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ARE YOU USING 16 OR 24 BITS? Please, help answering this to build up some statistics on what we are all doing when recording

I would like to pool out a little statistic chart about how many of us are actually using 24 bits recording instead of 16. I think it is important to know how far we have gone since the release of massive 24 bit recording interfaces.

Direct experience on the subject will be much apreciated when answering. The question for those who use 24 bits is:

“Does it worth to go through it at the end?”

The question for those using only 16 bits is:

“Should we keep using only 16 or should we go onto the great trouble of doing 24 bits doubling the need for power in our machines?”

I'm using 24 bit... works for me, sounds great and gives lots of headroom on my digital mixer.

i use 16 since that is where i have to end up at anyway

24 bit.

Less worrying about levels.
There is a percievable difference in sound quality. Not much but it's there.

And since i've used 8 and 12 bit samplers i want to be sure that i'm above 16 bits as much as possible.

I won't go for 96 kHz in years though.
Thats a marketing hype from HD manufacturers

I'm using 16bits, but i wonder, is 24bits really give more headroom to mix?

I though it was just 'another hype thing'?

marcus,

Why not try it yourself and see if you notice the difference? Dithering is a much 'nicer' process on your audio than a sample rate conversion; I think working at pure 24bit throughout the process makes cleaner mixes, and dithering down to 16bit at the end doesn't hurt sound quality as a SRC would. 24 bits absolutely give more headroom, especially useful for live recording audio, mixing, mastering...

Depending on what I plan to do with my song, I record 16 or 24 bit. 24bit is real cool because of the extra headroom which makes your music more dynamical. To my eyes.

But for now I stick to 16 bit recording. Most of my effects and stuff is done in Pulsar @ 32bit. That's when you really appreciate bitdepth, when you're doing all effects and modulation, cos those calculations may be done accurate.

The VST plugins are at 16bit here, although I have a 32bit Cubase version. It's not worth the extra computer load to me. I'm happy as inside Pulsar everything is done 32 bit. Except for STW efx, they are recalculated with 64bit precision.

My personal conclusion: 24bit is nice if your pc has the power. If you want to freak on effects, they sound better definitely 24 bit but it costs more on cpu. So you can use only half of the effects :-/ when you do 24bit editing

24 bit.down to 16 AFTER the mix.

Thanks Sub... I'll just try that tonight, as i'm at work now.... But, the way to try this, would be to record my guitar to a wav using Logic at 16 bit, then doing the same thing using Logic but at 24bits. This meen that i have to replace the asio2 16bits source by the Asio2 24bits source, that's it?

After that, comparing to find differences?

16 because that's all these punks that come into my studio deserve!!!!

That was a joke btw.

24bit as often as I possibly can. I would hate to let standards slip

Oh no !
I use 32-bit floating point drivers and True-Tape in Cubase VST 32 - it's the best quality
p.s.
ASIO2-32 Source 64 and ASIO2-Flt Source 64 drivers are useing the same PCI bandwidth.

I can confirm this.
Although I level each recording very "hot" and thus I don't need much headroom, the effect of 32bit TrueTape in Cbuase is amazing!

yes, 32bit true tape in cubase

Having more bits is very usefull. In Nuendo world almost everyone records in 32-bit float. There are certain benefits whith 32-bit float... Offline processing will not lead to the amount of truncation and the lower noisefloor! I hope you all agree, that 32-bit flaot has a lower noisefloor, and we all know that such things can be accumulative... So 32-bit does lead to a better result.

But at some point it has to get truncated down to 24-bit, and everything you hear in your speakers will reflect that process. So when you're listening to a 32-bit file, the benefits are not immediatly obvious...

A 32-bit file does have the recorded 24-bits plus 8 exponential bits! Whith float calculation you can generally get very large and very small numbers. If you start with a 24-bit file and do a process to it, Cubase does the processing at 32-bit then reduces that back to 24-bits on disk... The output of the mixer is also 32-bit. "Overs" on the master fader won't distort the file and it's a better thing to start from if you want to process the mix files after the fact.


"True tape" is just a Spectral-Design algo, which is similar to the "Magneto" algo.. Both "32-bit True Tape" and "32-bit" lead to 32-bit float files... Keep in mind, that when you activate "True Tape" it is at the insert stage, so everything you record does contain "True Tape"... Some people think that procesing that was done after the recording is always better than processing that was done during recording and therefore turn "True Tape" off...

As Subhuman said above, Bitdepth-conversion is nicer than Samplerate conversion. It´s questionable that higher sample-rates lead to better result when you are targeting CD format...


Regards,
Sunshine

24bit 48kHz

I use this format mainly because it´s what my convertors deliver anyway, and I´m routing signals through external FX which also work preferaby on 24/48 (via S/PDIF I/Os).
I´m not going for 96kHz yet, except for special sample-sound creation within Pulsar or VST.
Especially with VSTi´s you can really hear a big difference between 16/44.1 and 24/96!

I've never been able to get a valid response to this question:

will the tripleDAT plug-in work at 24bit?

So, it seems that most of us are still using 16 bits. I just wanted to know what was going on in general.

I have no doubt about the better accuracy of doing 24 instead of 16 bits. The point here is rather "computer power" VS quality. ¿Does it worth the price to go 24 bits? This is perhaps more specific question.

48kHz/24Bit all the way through till burn to cd. I put up with the time it takes to do a quality SRC if the final medium is CD.

I converted myself to 24bits after reading this thread