16bit vs. 24bit?

E

emomusician

New member
am I gonna notice the difference, if all I am recording are demos of acoustic pop songs.. to go on burned cds and myspace? I'd go to a real studio for anything I really wanted to market.
 
If you A/B'd the two, you would notice a big difference. But, plenty of good albums were recorded in 16 bit.

I would be more worried about how old/cheap your converters are to only be 16 bit in this day and age.
 
We had this same discussion on the P.O.R.K. board awhile ago.[Don't go there it's just a bunch of guys with 6" quiffs trying to get the psych chicks to show tits]

Nekroman said everything got mastered to 16 bit anyway.
 
You will be compromising the quality in a few different ways if you go with the cheapest thing there is. I would get the lowest price 24 bit interface if budget is an issue.

A good 16 bit converter will sound better than a crappy 24 bit converter, but a crappy 16 bit converter is the worst choice you could make.
 
Nekroman said everything got mastered to 16 bit anyway.
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But that's no excuse to do everything in the lowest possible resolution -

Record in 24-bit, throw calcs in (at least) 32-bit, pretty much no matter what the target delivery is.

*Starting* with the best core and keeping it that way as long as possible is how to wind up with the best final product. No matter what that product is.
 
How about something like the Digidesign 888 (going really cheap on Ebay)?

It used to be top of line, and I´m sure many excellent albums were recordered with it (including ad/da tasks)...

Most people would say that digi won´t support 888 anymore... but that´s really an issue? With most actual devices you have to cross your fingers to receive and answer from the company...

What do you think?
 
These will only work with Protools, I'm not sure if Protools LE will see them.

These things were pretty bad if you pushed the peaks past -4dbfs, but it being 16 bit, you need to push the levels a bit. Most big studios bypased these and used better conversion.
 
Massive Master said:
*Starting* with the best core and keeping it that way as long as possible is how to wind up with the best final product. No matter what that product is.
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Agreed. That said, the biggest advantage of 24-bit, IMHO, is that you don't have to spend the time getting your levels set to peak as close as possible to zero in order to get good sound. Every dollar you save on the gear by getting 16-bit converters is a thousand dollars worth of time you'll waste tweaking levels during tracking. :)
 
I would say the best reason for 24 bit recording is better results using plug-in audio effects & processing. Better to do all your processing on a 24 bit file and THEN convert the final master to 16 bit.
 
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