16 44.1

[paul kostabi]

I sent some files as exported .wavs to a PT guy. First he was convinced they weren't there. Once figured out was " bummed they weren't 24bit" All this without even listening.

[MMP]

I am always happier to get 24bit files if I am doing any work on them. I am fine listening to 16 bit at the end of processing, though.


Regards,

MM

[Grekim]

Better to have well recorded 16 bit tracks than poorly recorded 24 bit tracks. Still curious why you went 16 bit...

[RBIngraham]

I'm more curious why this guy couldn't just covert the damn things himself. Sound Forge anyone?


PFFFttt.... Blow Tools...

[Dave Labrecque]

I'm more curious why this guy couldn't just covert the damn things himself. Sound Forge anyone?


PFFFttt.... Blow Tools...

In the even that you're not kidding...

I presume he wanted the fidelity increase that potentially comes with the higher bit rate. Something that a simple conversion would not provide. But I'm sure you know all this.

[RBIngraham]

In the even that you're not kidding...

I presume he wanted the fidelity increase that potentially comes with the higher bit rate. Something that a simple conversion would not provide. But I'm sure you know all this.

Yes I was just being my usual charming and sarcastic self.

and taking a stab at Slow Tools users while I was at it...

Having said that, we did just get done with a thread about using higher sample or bit rates. And if Paul did what I would expect any good engineer would do (and I have no reason to doubt he wouldn't) and normalize the file, and compensate for good gain structure if it wasn't perfectly recorded in the first place, I would suspect that upping the file to 24 bit wouldn't do all that much, depending on the content of the file. The big differences happen when you manipulate the file or when you're doing the initial recording to have some extra headroom to play with. All of that could easilly be fixed on the PT user's end with a simple conversion to 24 bit of the 16 bit file and then work could move on. Any further editing on his end would be perfomed in 24 bit (and while I don't know PT very well, I would hope it was working with more than 24 bits for it's processing anyway, no matter what the format of the files were, although some do require you to set your software to store higher bit depth audio if you want the processing done at those higher rates). Others allow you to set the rates at which their engine runs seperately from what resolutions are used for file storage.

[Dave Labrecque]

Yes I was just being my usual charming and sarcastic self.

and taking a stab at Slow Tools users while I was at it...

Having said that, we did just get done with a thread about using higher sample or bit rates. And if Paul did what I would expect any good engineer would do (and I have no reason to doubt he wouldn't) and normalize the file, and compensate for good gain structure if it wasn't perfectly recorded in the first place, I would suspect that upping the file to 24 bit wouldn't do all that much, depending on the content of the file. The big differences happen when you manipulate the file or when you're doing the initial recording to have some extra headroom to play with. All of that could easilly be fixed on the PT user's end with a simple conversion to 24 bit of the 16 bit file and then work could move on. Any further editing on his end would be perfomed in 24 bit (and while I don't know PT very well, I would hope it was working with more than 24 bits for it's processing anyway, no matter what the format of the files were, although some do require you to set your software to store higher bit depth audio if you want the processing done at those higher rates). Others allow you to set the rates at which their engine runs seperately from what resolutions are used for file storage.

Sounds like you're saying if he doesn't convert the files to 24-bit, the software won't do it's internal processing at that depth. I wouldn't think that's right, and so I would think there'd be no advantage to doing that conversion. As far as optimizing the use of the bit range via normalizing, he could do that in the program with simple gain changes, I'd think.

Am I mad?

[Grekim]

Pretty sure PT and every other DAW will take the file whether it's 16 bit or 24 bit, process it at a higher depth, temporarily storing it this way in RAM as it works its way through the mixer. The processing bit depth should be the same in either case. The only thing affected would be the depth of newly recorded tracks to that session. So a 16 bit session would record new tracks with only 16 bits worth of data, but processing is still 32, 48, or 64 depending on the DAW and plug-ins being used.

[TotalSonic]

"converting" a 16bit file to 24bit only pads the file with 8 additional least significant bits with zeros in them and does nothing to give it greater resolution. You simply get a file with 16bit resolution inside a 24bit container.

While as a delivery format 16bit does indeed work great for the vast majority of playback systems - for a mix format - which will indeed be potentially subject to lots of gain staging and processing - then something which possesses greater detail in its least significant bits and is free of either the distortions that occur from truncating while requantizing - or is free of any additional noise from dithering - to me is indeed preferable to work with. While the end result may be very subtle in any improvement I'd still say an "all other things equal" I think ultimately you're better off giving 24bit files.

So frankly I think the ProTools guy was simply trying to be a conscientious engineer in his request for 24bit files instead of 16bit ones. I would do the same exact thing in his place using SAWStudio (although if they are the only thing available I would certainly go ahead and use 16bit files myself - and once I know these are all there is to work with I don't complain further).

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Dave Labrecque]

"converting" a 16bit file to 24bit only pads the file with 8 additional least significant bits with zeros in them and does nothing to give it greater resolution. You simply get a file with 16bit resolution inside a 24bit container.

While as a delivery format 16bit does indeed work great for the vast majority of playback systems - for a mix format - which will indeed be potentially subject to lots of gain staging and processing - then something which possesses greater detail in its least significant bits and is free of either the distortions that occur from truncating while requantizing - or is free of any additional noise from dithering - to me is indeed preferable to work with. While the end result may be very subtle in any improvement I'd still say an "all other things equal" I think ultimately you're better off giving 24bit files.

So frankly I think the ProTools guy was simply trying to be a conscientious engineer in his request for 24bit files instead of 16bit ones. I would do the same exact thing in his place using SAWStudio (although if they are the only thing available I would certainly go ahead and use 16bit files myself - and once I know these are all there is to work with I don't complain further).

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Just this week I had a film maker client bring me an OMF with 16 bit files in it. I asked if any of the source files in his Final Cut session were 24-bit. He said he didn't know, but that he'd chosen the 16-bit setting when he created the OMF. I sorted through the raw outtake audio (which was separate from his session) and found that a lot of them were, indeed, 24-bit.

He did some revisions to the film in FCP and this time created two OMF's, because outputting at 24 bits exceeded the maximum allowable size for a single OMF.

The sound is awful throughout. Probably should've just gone with 16-bit.