Producing in 24 bit

[deadly_habit]

I've only ever produced in 16/44, figured the end medium is going to be either 16/44 wav or even worse mp3.

However, my thinking is, if most of the samples I'm using come from 16 bit sources, and anything I bounce down and reload back into my project at 16 bit is not turned up later on, then shouldn't 16 bit be fine? Sure if I was bouncing shit down and then deciding hey I wanna turn that up 6dB later on it would matter but I dont so no biggie?

Then upon 'master' bouncing, just bounce a 24 to give mastering as much resolution as possible... all my synths and 'quiet' sounds will still be bounced at the full 24 bit resolution anyway right? Someone tell me if this is stupid.

For recording however, 24 bit seems totally logical with regards to headroom etc.

this is stupid

[ruckus49]

I actually have 4 gigs of ram running 32 bit xp

[In The Shadows]

^damn you must have a sick setup. i have an amd quadcore and i start hitting 50% in ableton after like 10 tracks and 10 plugins or so

That'll be RAM more than anything else my friend... I've got 8Gb of RAM and I can run 30+ instances of Massive + effects at a time (I've got a 2.66GHz dual core processor overclocked to 3.0GHz too but you've obvs got a better processor than me and yet you're coming up short) Invest in some good RAM (and a better motherboard if you only have 2 RAM slots) but you don't even have to go as high as 8Gb... Upgrading from 1/2Gb to 4Gb (2 sticks of 2Gb) will make an incredible difference to the load you can put your PC under Make sure that you are running Windows 7 though (if you're on a PC that is) because Vista and XP were made in a time where accumulating that amount of RAM wasn't possible, so unless you have the x64 versions of Vista/XP then it will limit the RAM size to 3Gb regardless of actual RAM :3 Hope this helps you out squire


Dub Fiend

yeah my setup isnt that hot at all really, 4 gigs ram, its only reading 3 because Im running xp with a gig of graphics memory. Dual core, nothing fancy, was maybe a fairly good pc 3 years ago or more. I keep effects off the audio where possible in ableton, Ill load a synth, get it right, do my thing with the effects then freeze and flatten just the 1 loop of it, so the file itself stays as small as possible, then just paste it out over the arrangement. I keep saves of everything prefreeze incase I need to go back. Its a pian in the arse tbh, Ive only started working like this recently after getting naffed off with Reason and constantly bouncing stuff to check whats going on with the peeks + having no proper spec analiser. The results are worth it though, when I started producing stuff long time ago it was dragging wavs directly into lanes, so it feels like home again after fighting with midi for so long. Another work around is getting the bass and drums right, then bouncing them together, load em into a lane then build the melodies against the bounce on synths, then freeze em and bring them back in as wavs with the open version of the drums n bass. But yeah, its no easy ride in xp when your dealing with hq wavs. You should try saving an A1 poster at 300dpi to jpg, thats another process that will take years off your life in stress.

[ajfa]

I've only ever produced in 16/44, figured the end medium is going to be either 16/44 wav or even worse mp3.

However, my thinking is, if most of the samples I'm using come from 16 bit sources, and anything I bounce down and reload back into my project at 16 bit is not turned up later on, then shouldn't 16 bit be fine? Sure if I was bouncing shit down and then deciding hey I wanna turn that up 6dB later on it would matter but I dont so no biggie?

Then upon 'master' bouncing, just bounce a 24 to give mastering as much resolution as possible... all my synths and 'quiet' sounds will still be bounced at the full 24 bit resolution anyway right? Someone tell me if this is stupid.

For recording however, 24 bit seems totally logical with regards to headroom etc.

this is stupid

Lol thanks mate But seriously, care to elaborate?

[abZ]

I actually have 4 gigs of ram running 32 bit xp

I have a pretty similar set up but I have intel with Windows 7. I can usually keep adding shit until the track is done. Honestly I didn't think you could change the way the program processes. Albeton works in 32bit floating and as far as I know that is non-negotiable. My tunes don't get reduced to 16 bit till after mastering, that's pretty standard shit.

