working with my convertors

[taeyoung]

Alright, I'm making progress here!

Few more questions about bit depth. Damn this question gets overkilled.

But mine is more specific.

So I have a 24 bit A/D convertor in my set up.

In my DAW I have been recording in 32 bit.

Now I'm wondering if I'm just wasting disk space.

First of all, at which point is the 24 bit convertors doing their stuff??
Am I even getting 32 bit at any point if my hardware has that 24 bit convertor??? If so, at which point would I be better off to dither to 24 bit? For example, in one of my previous posts I mentioned sending some tracks to be mixed. Should I bounce my tracks to 24 bit, or can I keep them at 32 bit?

Geez, this stuff is confusing, some help would be great!

 

[The Audio Cave]

You're wasting disk space. There's no valid reason to record at 32-bit float. The 24-bit signals from your converter just get "pumped up" to 32-bit float before going to disk, which is a waste... since the daw does the same thing everytime it takes in a 24-bit file anyway for internal operations.

No need to have those extra bits on disk eating away at your hard drive space.

There is some validity (sometimes) to rendering a 32-bit float mix file, IF you intend on importing that mix into another application like Wavelab that can load it, for editing and home mastering or whatever. Rendering to 32-bit float keeps the daw from truncating the file to 24-bits.

That's the only time I could ever imagine actually making a 32-bit float file.

Note: One could make a case that if you are recording through the daw with plugin effects and printing those effects that recording to 32-bit float would do the same as the above, keep it from being truncated and retaining the "maximum 32-bit float quality" of the dsp effects. I doubt if you'd hear the difference though... seems like a waste.

 

[danny.guitar]

Alright, I'm making progress here!

Few more questions about bit depth. Damn this question gets overkilled.

But mine is more specific.

So I have a 24 bit A/D convertor in my set up.

In my DAW I have been recording in 32 bit.

Now I'm wondering if I'm just wasting disk space.

First of all, at which point is the 24 bit convertors doing their stuff??
Am I even getting 32 bit at any point if my hardware has that 24 bit convertor??? If so, at which point would I be better off to dither to 24 bit? For example, in one of my previous posts I mentioned sending some tracks to be mixed. Should I bounce my tracks to 24 bit, or can I keep them at 32 bit?

Geez, this stuff is confusing, some help would be great!

You have 24 bit converters, so record in 24 bit. 24 bit will give you all the headroom you need. Otherwise you're just wasting CPU and disk space.

Your converters are what takes the analog signal and converts it to digital (takes samples/snapshots of the waveform).

Whatever project you're working on now that's 32-bit, I would just leave it at 32. And on future projects I would record at 24-bit.

 

[taeyoung]

You have 24 bit converters, so record in 24 bit. 24 bit will give you all the headroom you need. Otherwise you're just wasting CPU and disk space.

Your converters are what takes the analog signal and converts it to digital (takes samples/snapshots of the waveform).

Whatever project you're working on now that's 32-bit, I would just leave it at 32. And on future projects I would record at 24-bit.

OK, I see. Thanks for the help guys. And thanks Danny, that was going to be my next question...what about the stuff I've already started

So, from now on I will work with 24 bit then.