I have a korg d16 digital recorder. I have recorded several songs in both modes and for the life of me I can't hear a difference between them. what do I need to listen for? Does it really matter? I am trying to get a top quality sound. So far, much to my surprise, this stuff holds its own with commercial albums to my ears. I am a veteran musician but I am new to the engineering/mixing world and I cannot entertain the possibility of getting a great product with so little experience. The fact that I can't hear the difference between 16 and 24 bit is evidence of my assertion. Please help me train my ear.
Well, if you make sure to get the levels right you basically should not be able to hear a difference. What 24-bit gives you is higher detail, which means that you can record things with a lower volume (and therefore more headroom) and boost it without loosing detail, and you can record things uncompressed, and compress things on mix without loosing detail on the soft parts.
But just recording the same thing with the same volume and then playing it back and comparing, you have to have very good ears to hear the detail. Not to mention that you need very good amplifiers and speakers too... Oh, and microphones that really can handle more than 96db of dynamics.
Try to see if you can hear any difference between 16 and 24 if you record some REALLY dynamic material, and then play it back with a heavy compression. Plink a silent bit on your acoustic and turn on the fuzzbox, or whisper some stuff into the mic and then scream your lungs off.
