exporting question

With my upgrade from 5 PE to 8.5 PE, I noticed a dithering option. I record in 24bit, 48000k. What i used to do was export as 24bit, 48k. then open another program to resample to 44k and dither to 16bit.

So am i right to assume now i can do this in one step? set the export to 44, 16bit with triangular dither and its done..?

If the other program is going to be doing the final wordlength reduction, just export your files as 32 bits, no dither. Assuming, of course, that the other program can import 32-bit files.

I guess 24bit was not invented when sonar 5 was out..

well.. i looked at sonar 5's export, no dither in the export. I dont know what POW is so i left them alone. I could export at 32 and import them into goldwave or sony sound forge and resample plus dither there. but why? If i can do it in one step exporting from sonar, will it make a difference? and what would that difference be to human ears ?

The Pow-r dither algorithms were introduced in SONAR 4, but are exclusive to the Producer edition. If you had SONAR 5 Studio or Power Studio you wouldn't have them. But it's no big deal - it's very unlikely you or anyone else can hear the difference between them and plain old triangular dither.

Why transfer files as 32-bit? That's the native wordlength, so the files are simply transferred with no alterations. Does it make an audible difference? Probably not. But it requires zero effort to assure that no degradation occurs during the transfer, so why not?

However, after re-reading your original post it occurs to me that you may have been using the other program JUST for resampling, wordlength reduction and dither. If that's the case, then yes, let SONAR do it all. Its resampling is as good or better than any audio software out there. Don't worry about the dither algorithm - use triangular dither if that's what you have.

thanks bitflipper, makes perfect sense.

cj - yes there is a dither, but i would have to add it to the effect bin. it simply wasnt an option while exporting.....weird yes, but alas i have 8.5 now, and love it.