Ummmm...Ears:
"The dithering that goes on between the units is in no way destructive. I did all my live gig stuff to CD's from real time to an external non dedicated unit. It was flawless.
Unless your'e getting paid $1000s of dollars, are doing a jingle for Coca Cola, and can even hear a difference,which is most unlikely even in the most experienced ears, you will be fine either way, don't worry abo9ut @#$! like that."
If all engineers believed that, and practiced the above, music production would be pretty lousy sounding. It is one thing to maximize the use of what you have. But, lets not confuse that with the potential of better equipement. Better gear= better sound. No arguement will sway me from that.
If you are happy with the "demo" quality of digitally processing 16 bit audio, well, cool. But, without fail, people have noticed a significant increase in fidelity of my mixes once I started mixing them and mastering them at 24 bit, then dithering them.
Dithering is destructive no matter what. But, when 24 bit audio is dithered to 16 bit, it is a true 16 bit. No loss per se.
But, beleive what you want, but let your ears be the finale judge (this only works if you have a nice monitoring system by the way. You know, one where you can HEAR the difference between 24 bit and 16 bit...
)
Ed