when it REALLY comes down to it...(yes, more 16-bit vs 24-bit)

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shackrock

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i read this:
"about the 16/24 bit part... the higher bit rate you record and most importantly apply the effects to the better your final sound even after dithering down to 16bit for the master. And just to be sure do not dither until the master is 100% complete and mastered. Then go to 16bit.

The more bits that the computer has to work with the more accurate the edits and effects will be and the less digital junk and artifacts will be put in your music.

Think of bitrate like you would the width on analog tape."

on a previous post....but i was thinking - when it really comes down to it, if you're somebody like me, who is defineately not making pro recordings, and is just charging a little money for local bands/hip hop groups to come in and record thier stuff (some cases they make cd's out of them, others just demos, etc.)....is it really neccesary, or is there a NOTICABLE difference to the avg. person's ear in 24-bit to 16-bit?

if anyone has the capability too, i'd like to hear a sample of something recorded twice, once in 16, once in 24...to actually HEAR the difference. and maybe a 3rd mp3 of the 24bit one dithered, and ready to hit the cd's.
 
No. Get a 24bit card and do your own mix. You have to do it eventually since every high quality 16, 18, and 20 bit card has been replaced by a 24bit variation, and you're obviously somewhat unhappy with the sound you're getting or you wouldn't be asking this question.

The simplest answer in the world is that your soundcard has as big an impact on your sound as any device in your chain. Yes, you will hear it.

The first thing you need to do is actually hear your soundcard. Forget about all the 24 and 16bit crap. Run a guitar direct to your soundcard such that you're monitoring the sound through your monitoring system. Play it for a while and really listen to what it sounds like, good or bad. Now hit the record button and play for a while. Now stop, and playback what you just recorded. Does it sound *exactly* the way it sounded when you were playing live? Hardly. There, that's your soundcard.

Multiple the yuck introduced by your soundcard by 24 tracks, and you've suddenly got a whole lot of compounded yuck.

Moving to a better soundcard is going to move you into the 24bit arena, because that's what's out there. And yes, recording at 24bit does indeed make a difference, especially when you start adding track after track and processor after processor. Yes, it is a noticable difference, but you'll have to move up to a better soundcard to hear it....see where I'm going with this?

I have a hunch that you wouldn't have asked this question if you were totally satisfied by the recordings you're making. It's always tempting when you're first getting into this shit to say, "well, I'm just not going to try to make pro sounding recordings, I'll just make demo quality and be happy with it." Unfortunately, most people are only satisfied with their recordings until such a time as they can start to hear the defects introduced by equipment...and then they'll want to upgrade to better equipment. It's a never-ending cycle. Fortunately, a good soundcard is an investment that will have an immediate and major impact on the quality of your recordings.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Quote

A computer with a soundcard, even if it has a modest digital audio replay section, can act as a very compact and easy-to-use music workstation. If you are producing demos, or using your computer as a kind of musical notepad, then the digital audio section of a soundcard can add a lot of impact, even if it's only used to add a vocal line. However, bear in mind that it is very easy to lose sight of your objectives when delving into the technical minutiae of audio equipment. There is not a lot of point insisting on high-quality audio -- say a 90dB noise floor -- unless you are planning to produce commercial-quality CDs on your PC. It just depends on your ultimate objectives.
 
There is the issue of "what you are used to". If you have recorded your own band onto cassette tape for ages, and then switch to recording on a 16 bit soundcard (like a Sound Blaster), then sure its going to sound better & cleaner. And I suppose some people could stop right there and be happy.

But a better standard to "shoot for" are good CDs that you buy by bands that you like. Even with a 24 bit card and good home studio rig you will NOT be able to really duplicate this, because you will be missing many of the elements that went into that CD (great studio, great outboard gear, highly talented & experianced producers and enginers, etc). But that stuggle to get as close as you can has it's own rewards! And yes, 24 bit gear will put you a step closer to that. Like Slack said, its a never ending cycle.
 
Do indeed give it a try. Record something at 16 and again at 24. Then have someone "else" give you a blindfold test and tell me that you heard a difference. I've yet to meet anyone who could when I gave "them" a blindfold test. Not a single person ever. It's utter and absolute bologna! Save your money. Record at 16 and be happy. There are a number of new recordings that have come out in the past year that make a big deal out of claiming a superior sound because they were recorded at 24 bit. Not one of them sounds any better to me whatsoever. No human being in the world can hear any difference between 16 and 24 bits and don't believe that load of crap when they lay it on you. If you're not getting pristine sounds at 16 bit you'll never get them at 24. All it does is bog down your system. Not to mention that mosts recording software suites will limit you to 24 tracks at 24 bit. But don't sweat it because unless you've spent an ungodly amount of money on processing power you'll never be able to spare enough system resources to record more than a dozen or so tracks at 24 bit anyway.

