Topic: Transferring DATs w/ Audiofile Wave Editor (bit-depth question)

[hi and lo]

I've got a batch of about 40 DATs that I'm transferring, but using a new setup:

R300 > M-Audio Audiophile USB > Macbook Pro using Audiofile's Wave Editor

Wave Editor records natively at 32-bit floating point which is fine, but how should I get back to 16-bit int. wave files?

From what I've read thus far, if you transfer 16 bit int. > 32 bit float > 16 bit in WITHOUT doing any editing, no requantization occurs and thus, no need for dither. If you do any processing in the 32-bit environment however, requantization does occur and obviously dither is then needed.

Normally I just archive the 16-bit wave files created during the transfer. Does it make any sense for me to archive the 32-bit float files if their 16-bit truncated versions are identical?

[Breeze]

Not familiar with Wave Editor, but if your transferred and saved 16-bit file is identical to the 16-bit output of your DAT, then no; there's no advantage in saving to a higher bit depth if no processing is done. The only reason to save in 32-bit float is if you record a source in 32-bit float, but then again it only makes sense to match the the bit-depth to the source (ie whatever bit-depth your A/D provides).

The only situation where I'd record a file in 32-bit float is if I was processing the input or if my A/D was supplying me with a 32-bit float bit-depth. But digital-to-digital, just match the bit-depth.