Topic: 24bit mastering...worth it? maybe not?

[Nick's Picks]

Hi all....

i've been thinking about 24bit recording (concert recording only), and wondering if it is all that its cracked up to be.
Yes, i've posted this rant once before..but i'm still convincing myself that 16bit AUD recordings can be messaged into sounding like 24bit masters w/o the hassle and expence of 24bit recorders.

I've done several head to head comparrisons w/my last DAC that upsampled redbook to 24/96  vs. the master 24/96 files and I have to say that the difference was *very* difficult to detect (by me).  I say *very* difficult because I'm not sure if I could hear anything at all.
I have a Monarchy audio DIP 2496 upsampler coming...and that may render all of this 24bit recording a moot issue to me.
FWIW, I've also got an apogee big ben coming on loan to play with.  I plan to put the two units head to head....more on that later.

Any way...this all starts me thinking...about maybe going back to 16bit when I next rebuild my rig from the ground up.  You know, that ANSR dither scheme on the V3 really is all that AND a bag of dorritos (not just your run of the mill potatoe chips).
Same goes for the Apogee UV22HR.  16bit output on the ad1000 is just as sweet sounding to me (a different flavor of sweetness) and I certainly get all the pleasure out of those recordings as I do w/my 24bit stuff as well.

Comments ?
anyone else have the opportunity to try this approach?

[F.O.Bean]

i dont have the best playback by any means, but i have upsampled stuff thru wavelab and it sounded like an original 24 bit recording to me(im sure i'll get a TON of flac for that but hey )

so that brings another question? is the whole 24-bit thing just a money maker? maybe soo

why spend the ching when you can record v3>jb3 like me, bring it home, open it in wavelab, and upsample w/ a quality program ala sf/wavelab

hmm, i may do that to a few shows for archival purposes

anybody w/ technical knowhow to this sorta thing wanna chime in?

i still think 16bit is gonna be the standard for a bir,i mean i know dvd 's and such are all 24bit quality, but come one now, do you think all these cd companies are gonna start coming out w/ dvda quality stuff, i just dont see it persoanlly, that would cause everyone to buy dvda players for their car/home/portable, hell no, just dont see it

now for our archiving stuff, hell yeah, 24-bit is where its at

but if all these fancy 24 bit recorders are just doing what we could essentially do in post, why pay it?

[pfife]

I;ve never taped in 24 bit, but I have done multitracking in 24bit, and it makes a huge difference to me.

[Brian Skalinder]

To be honest, I haven't done enough listening to really make a call one way or the other.   

[sygdwm]

when i made the taping plunge a couple years ago, i first patched at 16 bit w/ my laptop. once i had the whole rig put together, i started taping 24/48, cause i can really., i have a piece of shit playback system (yamaha>bose) but whether or not i can hear a differnece doesnt mean its not there. one day ill have a badass stereo so im just stockpiling dvd-a's for the future. im not sure, but what you are doing bean isnt really the same as recording to 24 bit vs upsampling. if it sounds good to you then rock on.

[Chanher]

when i made the taping plunge a couple years ago, i first patched at 16 bit w/ my laptop. once i had the whole rig put together, i started taping 24/48, cause i can really., i have a piece of shit playback system (yamaha>bose) but whether or not i can hear a differnece doesnt mean its not there. one day ill have a badass stereo so im just stockpiling dvd-a's for the future. im not sure, but what you are doing bean isnt really the same as recording to 24 bit vs upsampling. if it sounds good to you then rock on.

that's my main reason, my home system may blow right now but one day I plan sinking some serious effort into playback and it will be nice to listen to high resolution recordings I made during my youth. I also enjoy the whole "ahead of its time" thing too.

as far as hearing the extra 8-bits of difference, it depends on the recordings; I've had some where I could detect a difference and others that proved more difficult.  I've definitely noticed that in my 24-bit bar recordings it seems I hear more of a difference in the detail of the "bar" or "crowd" than the music.  In the small amount of studio stuff I've done I've definitely noticed a difference.

[F.O.Bean]

i never do that to my recordings actually, if i record in 16 bit, it stays in 16bit

but the few times ive had a 24bit file, i downsample/dither, the upsample/updither, and i could hear NO diff at all, YMMV

[Tim]

fwiw - Nick has a very nice  playback system and he doesn't hear a great difference.

I had a Bel Canto DAC-1 which did 24/96 upsampling and sold it. It was nice for older recordings done line in to a dat deck but for tapes made on a V3, MiniMe, or ad2k the difference was so slight that if it existed I couldn't hear it.

I don't have the ability to playback 24bit so my experience with 24 bit recordings is pretty limited.

[F.O.Bean]

so maybe the v3 and the newer boxes are just that good at dithering down to 16 bit on the fly, we will never really hear it?

[Nick's Picks]

i'm not saying that there is not a benefit to be gained from mastering at 24bit.  I can hear it.  Its there.

What i'm saying is that I've focused more out of playing 16bit w/my stereo, and it sounds as good as raw 24bit files.  Only cheaper and MUCH less PITA.
ie: a good CD player that upsamples to 24bit
a good DAC that upsamples to 24bit
some sort of digital processer that re-clocks at 24bit (like the monarchy audio products).
you know, that little sucker could prove to be the best thing for us.  A $250 box that kills jitter and re-clocks all incoming digital to 24/96...then on to your DAC from there...could be the easiest soluction and a sonic equal to those wanting to go for more.

