Dear Sonar Users

When I select a track and want to export audio, the default settings seem to be to export it as a Wave file, sample rate 44100, bit depth 32 and triangular dithering.

Till now I have just been recording my guitar and vocals using default settings (sampling rate 44100, audio driver bit depth 24 and 64 bit double precision engine).

My query is this...will these settings be good enough to later use as the basis for making a CD? Elsewhere in the guidance it states that audio for CD should be 16 bit. Why would Sonar default to 32 bit? And does it matter if I change my recording sampling rate to say 96000?

To be safe (??) I have always changed the drop down box to use the "Microsoft Wav" file at 16 bit, but then I also get a message saying "8 or 16 bit PCM" and I just click whatever...rubbish, aren't I!!

Can anyone provide a bit of guidance, as the Sonar help files just seem to describe options. All I want is to export whatever audio I have to a wave file that will be playable on a music program or on a cd.

Thanks for any advice you can give

Jim

If you want to burn the song(s) to CD and have them play on every CD player, they should be the CD Standard 44,100 Hz @ 16-bit.

Heres what very little I know about it all.

The larger Sample and Bit Rates should get you a better recording of what your tracking.  It will also be a much bigger file size as well.

Id just stick to 48/24 when recording and leave the dithering alone. You only want to dither your stuff once from what Ive been able to gather.  

When your ready to export it to a CD, then you will want to do it down to 44.1/16 

That 32 bits keeps the audio intact for possible mastering in another software or in a separate project in SONAR.
So the default is set to keep quality as high as possible.

Many thanks to Digi2ns and others for taking the trouble to reply. Much appreciated.

Like others said. The default 32-bit tri-dither export  is great for external platform editing / mastering. For CD export, 44.1/16-bit is what you need.
 
For dithering, I prefer the Powr-3 setting, but that one should be used only as the past step of processing (like for CD audio) Powr dithering does funky stuff in the top half of the spectrum to make your ears "perceive" more dynamic range, and if you do ANYTHING else to the resulting file, it will often have perceptible artifacts.