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Leif recently upgraded the tool to enable a fully 24 bit audio path. This is great, I think, if nothing else than for future capability. In reality, the availability of 24 bit audio is fairly scarce. I think major studios/labels are producing and distributing more and more 24 bit tracks. But I would say over 98% of the available digital music is strictly 16 bit. Given the above (if correct), setting my audio path to 24 bit will likely make little to no difference.
My question is this… What if I start to re-rip my music collection from CD at 24 bit WAV or FLAC? The files will be in a 24 bit format but the audio, ultimately, will still be 16 bit. Would I be actually hurting the music quality doing this? Would I really not be benefiting at all?
Would I damage the music by ripping 16 bit audio to a 24 bit format?
Am I future-proofing here? Does anyone have any insider info to studios/labels producing more 24 bit audio?
Thanks!
Hi Timmy,
It's true that music is generally recorded in 16 bit resolution, and if you ask me, this is plenty for a recorded piece of content.
The problem with music isn't the resolution, it's the fact that they beat the audio to death and master it as if they had another three bits of resolution on top. (See: Loudness War)
The noise floor was not a problem in properly mastered late 80s 16-bit recordings.
The most laughable thing is that the 24-bit version of Imagine Dragons latest album (yes, there's a 24-bit release) has exactly the same amount of clipping as the 16-bit version.. they sound identical.So, why did I bother with making BreakawayOne fully 24-bit?
Because, if the input path is 16 bits, you'd only be able to preserve the 16-bit resolution of the original content by feeding it into BreakawayOne completely without attenuation … leaving you no headroom for any other elements.
The standard level for digital mixers is probably somewhere between -12 and -20. That's 2 – 3 bits.. if the input path was 16 bits, you'd be left with 13 or 14 bits. Sure, it'll still sound fine, but the noise floor will be too close for comfort. By extending the WDM I/O resolution, we moved the noise floor 48 dB's down.. so no we can really truly forget about it and worry about things that matter, like making sure we never ask Windows to do sample rate conversion by running the input pipeline at 48 kHz while playing 44.1 content. 🙂
BreakawayOne has been 24-bit (well, 32-bit actually — 24-bit audio + 8 bit headroom) internally since the very beginning, and so have the ASIO and Livewire I/O sections.
The streaming sections and WDM I/O was 16-bit though (in 3.16.84).. and in fact I wasn't even dithering the output properly. My bad. So, I took care of the few missing pieces, to achieve a truly 24-bit chain.
In contrast, the entire previous generation of Breakaway products (Breakaway Broadcast, Breakaway Live, Breakaway Audio Enhancer etc) was 16-bit throughout (16-bit audio + 16-bit headroom internally).
Now to actually answer your question:
CDs are 16-bit! There is absolutely no benefit to adding eight zeroes for every sample. The player is perfectly capable of adding those eight zeroes in real-time as you play your 16-bit files — there is absolutely no benefit to adding the zeroes to the file itself. Believe me, adding zeroes is very easy. Look, I can do it right here: 00000000000000000000000000000000000Best regards,
///LeifLeif,
When you mentioned above that you weren't dithering correctly, it brought up another question… In Foobar2000, which is the tool I use to convert WAV files to FLAC, there's an option for dithering. If I recall, the choices are Never, Always, and Lossy Sources Only. The WAV files are 16 bit and the FLAC output is set to 16 bit. Which dithering option would work the best? Do I need dithering in this case?
Thanks.
Hi Timmy,
16-bit to 16-bit needs no dithering unless you're attenuating (at which point it's no longer 16 to 16). It should not matter, and FB2K is probably smart enough not to do anything differently no matter what you select.
Hey, there's a phenomenal video by Chris "Monty" Montgomery explaining sample theory and dithering in a really riveting and cool way. His personality helps make it great too — I've watched it like three times, he gets every single bit right. I recommend you watch it if you're interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM&t=1040s
Best,
///Leif
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