[Ldizzy]

Resurrected the thread...

ive always produced 32/44.1

thus, i have very noobish questions on the matter.

i do understand (at least partially) the concepts of bit depth. dynamic range. and floating point.

truly, i think i do... (ive spent more then just 30 min before posting on the subject)

as im trying to get a good hand at balancing stuff, and saving myself some headroom and i always find myself in the red for sum reason... which, until u hit the output, doesnt matter sonically, if ur in 32 float (apparently)...

thus, a thought appeared to me : why not produce in 24 already so i really CANT neglect clipping... and become careful about my levels + i dont necessarly have to dither anything on the way out...

my point is : 24 is higher then what the human ear can distinguish as Sharma said a year ago (if i understand)... and 32 has to be converted to 24 on the way out anyways...

maybe it could make a difference while tracking as opposed to playback?? (would it)
maybe it could make a slight difference in the final digit crunching (would it)
maybe dithering, is ''better'' most of the time for some occult reason (is it?)

A similar thought occurs to me about samplerate...

if 44.1 is twice 20 khz... and 20khz is the maximum audible freq for most of us who aren't bats... and nyquist or suh'in said something about samplerate having to be twice as high as maximum freq in a recording... (20x2= 40; 40<44.1)

maybe, as i mentioned before, it could make a difference while tracking as opposed to playback?? (would it)
or maybe those frequencies we dont hear do affect the outcome/perceived balance somehow if they are there (even if we cant hear them)?

im trying to UNDERSTAND all of those concepts... fully. and ive read a lot about it but still, those two thoughts leave my brainz bugged as hell so please correct me if they are wrong!!!

Waiting for the input ...

[Bahgo]

Simple non tech answer:
Cd's can only be as high as 16/44.
If you record at 16/44 there will be high end noise in the mix.
If you record at 24/96, and then "master/dither" down to 16/44,
the high end noise is pushed out of the human ear range and
you can't hear it. If you only play music from your pc then record
and play at 24/96. Cheers!

[macc]

If you record at 16/44 there will be high end noise in the mix.
If you record at 24/96, and then "master/dither" down to 16/44,
the high end noise is pushed out of the human ear range and
you can't hear it. If you only play music from your pc then record
and play at 24/96. Cheers!

This confuses dithering/bit depth reduction with aliasing, and doesn't really help at all.

[Ldizzy]

the more i read about those subjects, the least i feel i understand :S

so many conflicting opinons

[macc]

It's not hard.

If your original sample is at 16 bit, even though just making it a 24-bit file doesn't give you anything, what it does do is give added precision to any subsequent calculations. That might be gain, flanging, some other shit, whatever. The more processing you do, the more things get stacked up and the more audible these things become. 'Digititus', some people call it. Sounds like shoite.

In short, 24-bit allows you to preserve precision/quality when keeping the levels reasonable (ie, you can turn it down), and gives the computer more wiggle room for calculations. There's not much more to worry about in practicality than that!

[back2onett]

Does higher bit-depth really give you more headroom? I can imagine having increased dynamic range and generally better quality but how can you get extra headroom above 0dB? And don't most most computers use 32bit for most arithmetic anyway so anything else is just treated as 32bit anyway?

[Depone]

I work in 24 bit, my samples are mostly from dvds at 24bit, 48,000hz, any bounces I make from synths are also at that res, my soundcards playback is set to 48,000, same with the settings in reason and ableton. Ableton becomes grinding with those rates by the time youve got 30/40 tracks of audio going, I freeze and flatten everything because running 10 high demand synths each with 4 gliss eqs on high quality mode with reverbs etc, it aint having it. But I believe it sounds better as a result, I can hear the clarity and depth in the 24/48 bounces compared to 16/44. Might just be the encoding or whatever, I dunno, but to me its a more translucent, expansive sound, its very subtle but its there, certainly on my limited setup. And thats just 1 bounce, if Id used 16/44 res through the samples in the track, Im sure the difference would be more blatant.

My experience in music and graphic design within a pc is where ever possible retain as high a res as you can. If cd quality is the highest anyones going to hear it then fine, thats what they get at the end but you want to be working in the most quality possible through the process. If I design an album cover I'll do it at about 18x18 inches, full print res, even if its just going on a cd cover thats going to be about 5x5, A. You never know where its going to end up, B. it cant hurt as long as you are aware of how the final product will be presented. Artwork now days has got to work at a thumbnail size, tunes have to stand up at 192kbs mp3 size, but your art would be seriously limited if you worked in those formats from the word go. When you start stacking up layer upon layer of sound or image little differences that were barely noticeable alone start stacking up to something quite noticeable in the end product.

Very well said. Can i ask why you use 48khz and not 44.1khz? Is it because you work in film or tv media?