I'll say it till the cows come home...if you can't tell the difference between a 16/44.1 wave and a 320k MP3 copy of it (and I'll call you a liar if you say you can) then why the hell would I think you could hear the difference between a 16 and 24 bit wave. It's beyond stupid!
 
You must have the worlds shittiest speakers if you cant tell the difference between a .wav and an mp3.;)

Im curious...how many people have you given this 'blindfold test' to... that makes it signifigant that 'Not a single person ever' could tell the difference. Ive never had anyone tell the difference when blindfolded, either... cuz I've never blindfolded anyone.... well.. not to play them some pink noise.. But Ive had plenty of people come out of nowhere and tell me that projects I did at 24 sounded WAAAYYY better than those I did at 16. Because its the final OUTCOME that will sound different.

You are ignorant of the difference between 16 and 24 if you think a simple A/B will show it up. You need to do a bunch of processing to really degrade a 16-bit sound... and press it to CD and play it on a NICE(ish) monitoring system... and compare that to a project in which you did all your processing in 24... THATS when you will hear a BIG difference. I've heard the difference. I could pass your test...

xoxo
 
I can hear it. Thanks for calling me stupid though, and I always enjoy a person who isn't afraid to come right out and share his inadequecies.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Well then

Greetings,

Having NEVER owned, touched, seen, listened, or recorded onto a 24 bit card I feel I am highly qualified to enter this debate.

Has there ever in the history of the world been an actually blindfold test of the level of resolution that the human ear can percieve? I never heard one mentioned here...so anybody who says you can percieve it is just stating an opinion to date. I know if I opened up a pretty box with a $500 24bit card in there I would certainly expect it to sound better. Its just like medical placebo's, expectation is powerfull stuff.

On the other hand, 24 bit encodes a hell of a lot more info. But with modern preamp and stuff, wouldn;t the signal to noise ratio even on a 24 track processed song be so insanely huge that you ear would not actually detect the distortions but just other artifacts of sound that occur is all recordings. Its insane to say "I can hear that dither right there!" more like "Something is different...I think."

I gonna make millions by dong a blindfold test and proving it one way or another.

P.S.- My buddy works at this hi-fi stereo store and he took me in to listen to a cd (16 bit) from a 30,000$ system (in the middle of a large room, with blue fluresent tubes and cables that were magnetically shielded and 1" thick!)

I must say, the sound was freaking amazing, even from a normal CD. But I still think that volume/clarity of the speakers and listening enviroment is a huge influence in how you recieve the music, even moreso then the actual resolution of the music itself.


SirRiff
 
It would seem that alot of the improvement in 'better converters' may be comming from improvements in other aspects besides just bit depth. That, if all else were equal, about the only difference is to lowering the noise floor. With a little care in record levels, 16 bit can pretty much cover it fine.
There's another good thread over at RAP geting into this if anyone's interested. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&num=30&q=group:rec.audio.pro
(hope that works, it looks weird..)
When you compare the bottom range of 16 bit to 24, it is amazing what happens to the noise floor of the converter...it goes down, way, way down. Very impressive if you happen to be listening at -80!
Bottom line, you can get very good results at 16, but overall quality can also be a variable.
 
You get out of 16 bit recording exactly what you put into it. You can't improve on "exactly the same". If you can then lets hear it. Show us this magic recording at 24 bit that's supposed to sound better. Do what the man suggested and record something at 16 and then again at 24 and then post it for us. I can tell you right now that you're either too chicken to do it because you know you're wrong or that if you do indeed do it the two recordings will sound identical. There's only one sensable reason for anyone to record at 24 bit and that's for making multiple changes/resaves to the file after recording. You lose bits with every edit so the more bits you have the less degradation in sound after edits. Who on earth makes lots of destructive edits on multi-track recordings though? You make your edits on your 2-track master. Take you finished stereo wave and bumb it up to 24/88.2 before you start making your edits and dither it back afterwards and that's all you'll ever need do. There's no need nor advantage whatsoever for recording initial tracks at 24 bit. It's funny we all got along great with 16 bit recording for over 10 years but when sales of workstations started to fall dramatically all of the sudden the guys in the suits at the factories decided we needed more bits after all...right.... You can believe that load of crap all you want. But by all means, do make a believer out of me. If 24 bit sounds better then lets hear it and shut up.
 
