Benefit of recording 32-bit audio?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSU > … e=youtu.be

Gone through the whole video and I almost bought it.

Fact is that more then 20 years ago the CD format was very often discussed and it became very clear that all CD players incorporated rounding error algoritmics to make playback of CD’s sound good (this is in fact told by software engineers who build these cd players), so in my book there is Always rounding algorithmics involved, the steps that have to be rounded become smaller as the samplerate increases.

The Sample Rate and Bit size is independent on each other.

The rounding errors are on the Bit side of things, not the Sample Rate of things. Just saying.

What iBM said… sample rate is a totally different topic. (but not without it’s own myths, upon which mentioning would likely throw this whole thread off track.)

We’re “stepping” into the sample rate myth I alluded to above. :confused:

Here’s the text version for the video (link below). Skip down to where the heading reads “192khz considered harmful.”

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html#toc_1ch

And another read:

http://www.trustmeimascientist.com/2013/02/04/the-science-of-sample-rates-when-higher-is-better-and-when-it-isnt/

If your A/D convertor in your interface is 24bit and as such can only deliver 24bit digital data, what is the use of padding the signal with nothing when storing it in your computer? Cubase already works internally on 32bit float, regardless of what the bit depth of your recordings is.
Do any of you know if there are interfaces available that convert at 32bit?
Jan

Stop distortion when mixing perhaps?

If anyone has to work at different sample / bit rates just try them out first to see if there are no bugs at that level. Seems to me that a fair amount of users of the higher 96 or 192 get a fair amount of problems that other users don’t experience.
32 bit audio benefits. Don’t think there’s much in it but I do set Cubase at that + 44kHz. If your ears can hear it then use it if it sounds better. Psychologically my head secretly thinks that using 32 over 16 means I get less bugs. But that’s just me and my monkey.

As said many times in this thread.

It is only benefitial to have 32-bit files IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO SOME (actually a lot of) OFFLINE PROCESSING.

Mixing in real time is already executed in the 32-bit realm, NO MATTER WHAT BIT SIZE YOUR FILE IS AT. SO…

…No benefit at all to have 32-bit files IF YOU MAKE SURE TO USE PROPER GAIN STAGING.

32 bit floating adds NO more bits to 24 bit integers. In fact, below 0db, there is NO practical difference.

The ONLY advantage of 32 bit floating is that it is impervious to overloads, which helps DAWs cope with a wider range of users as gain staging is not as critical.

OMG! What a sh*tload of misinformation. The author doesn’t understand anything about digital audio.

I have to agree. He has no clue about the topic.
He has gathered all the “internet myths” (read misinformation) of digital audio in two short videos.

The worst part is that he probably got paid to do this videos (Lynda.com). I also noticed it was from 2007, and it just makes it OLD misinformation.

This is how, what I call Internet myths live on. Please someone remove this from youtube.

Have to thank all the experts who provided information here… I was not aware that I should turn off Hyperthreading… not the subject of the original post, but highly useful ( and mentioned in Steinberg Knowledge Base). Helped a lot with my performance issues with Studio Drummer, my go-to drum set.

Also, love those videos from Xilph - Monty Montgomery - very well explained.

Thanks, all.

Is there technical manual about the headroom and bit depth? from cubase, i mean.

If i creat a empty project with 32 floating bit depth setup and import 24 bit audios for mixing. What will happen, will the 24 bit audios be converted to 32 bit format?

IF not, does it mean the extra depth is used as a virtual headroom?

What happened a 24 bit depth audio is imported to a 32 float project for mixing? Will the audio be converted to 32 float F
format? Is the extra bit depth used to add extra headroom to emulate the analog gears.

Not sure you’ll find it. There’s enough headroom within Cubase and Nuendo that you don’t have to worry about clipping before the outputs. You still have to make sure you don’t clip the outputs (going to fixed point converters and exported files stored as fixed point).

It’s still valuable to keep levels below 0dBFS throughout the signal flow even if you are in floating point processing DAWs.

I think you are asked about that when you import your files, or there is a preference you can set for it. Either way you don’t really have to worry about it unless your computer is pushing the very limit of how it performs. Because going from 24-bit audio files to the internal 32-bit floating processing (or now 64-bit float) doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal unless you’re really pushing your computer.

So, if your recorded audio is 24-bit fixed I would just keep it like that, personally.

No, you’re thinking about it the “wrong” way I think. There’s an article on Wikipedia on Floating-point arithmetic that may help, but it’s a bit technical of course. There isn’t really a particularly good and easy way of explaining it.

Basically, Cubase’s internal signal path is always going to be 32- or 64-bit floating point processing, so any calculations done have this enormous headroom regardless of whether or not the audio originated as 8-, 16-, 24- or 32-bit fixed (or float) point audio. The “extra depth” isn’t really about the number itself in this case it’s about the ability to process large numbers.

Cubase’s and Nuendo’s basic signal paths dont emulate analog at all by themselves. You need to use plugins to emulate analog. If you use a plugin to emulate analog that still has nothing to do with floating point versus fixed point processing.

The 32 bit float format is a mixer format, that is the mixer runs in 32 bit float, your audio files will remian 24 bit.

unless you use a AXR4T :slight_smile:

You’re confusing the processing format with the recording format. You’re talking about the processing format, but this old thread is about the recording format. There is a 32 bit float option for both, but they are unrelated.