Topic: 16bit vs 24bit

[pdastoor]

Would converting a audio file which is 96k/16bit to 96k/24bit reduce the quality? What would it exactly do and if I did it, would it be okay to seed it? I understand converting a 44k file to a 96k is completely pointless and doesn't improve the quality, but was wondering if the bits would do any harm (any difference in quality when comparing 16bit to 24bit)?

need to know this cause spec for a college project is 96k/24bit but was accidentally recorded at 96k/16bit, would the person find out if i converted a 16bit to 24bit? (maybe from a chart, freq analysis, sound editing software etc...?)

[eric.B]

http://tinyurl.com/6xsh8fe

[Simp-Dawg]

Would converting a audio file which is 96k/16bit to 96k/24bit reduce the quality? What would it exactly do and if I did it, would it be okay to seed it? I understand converting a 44k file to a 96k is completely pointless and doesn't improve the quality, but was wondering if the bits would do any harm (any difference in quality when comparing 16bit to 24bit)?

need to know this cause spec for a college project is 96k/24bit but was accidentally recorded at 96k/16bit, would the person find out if i converted a 16bit to 24bit? (maybe from a chart, freq analysis, sound editing software etc...?)

the short answer is that you're not going to get any higher quality out of the original recording than is already there, you can take an 8 bit mp3 and convert it to 24-bit/96khz and it will still sound the same. 
no, you won't lose any quality, you'll just be padding extra bits on it and unnecessarily taking up hard drive space.
can someone tell you did that?  yes.  in audio processing software you can see how many bits are being used, i think wavelab has this feature.  the bits above 16 will be empty.
can you seed it?  i wouldn't.  but if you like driving audiophiles crazy, go right ahead. 

http://tinyurl.com/6xsh8fe

[DLay]

yup, adding more bits now would be pointless and would do nothing for the quality. bit depth has to do with the headroom allowed and dynamic range which is the difference between the loudest and softest parts of a recording.

[Shadow_7]

The bits is the dynamic range potential.  Changing up in post doesn't really do much.  That being said, if you want to / need to do some heavy editing (like compression), you MIGHT benefit from upsampling, doing your heavy edits, then putting it back into the format you got it as.  But outside of a speech or lecture, it'll likely sound more hideous than the original.  I did some heavy edits of a convention lecture and that was done to the 16 bit that was that recording.  The main problem was that with 16 bit, all of the soft stuff like people asking questions got lost, literally.  No amount of gain adjusting could bring that content back.  But every once in a while a single word or syllable would peak into the dynamic range, and you're like where did that come from.  I recorded my stuff in 24 bit in the other room for a different lecture and didn't have any issues like that.  But I also had my gain set a little hotter than they did.