so...a 24 bit soundblaster will sound better than my layla 20 bit cards..... I don't think so. oh...the AD/DA about to ensue. I've NEVER had anyone tell me I ought to upgrade, because the fidelity/SN/dynamic range/bit rate was inadequate.....maybe my recording skills....but not my PCI cards. Check my crap-o-la at the mp3 clinic. I'd be intererested if someone could point out the 24 bit recordings to me, and then the 20 bit....from anyones music..

you guys can hear the difference in the clinic....Huh? I don't think that has ever been an issue over there....

:rolleyes:
 
whatever happened to a nice friendly debate? This is turned into some grade school battle or something ("...you're stupid" or "you're just too afraid to admit that you're wrong")...but that only seems to be with the one person. I wish I could bring something to the table but I've only recorded digitally at 16 bit (for a little while when I had my Roland VS880) but haven't heard 24 bit. I know one guy, a good friend of mine, swear by 16 bit on his SBLive, and there are others here who swear by 24 bit. I say if it works for you then that's fine...but the obvious assumption is that 24 bit does sound better, so why not spend a little extra and get a 24 bit card? In fact don't 24 bit cards go to 16 bit as well? If so, I'd rather have a card that's flexible like that.
 
Basslord,

I'm sorry if I sound disgruntled and even a bit disgusted at this whole thing but darn it, every time somebody jumps up and yells about how great 24 bit is, yada, yada, yada, and then you ask them to show you their great 24 bit recordings they slink off into the sunset. I'm just saying that if it's so darn terrific then there should be plenty of terrific examples of this great new recording tool. I've yet to hear one and 24 bit recording has been around for about a year now. That even includes award winning CD's such as the latest Roger Nichol's produced one by Steely Dan. No doubt it sounds great and he's a hell of a producer/engineer. But I sure don't think his new 24 bit recordings sound any better than ones he was making 10 years ago at 16. For that matter he and others were making records 30 years ago on analog tape that sound just as good to me as anything current. Aside from a bit less tape hiss I hear no difference.

Further, I've made some 16 bit recordings that I'm very pleased with. But do they sound as good as a Roger Nichols' 16 bit recording? Nope. But my going to 24 bit isn't the answer. Until you and I can make our 16 bit recordings sound as good as other top notch 16 bit recordings, why bother going to 24 bit? I still haven't been able to make the most of 16 bit. Until I do I'd be pretty foolish to waste money on the hardware required to go to 24 bit. Instead, I'd be better off to figure out what I can do to make my 16 bit recordings sound as good as the others. There's an awful lot that goes into making an award winning 16 bit recording. How good does your room sound? Can you afford maple walls? (I know I can't.) How good is your mixer? Did you know that a lot of digital mixing boards will skimp in certain areas that they don't tell you about? For instance, it's not uncommon to find a board that claims to have 24 bit ins and outs but they don't tell you that the volume sliders are only 8 bit. Will that effect the sound? Darn right it will.

Not only does it take a lot of experience, a ton of outboard gear, and an extremely expensive room to make recordings like Roger Nichols. It takes a lot of cold, hard cash. You and I will probably never have enough money to make the best of even 16 bit recordings. At least I know I won't. I've got a girlfriend who actually likes to go out and do things now and then don't you?

But I can make perfectly satisfactory recordings with my old analog mixer and even an inexpensive SB card at 16 bit. It's cheap, it works well, and sounds great. As Good as a Steely Dan Record? Nope. But if I can make up for that in the calliber of my musicianship who's going to care? Half of Phil Keaggy's records were recorded at home on a little Tascam 8-track reel to reel workstation at 7 1/2 ips with the fidelity of a cassette deck. People still buy his records. No one complains about the fidelity. If you're good you're good and you'll have an audience for what you do. But lets face it, 90% of what I hear in this mp3 clinic sounds decent sonically but the musicianship is crap. So do they think that going to 24 bit recording will make their crap sound clearer or what?

