Quote Originally Posted by RBIngraham View Post
Yes you are mad... but I wasn't being very clear...

What I meant is what Grekim stated. In most DAWs I've seen, if you run the audio engine at 16 for example, it will store files as 16 bit data and I would assume it's doing most of it's processing and mixing in much higher resolutions. However it is possible in some DAWs to run the engine at 24 bits and have it store 16 bit data. Not sure about the other way around, never really tried. So in that case you could potentially be throwing away data.

Also in some editors such as Sound Forge the engine is not really separated from the file. Granted editors like Forge are not really a DAW... but what the recipient was going to do with the files wasn't really specified by the OP either, although one would assume it's being loaded into blow tools....

So for example in Forge, if I have a 16 bit file and do processing to it, I would suspect that some data will be thrown away as soon as I save as the processing would be done at the resolution of whatever the plug-in(s) wish to work at. I think you can also set the temporary files to lock to a certain resolution if you wish. (if my memory serves) Anyway, if I was going to do some work in Forge and I wanted to be able to do my work in steps rather than all in a single work session, the first thing I would do to 16 bit files would be to save them as 24 bit or even 32 bit float. Then resave them to whatever my final format my end delivery was going to be in.

So no, not mad, but it all depends on what the files are, how they were originally recorded, what else needs to be done to them and likely also what kind of material we are talking about as well as some other things I'm not thinking about at the moment.

No point here really... just saying..
OK, well... I'm still seeing no reason for him to convert his 16-bit files to 24-bit. Pain, no gain.