[sdiy] Taking a Step towards Digital Synthesis?....

[john mahoney]

One word: headroom.

Large gains can be realized by recording 24-bit tracks, even if your final
mix is 16-bit.

16-bit audio gives plenty of dynamic range for most purposes, *if* you can
use all the bits. But it's not easy to use all the dynamic range available
when you are recording (as opposed to when you are mixing & mastering).
Analog tape gives that famous saturation compression, but digital recording
is not so forgiving, so we use limiters and we try to ride the gain but it's
not always enough. If you aren't using the full 16-bit range then you don't
really have 16-bit audio.

Higher bitrates don't help as much because most of our output is to
uncompressed 16/44.1, at best. We just throw away the extra bandwidth.

On a related note, I'd like to see some discussion of 88.2 vs 96kHz. Which
makes more sense for the home recordist, assuming that final output will be
16/44.1?
--
john


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Glen" <mclilith at charter.net>
To: "Jay Schwichtenberg" <jays at aracnet.com>; "Colin Hinz" <asfi at eol.ca>;
<synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 2:37 PM
Subject: RE: [sdiy] Taking a Step towards Digital Synthesis?....


> At 01:07 PM 1/7/04 , Jay Schwichtenberg wrote:
>
> >In my opinion 24 bit 48 kHz either raw PCM or with loss
> >less compression would be the ultimate.
>
> I wonder why everyone is so focused on bit depth, instead of the sample
> rate? Almost everyone I have spoken to would rather have 24 bits at 44.1
> kHz than 16 bits at 96 kHz. I don't understand this one bit.  ;)
>
>
> >The reality is that most of the 24 bit/96 kHz stuff is marketing garbage.
> >The limit of converters making real audio is about 20-21 bits.
>
> Once again, your focus seems to be on bit depth. Apparently you don't feel
> the much higher sample rate brings anything useful to the 24/96 format?
>
> I believe that the 44.1 kHz sample rate is more of a problem than the
> 16-bit depth. I can hear a certain grittiness in the overtones of a 44.1
or
> 48 kHz recording that are much reduced (or gone) in a 96 kHz recording. I
> haven't had the pleasure of hearing any higher sample rates, so I can't
say
> if there is anything to gain by raising the sample rate even higher.
>
>
> later,
> Glen Berry