Helpful ReplyWhich bit depth conversion methodology going from mix to master to CD ?

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Chregg
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Re: Which bit depth conversion methodology going from mix to master to CD ? 2018/06/03 11:07:50 (permalink)
more i go through his posts, wat a fool, you come onto these forums like you are some kinda tribal elder, graced with divine wisdom, with your watered down arts degrees as back up, why use 64 bit files when most plug-ins ins and out are 32 bit, getting truncated before the files even get to the internal processing, dont think you really understand digital word lengths do you. uploading 64 bit files to soundcloud, where they automatically get converted to 128 kps mp3's, hope you lowered the ceiling of your limiter to prevent inter sample peaks. hope soundcloud uses a HQ dither algo, and you can hear the difference, BS. you talk about rounding errors, i would like to hear an in depth description of rounding errors in your own words, not what you read online and quote
#91
mariogag
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Re: Which bit depth conversion methodology going from mix to master to CD ? 2018/06/03 11:07:53 (permalink)
AT
44.1/24 bits for recording and mixing.  The 32 bit export ain't for 32 bit file but is an upsampling process internal fx - if you are using the 64 bit engine just leave that it as is.  You want to "work" on the highest resolution file (and keep that file if you need to go back to make more changes).  I put my 24 bit Mix Master back into the SONAR project. 
 
Then I pull the 44.1/24 bit MIX Master file into Sound Forge and do whatever work needs be done (top and tail, limiting, etc.), then export it as final MASTERED 16 bit file.  Then back to the 24 bit to export it again as an MP3.


Why downgrade to 16 bits before "downgading" to MPP3? It seems redundant.

Mario
#92
msmcleod
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Re: Which bit depth conversion methodology going from mix to master to CD ? 2018/06/03 11:25:57 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby dj squarewave 2018/06/03 12:06:11
I tried to resist replying to this, but I've hit my head with my palm too much whilst reading this, so here goes.
 
16 bit audio files store integer values between -32768 and 32767. 
24 bit audio files store integer values between -8388607 and 8388607.
 
Neither of them are "fixed point" - they have no fractional point at all.
 
The dynamic range of 24 bit is better than you ears could ever cope with, and actually most A/D devices can't practically deal with greater than a 20 bit resolution in any case.
 
For all practical purposes, storing your files at 24 bit as as good as you'll get.
 
As has been mentioned before, D/A converters deal with INTEGER values - either at 16 bit (-32768 to 32767) or 24 bit (-8388607 and 8388607), so even if you have everything stored as 64fp it has to be converted back to 24 bit or 16 bit integer values for playback in the end.
 
The 32 bit fp and 64 bit fp part has nothing to do with the audio recording. It is the number representation used when doing calculations. Because they are floating point representations, they can deal with fractions. They are useful when either mixing several tracks together, processing sound (i.e. plugins), and volume changes, as they go some way to limit rounding errors during these calculations.
 
Note however, that you're still dealing with values between -32768 and 32768 (for 16 bit), and -8388607 and 8388607 (for 24 bit). The dynamic range does not increase by converting to 64 bit fp, as everything gets rounded to an integer when it's played back. What you do get, is a decrease in cumulative rounding errors during mixing and processing, as during the calculations fractional results are preserved until the final conversion back to 24 bit integers, and obviously 64 bit has more precision (and hence less rounding errors) than 32 bit.
 
For these range of numbers, floating point numbers perform pretty well. What they're not good at is accurately representing very large or very small numbers. For those extremes, you start to lose accuracy with floating point representations.
 
So for a single track the signal flow goes 24 bit integer --> process the audio using 64bit fp to avoid rounding errors --> convert back to 24 bit integer for playback.
 
 
For multiple tracks, you take each 24 bit integer from each track --> convert to 64 bit fp and process / mix them all together (this part involves adding them all together plus some division to get back to your -8388607 to 8388607 range) --> finally convert the stereo mix to 24 bit integer for playback.
 
If you're only ever mixing in the box (i.e. the audio files are never processed outside of Sonar/Cakewalk) then there's absolutely no reason to store things as 64 bit fp. Using 24 bit files, with 64 bit processing is absolutely fine.
 