First you sit down in a room 4 or 5 hours a day for no less than 4 years until you can double-pick like Steve Morse, fingerpick like Doyle Dykes, play arpeggios and intervals like David Sanborn, and come up with harmonic counterpoint like Dave Brubeck. Most of these guys haven't even mastered their instruments yet but for some reason they think the world wants to hear their nice, crisp 24 bit recordings?

But again, if you want to stay with the issue, then lets hear those great sounding 24 bit recordings. I'll be more than happy to drop the whole thing if someone will just show me I'm wrong. The issue isn't whether or not 24 bit recording sounds better than 16 bit. The issue is whether or not any human could hear that difference. There are very few people over the age of 12 that can even hear anything at all above 16k hertz. And I'm supposed to think they can tell the difference between 16 and 24 bit? Please....
 
The reason they "slink off into the sunset" is that nobody in his right mind is going to spend the time to either retrack or convert an entire project and remix it in 16bit. Why the hell should I do that? Why don't *you* mix two projects at different bit depths and show me two identical end results?

And what's the point of bringing the clinic into this? It's rare to hear a professional sounding recording in the clinic unless it was posted by one of the pros. Neither of you has posted anything overly-respectable to the clinic. The only thing I've heard from windowman is ballooning.

What I think is most interesting is that most people who are anti-24bit (which is funny in itself) always seem to bring up the noise floor. Obviously some of you who claim to not care about specs sure put a lot of weight into considering the *wrong* specs. It's really quite simple. Let's say you have a perfect 16bit digital system (which doesn't exist), and you've got 96db of dynamic range to work with. How many values do you use to represent the range -96db to -90db? Two. Two discrete voltage levels. In a 24bit system, how many values represent the -96db to -90db range? 128. Now continue up the db scale, and consider what happens when you're not consistantly keeping your levels between -6 and 0.

It's also silly to compare a 24bit soundblaster to a 20bit Layla. I would put my money on the Layla any day. Nobody said that bit depth was the key specification to look for. I've said time and time again that it is possible to have a 16bit system that sounds better than a 24bit system. Duh.

The big point is, that the difference between a 16bit soundblaster and, for instance, a 24bit delta is night and day. If you're going to upgrade, you're going to get 24bit converters because that's just what's out there. It doesn't really cost *more* for the converters themselves, you're paying for the entire package, and you're not paying that much really. And if you do happen to record and mix an entire project at 16bit with that 24bit card, you will hear the difference. It's not quite as simple as just recording ONE track at 16 and 24 bit and comparing the results. I have plenty 128Kbps MP3's on my system that sound somewhat respectable on their own. Does that mean I should start saving all my raw tracks as MP3's? Why not? Leaving them as waves would be a waste of disk space right?

The 16bit recordings your so fond of were NOT recorded on your soundblaster. If you're waiting until you produce something of professional quality with your soundblaster before you get into 24bit then you're going to be waiting a long damn time.

Shit, Sgt. Pepper was recorded using nothing but 4-track machines! Oh my, does that mean I can drag out my Fostex X-26 and eventually get a professional sounding recording out of it? I just must not be using it right. The chili-peppers ran a lot of guitars straight to the board on blood sugar, does that mean I can run my guitar straight into a mackie and get the same results? Sweet!

So until I actually get a perfect room with perfect acoustics and perfect microphones and perfect pres and a perfect board I'll never be able to touch a professional recording, so there's no point in ever upgrading any of my equipment. Is that your point? Did I hear you correctly? A person shouldn't put a whole ton of money into a 24bit system? $150 is a whole lot of money?

I am ducking out of this conversation now. Not because I'm running away, but because neither of us is going to put out the effort to prove anything. If I'm supposed to prove that there is a noticable difference, then I want you to prove that there is not.

Slackmaster 2000
 
"The reason they "slink off into the sunset" is that nobody in his right mind is going to spend the time to either retrack or convert an entire project and remix it in 16bit. Why the hell should I do that? Why don't *you* mix two projects at different bit depths and show me two identical end results?"

You are the one claiming superior sound. The burden of proof lies with you, not me. And what's so hard about recording a tune twice at 2 bitrates? Unless you can't play to save your soul that would take all of 20-minutes. You don't have to lay tracks for a twenty piece orchestra. A three piece trio should do nicely. But I'd be happy to make a short recording of my trio at 16 bit while you make one at 24 and we could all compare them. What's more, I still have an old SB Live in my puter. You know, one of those relics you claim has crappy converters and a bad S/N ratio etc? I'll be happy to record at the default 16/48 on it while you can use anything you want. If you can't make it on an old SB then the problems with your engineering skills.

