choise,thanks.

[Hoi]

Egosys waveterminal 2496 and Terratec DMX,
thich one is better?A sales in a shop said
that even 2496 have 24 bit,it have to change
to 16 bit when recording cd cause cd format
is 16 bit,is it true?So,is it a big difference between 16 bit and 24 bit?Hope
someone can give me a suggestion,thanks a lot.

 

[amadeus]

Technical answer:

When you record at 24 bit you are capturing much more detail than if you record at 16 bit so it is much higher quality. Even though you ultimately end up with 16 bits, being able to work with 24 allows you to preserve as much quality as possible until the final dithering to 16 bits. Imagine if a scanner could only scan using 16 bit color depth. It would have only 65,536 set colors it would have to choose from while scanning. It would produce a much lower quality image than if you could scan in 24 bit (16.7 million colors), then use an image processing program to take your 24 bit image and convert it down to 16 bits. Both images will be 16 bit in the end, but one will be alot better quality.

I imagine you would have to have somewhat decent quality mics and other gear to take advantage of the 24 bit quality, but I would think it would be very noticibly better than 16 bit. I never used 24 bit soundcard, anyone have some real world experience with this?

 

[drstawl]

Don't forget about the nominal 50% drop in performance of your computer as a DAW when you switch from 16 bit to 24 bit.
Each sample is now 50% larger.
And the HD space requirements grow as well.
But I'll take Ed's word for it.
The quality is better.
He loves his Lynx One.