emusonacid!

How many of you guys work at this bit depth and sample rate exclusively?? I know an E-MU sampler wont take any higher, but do you work at higher rates in processing on your C.P.U etc?? Do most big name D&B producers work at these rates or are they upping the ante in these days of 32bit floats and 96K sample frequency??

I thought that the EMU did take 24bit samples? Maybe I'm remembering wrong though. It's A/D convertors are only 16bit but if you transfer a 24bit via SCSI it will accept it - I think*. I guess it doesn't really matter because its D/A conversion is only 16 bit anyway - I'm rambling though.

I think the EMU sounds great. If you have the CPU - you might want to try resampling everything out of the EMU and on to it's own audio track in logic or DP. Then you could go 24 bit and do all your EQing and Reverb in there.

I would recommend using a 24 bit format when using plugins because often they will automatically convert to a 24bit format and then back to 16 without using the proper dithering.

this is kind of a long standing debate... i haven't really heard anything at 32, i have heard it at 48 khz thought, and i can't really tell the difference except that it eats up more memory on my computer. i typically wonder why people would record at these sample rates because after the product is finished it is going to be pressed on a record, or cd, and the sample rate has to be converted for at least the cd. and of course the record has some much noise under the signal. but then i could be missing something all together. madmax would be best to comment on this. he has been released so he would have a better insight to it all.

funny, it looks like he and i were commenting on the same thing...

yeah man,

I use mostly 16 bit samples - I don't really believe that it makes too much of a difference at the sample level. Mixdown is done to dat and then my own bullshit mastering job is done through a tube compressor (not multi-band but it sounds better than a software multiband-I've gotten good at compensating with EQ) and into 24bit audio where it's limited and maybe some other enhancing (though I've really just been limiting recently). Then dither down to 16 and on to a CD for shop.

I've never heard of a label sending a 24bit premaster to a mastering house - everytime I've gone with label honchos they just bring a CD or DAT (16bit) copy.

can dithering take away anything from the sound? someone told me that it can.

dithering adds a small amount of white noise to your recording, which both helps to reduce digital artefacts (good) and raises the noise floor (bad). If your recording is really noisy to begin with you may have problems.

Really, I'm not even convinced that 24bit matters too much. You can def write quality toons using all 16bit samples and processes. This is the type of thing that doesn't really matter unless you have a don studio with a Pro-Tools 24 system with all hardware like Apogee converters and all that (your looking at $30,000 worth of kit). Even using cheaper wires (which I do cos I can't afford to spend $50 on a single cord) will negate any clarity that 24bit may offer. I would not worry about bit rate so much at this point. Things like EQ (filters) and compression are much more important to getting a tune to sound good.