I have no doubt that 24bit is better.  I supose from the archival standpoint, mastering at 24bit is the thing to do.  I just look at it from the listening standpoint, and I feel that the technology here does just as good a job souping up 16bit PCM as recording it at 24bit does in the first place

Scott Brown..
remember your recent comment on the V3 regarding 24bit sound, is it dissapionting because ANSR sounds so damn good, that the line is thinned that much?.

[sygdwm]

i'm not saying that there is not a benefit to be gained from mastering at 24bit.  I can hear it.  Its there.

What i'm saying is that I've focused more out of playing 16bit w/my stereo, and it sounds as good as raw 24bit files.  Only cheaper and MUCH less PITA.
ie: a good CD player that upsamples to 24bit
a good DAC that upsamples to 24bit
some sort of digital processer that re-clocks at 24bit (like the monarchy audio products).
you know, that little sucker could prove to be the best thing for us.  A $250 box that kills jitter and re-clocks all incoming digital to 24/96...then on to your DAC from there...could be the easiest soluction and a sonic equal to those wanting to go for more.

I have no doubt that 24bit is better.  I supose from the archival standpoint, mastering at 24bit is the thing to do.  I just look at it from the listening standpoint, and I feel that the technology here does just as good a job souping up 16bit PCM as recording it at 24bit does in the first place

Scott Brown..
remember your recent comment on the V3 regarding 24bit sound, is it dissapionting because ANSR sounds so damn good, that the line is thinned that much?.

all that upsampling gear is cheaper and less of a pita? i have a $200 pioneer 563a that plays all media types. pretty cheap and easy 24bit playback.

[BC]

I tape at 24 bit, to be perfectly honest given my current playback gear I have not been able to hear the difference between 16 and 24 bit. I think a lot of this is b/c I listen to my 24 bit files through my USBPre which is clicky as hell on playback, I am sure it is introducing all kinds of distortion and spuriae that swamp the low noise floor of 24 bit material (and 16 bit for that matter)  . Maybe when I get my VX pocket working and play back through that I will be able to hear a difference.

But the way I figure it, why not do it if you can, storage is pretty darn cheap these days. You can always throw away resolution after the fact but you can never get it back.

I agree that well done 16/44.1 can sound great, actually all my 24 bit masters just get thrown onto HD and CDR as data for archiving, all my listening is done on the dithered audio CD's I make from the 24 bit masters. I am perfectly happy with these, who knows, I may never get around to listening to the 24 bit master copies, but at least they are there just in case...

Take care,
Ben

[Nick's Picks]

all what upsampling gear?
one cd player or a DAC that does it.  or the monarchy DIP upsampler. 

mastering shows at 24bit, lets face it.  its expensive and involoves other logistics.

will I continue to?  maybe.  i dont know.  I can burn/play 24bit DVD discs w/the same ease as a 16bit redbook CD.  Its just that I can't really hear a difference between them on *my* system.

i dont know, maybe my ears are finaly shot.
fuckin' mule.

[BC]

one more thing, when I started taping 24 bit with my V3 stepping up from a USBPre (also @ 24 bit), I noticed an increase in low level resolution. What did this translate into on playback? I could REALLY hear how crappy the rooms and PA systems I was taping were, and also I could hear so many more details of the chatter and conversation going on around me!! So maybe for most rock shows we go to the benefits of 24 bit could be debateable.

But for me personally the real benefit of 24 bit is for stealthing relatively unamplified music.  As those of you out there who record real instruments in real space know, live instruments can have a huge dynamic range. So in these situations by running at 24 bit, I can set my levels very conservatively, which gives me peace of mind during the show since I know I am not clipping. I hate to be thinking about levels rather than the music during the show, and it drives me nuts to be worrying about clipping when I am not able to check levels!! Afterwards, using the Waves L2 plugin, I can boost the levels significantly and still have the recording come out well due to the increased low level resolution of 24 bit. Of course this benefit is specific to the types of shows I like to tape, but something to consider...


Ben

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

I'm just getting into 24bit so I don't have a lot of experience with this.  I can say that when listening on a Denon2900 I can hear a difference between CDDA and the few 24 bit DVDA discs people have sent me.  The difference is not subtle.  I also had a Pioneer Elite top-of-the-line player on loan and that also revealed an improvement with 24-bit sources.

Nick, I understand what you are getting at.  If you have very high quality upsampling DAC and transport, then you are likely to get a very big improvement in CDDA playback.  That improvement may push CDDA close to 24-bit quality.  Likewise a low resolution system will mask the gains of 24 bit over CDDA.  

But for those of us in the mid range gear (multiformat players in the 1k-2k retail range) I would think that the benefits of 24/96 are going to be more apparent.

If you are arguing that the overall hassle and cost of recording/authoring at 24-bit and having to convert for portability is more than the value you percieve with 16-bit sources and very good upsampling, well I don't think anyone can dispute that.  V3->JB3->CD is about as easy as it gets and for the money you spend on a laptop or 24-bit recorder, you can get a really sweet upsampling DAC.