Sycraft
 
It is additionally silly to stress over it if you are using the console emulator. The reason is that the whole point of that thing is to change frequency response and add low level noise and distortion, just like real hardware. You raise the noise floor and distortion level, drastically compared to an unmodified digital signal. So if you are inserting an effect that moves the noise floor up anyhow, it gets really silly to worry about errors in the very least significant bits. If a totally clean signal with more dynamic range than any playback system is capable of is you goal, then you don't want something like a console emulator.
 
People seriously need to chill about this :P.

 
^^^ Game, Set, Match ^^^ - That is.. for anyone whose primary concern is about performing,capturing, mixing and presenting...music 

Here's an analogy I've used sometimes as to errors that happen at extremely low levels.
 
If a bus is going down the street right outside your window while you're recording a vocal, it will introduce unwanted sounds. If a bus is going down the street two blocks over, it may or may not introduce unwanted sounds because it will be much lower in level. If a bus goes down the street 500 miles away, it really won't make any difference to your vocals although the bus does exist and does make noise.
 
Speaking of really low-level signals, I find dithering very interesting because it seems to be right on the borderline of the perceptible. I've done several classical music projects involving solo acoustic instruments; some people could reliably identify dithered and non-dithered material, while others couldn't tell the difference.

so the dpe is/was just marketing hype?

lawp
so the dpe is/was just marketing hype?

As I've said before...when the 64-bit engine was introduced, the world of audio engines was quite different and it was a major step forward.
 
As an analogy, at one point stereo was a huge deal and there was a major marketing push about how much better it was than mono, which it was. However these days, you won't see a lot of marketing based around stereo reproduction because the world has caught up to it.
 
Please note this is my personal opinion and does not speak for Cakewalk.

Of course there are guys who brag that they can hear that bus 500 miles away! We all know some of those guys...
;-)
WSS

The issue with console emulator buzz when the 64 bit engine was on has been fixed. It was actually caused due to a stereo mono mismatch with the plugin and SONAR.
This issue ironically was caused by a workaround in X3C for the line 6 PodFarm bug (problem when switching it to mono and then stereo). That workaround has now been removed from X3D and I have notified Line6 again. A fix for that issue will have to come from them now.

lawp
so the dpe is/was just marketing hype?

I don't think it is. Izotope had it in Ozone for ages. I know it was in Ozone 3 long before Sonar had it.

Unless someone can demonstrate that it's ever even borderline audible through some objective testing, I would say that there was some marketing going on.
 
But I think most of the hype part actually comes not from marketing, but from the odd (to me) psychology of people who want so very, very badly to believe they can hear something - despite any and all evidence to the contrary - just so they can click on a button and make it go away.
 
 
Personally, I would prefer if CW would just say something like, "turning on 64bit double precision essentially ensures that any mathematical errors that normally occur as a result of processing in the mix engine will never make it to your output audio" and leave it at that.

drewfx1
Unless someone can demonstrate that it's ever even borderline audible through some objective testing, I would say that there was some marketing going on.

It depends upon what you compare it to. When compared to a 16-bit fixed audio engine, you don't have to do too much DSP to hear an obvious, audible difference. With a 24-bit fixed engine, you have to work a lot harder to create a project where you can hear a difference. It is possible, but the project wouldn't have much relationship to real-world projects...unless your music consists of solo acoustic instruments recorded in isolation with noiseless mics, then bounced multiple times through precision reverbs and played back at really loud levels
 
Again to draw a comparison to dithering, I did a mastering seminar where I reduced the signal level dramatically and did comparisons with and without dithering. The difference was totally obvious, but only because the signal level was so low you could really hear what was happening with those least significant bits. People couldn't tell the difference at "normal" listening levels.
 
However, I always wondered if after people heard what dithering did to multiple low-level examples, it would train their ears sufficiently so they could learn to recognize the difference at normal listening levels. The ability of the ear to "learn" extremely subtle gradations would explain why some people hear very subtle audio cues while others don't.
 

Well have X3C now, next week we will have X3D.
That is one letter more, and "D" sounds better than "C".
Which is the main reason why I will be installing this patch (finally I will be able to put my cucumber back into my pants).