And I don't know why anyone would bring the S/N ratio into the debate about 24 bit recording either. Even a SB has a S/N ratio of well over 90 db. The difference between 60 and 70 db is extreme but the difference between 90 and 100 is next to nothing, so who cares?

And BTW, the new SB Audigy won't do 24 bit. I know the box makes it appear like it does but it does not. It will play back 24 bit recordings (of course) but it won't print them. It's still 16/48, same as always.

"The big point is, that the difference between a 16bit soundblaster and, for instance, a 24bit delta is night and day."

Let's hear it. I don't own a Delta but it's a popular card and I've heard a lot of stuff done on them right here, but I haven't heard anything that sounds any better than the recordings people do with a SB.

"If you're going to upgrade, you're going to get 24bit converters because that's just what's out there. It doesn't really cost *more* for the converters themselves, you're paying for the entire package, and you're not paying that much really. And if you do happen to record and mix an entire project at 16bit with that 24bit card, you will hear the difference."

Yes, the trend is to try and stick you with 24 bit cards that you don't need. There's no avoiding it. Because you have 24 bits available does that mean you should use it? I don't think so. The cost is simply not as simple as merely paying $200 for a card. In order to take advantage of those 24 bits per track you'll need to go out and buy a gig of Ram, a humongous HD, and a 1000 meg Pentium Processor. That's a hell of a lot more than just $200 bucks for a new card. But as long as you're still using an analog board or even an inexpensive digital one the sound will be degraded before it ever hits the card anyway. Okay, you could use a single good mic preamp with digital converters to run to your card via a digital connection if you're a one-man show but then how good are your microphones? How well shielded are your cables? Do you have your monitor in a seperate room to avoid RF interferience because your sure gonna have it if your recording in the same room. It's not as simple as just buying a 24 bit card. It's way more costly than that. And for what? A better sound? I don't think so. Maybe dogs could hear the improvement though. Let's say for a moment that it's possible to hear the difference. How good a sound system would your CD-buying public need in order for them to hear this difference? Most people don't have a dedicated listening room with thousand dollar speakers, a Mark Levinson Tube preamp, etc. 9 out of 10 are listening in their car with the wind blowing in their ears and the sound of the road beneath them. Or they've transfered the tracks to MP3 or WMA so they can hear em on their little RIO players while jogging in the park. Even if it was possible to hear a difference in the quality of a 24 bit versus 16 bit recording, is it at all feasable to blow all that money for it just so 3 people with a few grand tied up in a killer sound system can hear it?

"The 16bit recordings your so fond of were NOT recorded on your soundblaster. If you're waiting until you produce something of professional quality with your soundblaster before you get into 24bit then you're going to be waiting a long damn time."

I beg to differ pardner. When I first got my feet wet with digital I was just goofing off with an SB Live and my home puter. I made some astounding recordings of fingerstyle guitar that sound better even than my 15 ips reel to reel tapes. Not much better but a little. Furthermore I have a small web design business that I operate. I specialize in Flash tutorials with narration and have several music samples on my business page for prospective clients. Many of those samples were done by just myself and a percussionist friend in a single night at my home on that little SB Live at 16/48. Nothing terribly fancy because the stuff that makes for good Flash intros and background beds needs to be a little bland in the melody department. But I think the quality of those recordings, even though rushed, sounds pretty darn good. I'll post several here.

The first 4 are myself on a set of stereo acoustic guitar tracks along with 2 stereo percussion tracks. The guitar in this case was just straight to the board using both a Sunrise soundhole pick-up and a LR Baggs under the saddle. From there the signal went to a Boss AD-5 Acoustic preamp where it was effected with it's own built-in reverb (very nice BTW) and a DBX compressor (without a noise gate too) in the sidechain loop. Then straight to the SB Live analog 1/8 inch stereo input. All percussion was recorded through the same ins/outs but with an ART Tube preamp. The reverb for the percussion is just the stock reverb from CakeWalk. Everything was recorded on Cool Edit 2000 w/ the 4-track plug-in. I have CW GT Pro (32 stereo tracks) also and used the reverb plug-in from it but otherwise the 4-tracks available in the CE program was enough for what we were doing. I employed no noise reduction of any kind even though CE has a good one available. I just didn't need it. I think these tracks sound about as noise free as you'd ever need them to be. The SB Live is a clean and good sounding Card and I would have no problem using one all the time if it had an effects loop on it so I could use my Revalver plug-in for my electric set-up. I like Revalver so much that I've retired my amp from the recording process recently.

