24 bit benchmark

[Yasoo]

I want to use a 24 bit wav file as a benchmark for testing my audio soundcard to see if it's working in 24 bit mode correctly. If I have a file I know is in 24 bit (how do I determine if a .wav is 24 bit?) and I import it into Sonar, if I bounce it to track in 16 bit mode and export to a 24 bit file I should see padded 0s every 3rd byte, right? If I bounce it to track in 24 bit mode and export to a 24 bit file, should I see almost an identical file as the original except for minor resampling exceptions?

 

[ds21]

just look under the waves properties.

 

[Yasoo]

I found that if you right click on a .wav file in Windows, under the summary tab it will tell you if it's 16 bit or 24 bit. I did verify that if I record a track at 16 bit and save it to a 24 bit file, every third byte is a 00 (0, this is a no brainer, I guess). The thing I thought was interesting was when I looked a 24 bit file that was recorded in 24 bit. It almost seems as if every third byte is padded with FF (255). It's not, because I found some sections of the wav that had a series of 3 byte values that didn't have 255 every third byte. Anyone know why I would see so many FFs?