An interesting conversation!
This is a reply to one of my post a while back over at the MTS forum, from the product designer who programmed the product. I was wondering about bit rates and the effect it had on the process, what was best, and how that program worked. While MC is not MTS, they do mostly the same thing and a lot of this applies here as well, in theory. It kind of goes along with the idea of a bottle neck, in that the end result can only be as good as the path that is created. Also the better the master file is the better long term results will be. Any way i thought you guys might enjoy reading the information.
Choosing audio file bit depths in MultitrackStudio Pro Plus
MultitrackStudio Pro Plus not only supports 16 bit audio files, but 24, 32 and 32 bit floating point files as well.
What to use when? A comprehensive list:
Recording a track from a 16 bit soundcard: 16 bit file
The 16 bits coming from the soundcard can be stored in the 16 bit file nicely.
A 24 bit (or higher) file won't increase audio quality since there are only 16 bits available anyway, while disk usage for these files is higher.
Recording a track from a 24 bit soundcard: 24 bit file
The 24 bit signal coming from the soundcard can be stored in the 24 bit file nicely.
A 32 bit file (either fixed or floating point) won't increase audio quality since there are only 24 bits available, while disk usage for these files is 33% higher.
'Freezing' a softsynth track: 32 bit floating point file
You can freeze a softsynth track simply by saving it as an audio file.
32 bit floating point files don't clip at 0 dB full scale, like fixed point files do, so you don't have to worry about that.
Mix down to file, and burn this file to audio CDR: 16 bit file
Audio CDs are 16 bit, so a higher quality file will be converted to 16 bit by your CD-writer software anyway.
It's best to let MultitrackStudio do this conversion, then you can be sure it has been properly dithered etc.
Mix down to file, and apply further processing to this file: at least 24 bit
A properly dithered 16 bit file can have a dynamic range equaling about 19 bits (thanks to the dithering and noise-shaping).
However, these details are lost if you apply any processing to it.
If you process your 16 bit file the end result will have a dynamic range of slightly less than 16 bits because of rounding errors.
Mix down to file, and store it as 'master': at least 24 bit
Processing 16 bit files has a negative effect on sound quality (see previous paragraph).
You'll be glad you kept high quality files when it's time for your 'best of' album