The last three recordings here are solo acoustic. With these I used a cheap Marshall SM 57 mic through the ART tube preamp and then into the AD-5 agin. I like the reverb available in the AD-5 unit so much on acoustic guitar that I'm willing to run a preamp into a preamp. Is there a noise build up from doing this? I don't hear any. The mic itself is a 1" diaphram and I personally think that 1/2" sounds better on acoustic guitar, but this was just some simple home recording stuff for use in my Flash design business and I keep that mic at the house for doing voice-overs. It's a great sounding vocal mic for speach. Extremely clear and I have a muddy voice so I need it. The acoustic could sound a little less boxy with a different mic but I still think the recording is fine and I find little fault with it. In fact I just got the new CD, "Huron Street", by fingerpicker Don Ross because it was much ballyhooed as sounding great because of the 24 bit converters used. I don't think it even sounds as good as these little Marshall/SB Live recordings I did. I'd be happy to load a sample from his album if anyone cares to hear.

All recordings are around 30-seconds (about as long as you'd want a Flash intro to be) and are 128k MP3's encoded w/Fraunhofer.















My band is on a break right now and we keep all the recording gear at the keyboard/bass players house. When we get back into things later in the spring (around June) I'll make some recordings of us at both 16 and 24 bit so you can compare a full band. Like I said, it shouldn't take more than 20-minutes. A monkey could do that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now for something completly different: One of the best produced/engineered albums I ever heard is by The Glass Harp. "It Makes Me Glad" was recorded in 1972 at Electra Lady studios by Lewis Merenstein. It was recorded on the same 8-track set-up that Hendrix used. Yet, although the Hendrix recordings all sounded fairly awful, these Glass Harp records were clear as a bell and beautiful! Which I think only goes to show that it's not what you've got but how you use it. Merenstein was simply gifted behind the console. I don't know whatever happened to him. But anyway, here's a sample from the album. A young 20-year old Phil Keaggy here that was playing circles around Hendrix while still a teenager. The instruments and vocals sit perfectly together in the mix. I can't think of a single thing I could do to improve this recording. And I don't think there's a 24 bit digital recording today that sounds any better either. At least I haven't heard it.



See Ya
 
windowman...

You dont understand what we're saying. Read closely.

If I record a signal at 16-bit... and record the same at 24-bit.. and play them back... odds are they will sound about the same. YOU ARE RIGHT!!! its true.

BUT.. that isnt really where the PROBLEM with 16 bit.. or where the superiority of 24-bit will become apparent... its in the FINISHED PRODUCT.

now.. the rest of this post is OLD, OLD news.. so anyone educated can skip it......................

window... Imagine a 16 bit word. For simplicities sake.. imagine it as a decimal (in base10) with 16 digits (even though its NOT!). like
0.1234567890123456 ...
for instance. This is a sample.
NOW when I do ANY processing to it.. be it volume or reverb... it gets run through an equation.. or series of equations... and MATH HAPPENS. Now you may remember from math class, that sometimes you end up with MORE THAN 16 digits.. and you have to round. So imagine that numbet getting the last couple digits scrambles... time howevermuch processing you do... Now.. just like in stats.. error multiplies is error compounded... so by the end of a pretty extensive mix.. you will have accumulated A LOT of error. It sounds like DIGITAL. Thats what people dont like about digital.. that SOUND. Like your Alesis Midiverb III... now multiply that by 44100 samples per secont.. and there you have it.

NOW..imagine a 24-bit word ..again, for visualisation's sake a base10 dec.....
0.123456789012345678901234 ...
for instance. You do all the same PROCESSING to it.. volume adjustments.. panning... compression.. reverb.. more volume.. more panning... whatever.. and your error multiplied is error compounded. Say the last 5 digits are scrambled. THESE DIGITS (#19-24) ARE MUCH LESS SIGNIFIGANT THAN THE LAST FIVE IN THE OTHER EXAMPLE (#11-16). Then you dither down!! even if you did the LEAST ACCEPTABLE method.. and just truncated those last six... you would end up with MUCH less corruption of sound.. less DIGITAL noise.. a more pure and true to the intent tome. Does this make sense??

