HomeRec Home Page

Digital Primer
Recording ] Digital ] Mixing ] FAQs / Tutorials ] Reviews ] Dragon Sez... ] Web Stuff ]

Site Search


powered by FreeFind

 

How Digital Recording Works (Sort Of)

Basically, whenever you go from analog to digital, you're encoding the real world into separate pieces called bits. If you had only 1 bit, the sound would be either at maximum volume or zero...not too useful. Adding more bits gives you more refinement of detail and dynamic range (the difference between the loudest and softest material). So with 24 bits, you get more than with 16. In case you're not up on powers of 2, 16 bits gives you 65,536 levels and 24 bits gives you 16,777,216. Quite a bit more (all together now: groan!), but don't forget that all audio CDs are recorded at 16 bits and they sound pretty good.

Why does it improve things to record in 24 bits if your final output is only 16? Pretty much the same reason we found that mixing down from a cassette multitrack to a VCR is better than going to cassette directly. If you record "up", to a medium with better resolution, you lose less on the way to the end product.

It's almost like (and I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, maybe I'm giving away a little too much here :-) in the early days of consumer-oriented solid-state radio-frequency receiving equipment (OK, I'm trying to say "transistor radios"), unscrupulous manufacturers would advertise cheap radios having insane numbers of transistors, like 16 or 24 in a little handheld radio (why do those numbers sound so familiar all of a sudden? :-).

The idea was that Joe Consumer would think that a 24-transistor radio would be "more powerful" or "cooler" or "sound better" than a crummy old 6-transistor radio, which is what most of them had in those days. What all us hardware hackers knew (software hadn't been invented yet) from reading the schematics was that these extra transistors were there, but had all their leads wired together so they were doing absolutely nothing in the circuitry whatsoever!

At one point in the recent past, maybe only 9 months ago, it was true that virtually no software supported 24 bits so the lack of available software might have been an issue. Now it's just whether you're using it or not.

The main point is, the whole thing is similar to the analog-vs.-digital dichotomy. If you're working in digital, the second you drop out to analog, you never get that all-digital sound back (this can be a good or a bad thing, by the way). And if you're working in 24 bits, as soon as you go to a 16-bit only program, you lose the extra precision. You'll have to do that when you go to CD, though, no matter what, where everything is "just" 16-bit precision. But take heart...DVD audio is just around the corner!

So, the longer (in the recording/mixing process) you stay at 24 bits, the better it will sound. So 24 bit resolution on a sound card, if the software doesn't support it, is kind of lost right away...

If you have 24 bits, you always have more potential dynamic range on the card itself, so more headroom for those occasional loud peaks. Don't muck all this up by using a Radio Shack mic, that's all.
-- Dragon

Home Recording Books and Videos

Guerrilla Home Recording
by Karl Coryat
 
Make your small home studio sound huge! Guerrilla Home Recording is a revolutionary approach to getting great sound in a home or project studio.
Practical Recording Techniques Book
by Bruce and Jenny Bartlett

 
This hands-on practical guide is useful for all aspects of recording, and is ideal for beginning and intermediate recording engineers, producers, musicians and audio enthusiasts. Filled with tips and shortcuts, this book offers advice on equipping a home studio (both low-budget and advanced) with suggestions for set-up, acoustics, choosing monitor speakers, and preventing hum. This best-selling guide also tells how to judge recordings and improve them to produce maximum results. Extensive coverage of digital recording technology and techniques, including computer DAWs and optimizing them for best performance

Home Page
HomeRecording.com
Recording
Digital
Mixing
FAQs / Tutorials
Reviews
Dragon Sez...
Web Stuff

1-Minute Digital Recorder
Burn CDs
Digital Q&A
Digital Math 101
Digital Primer
Digital Test Results
Going Digital
MP3
RealAudio
Sound Card Basics
Which CD-R?



Home Page
Recording
Digital
Mixing
FAQs / Tutorials
Reviews
Dragon Sez...
Web Stuff

Browse Our Site Map


Entire Contents Copyright © 1995-2008 David Fiedler d/b/a HomeRecording.com except where noted.
All Rights Reserved.

"HomeRecording.com" and "Home Recording dot com" are trademarks of David Fiedler.

Our Forums Can Solve Your Problems!    Banner Advertising Info