slightly in your swivel chair, or maybe the foundation of your house decides to settle a little bit during one take -- you're going to hear it.
I usually record straight to 16 bit at 44.1 khz, the same rate it plays on my CD's, without a really noticeable difference. And in a lot of cases, a lesser resolution gives me more control over the sound when I want to move it to another place and create the appearance of a seamless take.
If you really want to hear your CPU fan in the recording for some reason, then go 24 bit all the way. Me, I'm happy knowing that if I really need the extra detail I can record it, but for most everyday recording purposes 16 at 44.1 is just fine.
reshp1
New member
Well that's not the complete story... final productions generally use all of the 16 bits, especially with the recent trend of over limiting/compression during mastering. When you record, you have really crank your sources near 0db to take advantage of all that resolution. Otherwise, if you record softly you are not using all the bits, and if you later have to add digital gain, the effective bit depth goes down and quantization errors become more noticable.mindbuzz said:
mindbuzz
New member
That's true, and kind of goes without saying, since my levels are okay.
You really need to watch how the meters jump on your tracks. Pump up the microphone to the point where you don't have any green at the bottom of your meter unless you move around a bit; then you should see maybe one or two bars. You don't really want to bring the floor up much more than that or you'll hear the air in the room. Guitar and other direct inputs are easier to bring up to zero dB, but generally you'll want those instruments to run five to ten decibels lower than your vocal unless you want the vocal to hide/blend-in with the rest of the mix.
Pretty soon now I'll be gutting my walk-in closet and converting it into a vocal isolation booth.
You really need to watch how the meters jump on your tracks. Pump up the microphone to the point where you don't have any green at the bottom of your meter unless you move around a bit; then you should see maybe one or two bars. You don't really want to bring the floor up much more than that or you'll hear the air in the room. Guitar and other direct inputs are easier to bring up to zero dB, but generally you'll want those instruments to run five to ten decibels lower than your vocal unless you want the vocal to hide/blend-in with the rest of the mix.
Pretty soon now I'll be gutting my walk-in closet and converting it into a vocal isolation booth.