................
SO..in conclusion... it really is more than just recording two sounds at different depths.. you need to Mix a whole project to really appreciate the diff... and I dont have time to do that for you. I could give you DIFFERENT projects to compare.. but different instruments.. different progs.. different effects...and the MORE processing you do.. the more apparent your differences will become. This may be why you cant hear the diff with your acoustic recordings... maybe you go light on the effects? (as well you should;))

However.. for your perusement... next summer our latest record will be out. Its in 24-bit, mixed in Nuendo. You can compare it to our LAST record.. mixed in CEP at 16-bit. Thats as close as you'll get to the "same" project at different bitdepths from me... same instruments.. a lot of the same mics... you'll be able to get them both from amazon.com or your local Tower records.;) I guess I could.. being a "monkey" whip up some CRAP in 20 minutes... but Im FAR too busy doing shit that matters.... so you'll have to wait.

Though I fully agree that when some chump compresses it down to mp3 and plays it thru their in-ear phones while jogging.. they wont be able to tell the diff. Thats why mp3s are free.. and the CD costs money.

good times!

xoxo
 
windowman said:
"Because you have 24 bits available does that mean you should use it? I don't think so. The cost is simply not as simple as merely paying $200 for a card. In order to take advantage of those 24 bits per track you'll need to go out and buy a gig of Ram, a humongous HD, and a 1000 meg Pentium Processor. That's a hell of a lot more than just $200 bucks for a new card.
Click to expand...


It's a given that you need a computer. Your spec's are grossly exaggerated. I routinely record 24 track, 24 bit/44KHz, with a moderate amount of plugins with 0 problems. PIII 800, 256MB, 20GB hard drive. This is hardly a state of the art machine. My last 24bit project of 10 songs would fit on a 8 gig drive.
 
Well, Camn I know it all looks right on paper. And technically it 'is" right. But can anyone hear a difference? I just don't think so. I haven't filled up a lot of tracks at 24 yet but I've filled a bunch with 16 and I don't hear any problems with it. Sounds just fine. Sounds every bit as good as the stuff we used to do with analog tape to me. And to be honest I was very skeptical about jumping into digital because like a lot of people I remembered how bad some of the early 14 bit CD's sounded. But I had to admit that once they got it down right the CD's were sounding every bit as good as even the best german pressed virgin vinal. So I took the plunge. Just dat stuff at first, then later a borrowed Alesis 16 track. It was all sounding as good as my Tascam machine. Sure it lacked the low end warmth but that was because of the bass bump that tape will give you around 80 hertz or so. That extra low end could be easily dialed in at the board. And the quietness was extraordinary even through our rickety, old analog sound board. I was convinced. And now we do everything on computer but still at 16 bit. We just recently got a newer card that has better routing options. It'll do 24 bit but we haven't had much oportunity to mess with it. And we have no plans on changing anyway. We're very happy with 16. I've laid well over 16 (stereo) tracks at a crack and things sound great. There's no build-up of mudd or artifacts. I really don't know what you guys are talking about because it's just not there. Even here at the house I've laid more than 8 stereo tracks with that little SB Live and everything sounds great. Coudln't be better. That's my problem with what you guys keep telling me. I just don't think things could ever sound any better given the recording room we've got, the outboard gear, the mics and so on. I've probably invested over 15 grand myself in our equipment and if I have to spend more than that in order to hear the benfits of 24 bit recording it just isn't worth it to me. We're all very happy with what we've got. Why mess with that? As I said, at 16 bit we get out the back end exactly what we put into the front end. How do you improve on "exactly the same"? It might be provable on paper but in the real world of normal human ears...none of us can hear the improvement. If you think you can and you're a rich man with nothing but bucks to blow then have at it. There's a lot to be said with contentment though. Besides, I just don't think I can improve on things. I'm a happy man.
 
Are those 24 "mono" tracks Emeric? If you're recording 24 stereo tracks at 24 bit with the gear you just described and "aren't" getting a lot of dropouts then my hats off to ya. I don't know how anyone can do that with only 256k (which is what we have also.) 500mg pen3 here, and only a 13 gig hd. At 16 bit it's plenty and then some. At 24...boy I don't know, that would seem fairly demanding to me with only 256k of ram. But if it works for you that's great. Could you post some samples maybe? I'm interested in hearing anything anyone's done with 24 bit. Maybe someone will surprise me. But so far no one has.
 
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