DogmaticVox
Meh...
Not sure if this has been shared before but I thought this was a great article:
16 Bit vs. 24 Bit Audio Recording Demystified
16 Bit vs. 24 Bit Audio Recording Demystified
dgatwood
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Well, to be pedantic, the use of the term "registers" is completely wrong. A register holds a complete 32-bit value (or whatever length). It should say "having 32 rather than 24 bits". I'm also not too happy about the use of "strings" in that paragraph, since that has a specific technical meaning that this has nothing to do with. And it's not 24 numbers, either. It's 24 bits (binary digits) that make up a single number.
Also, the statement that you can't hear the difference between 44.1 kHz and higher sampling rates is only true if you are not doing any sophisticated processing on the signal. If you plan to use plugins like Auto0Tune/Melodyne, that extra precision in the time domain results in better pitch detection accuracy and better correction results with fewer artifacts. In fact, that's probably true for any pitch correction, automated or not. But for sure, having twice the sampling rate means that you can calculate the pitch to within a range of Hz that's half as wide, if I remember my Fourier transform theory correctly.
Thus, my attitude is that disk space is free. Sure, it's not precisely free, but let me put that statement in the proper perspective.
When I started doing digital recording, I used 44.1 kHz/16-bit because that 500 MB external hard drive cost two or three hundred dollars. At 88.2kB per second, that meant I could fit about 1 hour, 39 minutes of recording on that drive.
Now, I can buy a 2 TB internal drive for about the same price ($200). On that drive, I can fit 288 days of audio at 44.1 kHz/16-bit. I can fit 88 days of audio at 96 kHz/24-bit. Realistically, this means that I'll be ready to replace the drive with a 4 TB drive (for reliability reasons) long before I'll be able to record 2 TB of audio data. So for all practical purposes, the additional disk space is free.
Also, the statement that you can't hear the difference between 44.1 kHz and higher sampling rates is only true if you are not doing any sophisticated processing on the signal. If you plan to use plugins like Auto0Tune/Melodyne, that extra precision in the time domain results in better pitch detection accuracy and better correction results with fewer artifacts. In fact, that's probably true for any pitch correction, automated or not. But for sure, having twice the sampling rate means that you can calculate the pitch to within a range of Hz that's half as wide, if I remember my Fourier transform theory correctly.
Thus, my attitude is that disk space is free. Sure, it's not precisely free, but let me put that statement in the proper perspective.
When I started doing digital recording, I used 44.1 kHz/16-bit because that 500 MB external hard drive cost two or three hundred dollars. At 88.2kB per second, that meant I could fit about 1 hour, 39 minutes of recording on that drive.
Now, I can buy a 2 TB internal drive for about the same price ($200). On that drive, I can fit 288 days of audio at 44.1 kHz/16-bit. I can fit 88 days of audio at 96 kHz/24-bit. Realistically, this means that I'll be ready to replace the drive with a 4 TB drive (for reliability reasons) long before I'll be able to record 2 TB of audio data. So for all practical purposes, the additional disk space is free.