Bristol_Jonesey

Don't bother.

There are no 32 bit recording interfaces available.

24 bit is more than sufficient

This is where people get confused with all of this.

Correct, there are no consumer grade 32bit recording interfaces, although I actually have seen a high end 384kHz/32bit recording interface.

The whole point to recording 32bit is so there is no internal dithering going on ... and like bitflipper said, and I said (Please read the last paragraph of my post), the difference is very minimal ...

@lawajava:

The bit depth of the files recorded in Sonar are not related to the bit depth of the driver of your audio interface. They are two very separate entities. The internal converters in your sound card, when using ASIO, will always be 24bit.

The bit depth at what Sonar captures that sound is what we are talking about. You don't have a choice when it comes to the actual converters in your sound card. They are what they are.

If you look at Sonar's settings under 'Playback and Recording', you will see an option that says 'Dither'. This is for the processing of effects when playing your project ... it comes in to play for example, when your project is set to 16bit, and you are using FX that are 32bit. So, if you have Sonar set to record 32bit files ... dithering never comes in to play during playback when you are mixing and mastering.

Unless you have the 64 bit audio engine on. 

Correct, there is definitely confusion here.

The internal recording bit depth can be set at what you want but the data within those files isn't going to be at any greater resolution than that used by your interface, currently no better than 24 bits.

If you choose 32 in the record bit depth the rest of the file will be padded out with zeros taking more disk space for no benefit, not that that is much of an issue nowadays.

Of course rendering and internal processing is a completely different kettle of fish.

I switched from 16 to 24 bits a while back - I think whether the difference is audible to the naked ear or not will likely come down to a variety of other factors - including other components in your audio chain, how well the source is recorded, the overall noise level of the recording, how attuned your ears are, etc. 

However, regardless of whether you can hear the difference or not, I believe one advantage to recording 24 bit is that it provides increased headroom, which is particularly handy when recording vocals - you can lower the input gain down a bit, so you don't have to worry about compression to protect from peaks clipping and still have plenty of headroom to increase the level in the final mix.

Yes definitely an advantage in selecting 24 bits over 16 but currently not 32 over 24 at record time.

I view 24 bits as an easy way to record quality audio without all the angst that 16 bit audio has. As a poster mentioned 24 bits gives added headroom. That may not be technically accurate but it is a fair characterization in the sense that one can be less attentive of ones levels with it. 

On the other hand 16 bits is the CD standard and no one can say that CDs don't sound good.

As to dithering, it takes place when we go from a higher bit depth to a lower one because of truncation errors. Its a way to mask the artifacts that may occur when bits are cut off. The funny thing is that often there is sometimes little to no degradation of the audio because of the cut off of the bits. It really depends on whether there is useful data being truncated or not. This is one reason we have various types of dither.  

It is a good idea to test which dither works best with the material being processed.

I have maintained that we get no perceivable benefit from using bit depths greater than 24. Sonar allows 32 and 64 bit files but the true usefulness of those bit depths has yet to be demonstrated to me. The thing people often forget is that you can never hear either a 32 bit file or a 64 bit file. No D/A converter can process those bit depths thus at best you will hear 24 bit audio only.

So to sum up record at 24 bits if you can and when exporting use dither if needed and burn to CD and be happy. However, keep in mind dither is a form of distortion that is cumulative so try to dither only once. 

   

Go 24.

24bit ADCs generally perform only to about 18 bits and the rest is buried in noise, but there is still information in those noisy 6 bits.  DACs do a better job, being good to about 20 bits.

Going to 32/64 allows you to mix (scale and combine) freely without throwing away (much) information.

FastBikerBoy

Correct, there is definitely confusion here.

If you choose 32 in the record bit depth the rest of the file will be padded out with zeros taking more disk space for no benefit, not that that is much of an issue nowadays.

I was always under the impression that if we set Sonar to record in 32bit, then live dithering of 32bit FX during playback never came in to play?

Seems to me, it would be very beneficial to set Sonar to record in 32bit if that would eliminate dithering during playback, especially with FX such as reverb ... etc.

Am I thinking wrong on this?

Record at 24 bit, render at 32 bit, turn on dither power three and mix and stream your project to an out board CD burner. The converters on the audio outs will not carry bit information to the outboard burner. You will essentially get what information is in a24 bit file in audio, and the outboard burner will record a 16 bit CD. On the way out to the burner you will have the option of passing the audio through hardware processors such as mixers, EQ's, compressors, limiters, etc. This approach avoids truncating your recordings. If you want to make Mp3's, it will be different of course.

Are you a recording studio for hire whose work, as it is recorded, will be commercially mastered and released? If you're like me and you're a "pro-sumer" (a nut recording in his basement) instead of the aforementioned recording studio than these details will probably not have any affect on whether your final product is artistically and creatively (or even commercially) viable. This is a question I ask myself when I'm trying to finish a song: Am I an artist or an engineer? If I say I'm an engineer (or I get slick and I say both) I ask my self do I have the equipment in my basement the the big recording or mastering houses have in their facility? Their expensive boxes DO make a BIG difference in SOUND quality. If I'm being honest I'll then try to make the best song or song idea I can with the best mix I can with MY realistic circumstances. Sound quality wise I can only go as far as my resources but creatively the skies the limit.