The ONLY reasons I can see an advantage to using 64 bit fp files are:
 
1. You've drastically reduced the volume of a track, and bounced the result. In a 16 bit or 24 bit file, there's a theoretical loss in quality (I say theoretical, because I seriously doubt your ears would tell the difference except in extreme cases)... and in any case, why bounce the result of a volume decrease in the first place?
 
2. You want to process a half-processed file in another program, and load it back into Sonar/Cakewalk. Again, unless your volume is pretty low, I don't see how you would get much of an advantage here. -8388607 to 8388607 is still a pretty big range.
 
So as long as your tracks are at a decent volume (to get the most out of the -8388607 to 8388607 range), and your using 64 bit fp for processing, I can't see any practical reason to actually store your audio files in 64 bit fp format.
 
M.
#93
The Maillard Reaction
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2018/06/03 12:16:47 (permalink)

post edited by dj squarewave - 2018/06/12 19:04:57


#94
Chregg
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Re: Which bit depth conversion methodology going from mix to master to CD ? 2018/06/03 12:29:49 (permalink)
The dynamic range of 24 bit is better than you ears could ever cope with
 
I'm kinda hoping your not trying to correlate dbfs to spl, please no lol 
 
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msmcleod
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Re: Which bit depth conversion methodology going from mix to master to CD ? 2018/06/03 12:54:46 (permalink)
Chregg
The dynamic range of 24 bit is better than you ears could ever cope with
 
I'm kinda hoping your not trying to correlate dbfs to spl, please no lol



Nope just saying with 8388607 incremental volume steps between silence and 0db, [edit: assuming 0 is your DC offset] I doubt if your ears would tell the difference (for example) between 100000 and 100001.
 
So for a single stereo waveform, 24 bit is more than enough accuracy.
 
Floating point arithmetic comes into play in a big way when mixing multiple waveforms, as you can add / divide with less rounding errors.
 
M.
 
 
#96
Chregg
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Re: Which bit depth conversion methodology going from mix to master to CD ? 2018/06/03 13:06:28 (permalink)
i understand your original post top to bottom, just wasn't sure whether you were trying to correlate dbfs with spl like a lot of people do with that comment laddie lol :) all i work with is 24 bit
 
#97
azslow3
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Re: Which bit depth conversion methodology going from mix to master to CD ? 2018/06/03 20:46:18 (permalink)
msmcleod
I tried to resist replying to this, but I've hit my head with my palm too much whilst reading this, so here goes.
 
16 bit audio files store integer values between -32768 and 32767. 
24 bit audio files store integer values between -8388607 and 8388607.
 
Neither of them are "fixed point" - they have no fractional point at all.

I could probably find more academic references, but as a quick link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_arithmetic
"A value of a fixed-point data type is essentially an integer that is scaled by an implicit specific factor determined by the type."
"Integers" in audio have no integer meaning, they represent the range between -max and +max. And so they can be perceived as a fraction of this "max". Also thinking of them as about fixed point numbers simplify understanding the difference between different audio formats.

For all practical purposes, storing your files at 24 bit as as good as you'll get.

For this and the rest, see my previous posts...
 
dj squarewave
Where as, it may be possible but highly unlikely that a 24bit integer will ever provide a more accurate representation of some value than a representation of the same value in a 32bit floating point format?

Theoretically, that is "unlikely" at extreme level (I mean the probability should be zero...): 32bit FP format has 23 explicit + 1 implicit = 24 bits of precision. 24 bit integer, as unsigned integer, has 24bit precision.
But practically that is not unusual case... F.e. in mentioned bachelor thesis (btw not bad one, but as majority of bachelor works in such theoretical areas it has zero "know how"), the man hit "not transparent" conversion of libsndfile.
The roots are lengthy to explain, but practically noticeable in 7bit MIDI domain. I mean for the same reason "simple" approach in using controllers does not allow to exactly center Pan (center is exact number 0.5, while MIDI range 0...127 corresponds to 0(full left) to 1(full right). 127/2 = 63.5 , but controller values are 63 or 64, never in between ).
 

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#98
The Maillard Reaction
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2018/06/03 21:21:19 (permalink)

post edited by dj squarewave - 2018/06/12 19:04:47


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