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Gear / Technical Help => Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity => Topic started by: achalsey on February 04, 2015, 12:54:44 PM
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If I render 4 tracks, two being 24 bit and two being 16 bit, down to a 16 bit stereo file, it'll turn out fine, correct?
I ran mics in the sweet spot and just got a board feed on USB after the set and now in post mistakenly forgot to convert the 24 bit track to 16 bit before mixing the two sources together. They're both the same sample rate luckily. I've got a slow computer and just don't want to take the time to go back, render the 24 bit file to 16 bit, re-import it to Audacity, line it at the beginning, shrink the file, and render to a stereo track all over again. I'm hoping I'll be fine as is, but just wanted to check over here to see if there are any technical issues with doing what I did.
Also, in Audacity it seems to bump the 16 bit file up to 24 bit automatically, while bumping the 24 bit up to 32 bit float. So not sure how that all effects it.
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Use the widest-range/highest-rez/biggest-number sources or whatever you care to call them to mix from, and funnel down the result for final distribution.
Most DAW software will easily accommodate files of differing bit depth without additional conversion, typically doing their calculations at 32-bit float, so 24 and 16 bit files fit comfortably within that calculation range without any need for you to do anything to them first.
Most new DAW software can also accommodate files of differing sample rates or even encoding formats, but those things take more computer overhead to convert on the fly. How much that matters is subject to debate I'm sure, but mixing 16 bit WAVs with 24bit WAVs is no stress.
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Okay, cool, thanks for the reassurance. I do edit as much as possible in the sample rate/bit depth the files were originally recorded in as much as possible, but with two differing bit depths thought using the closest common denominator without upscaling anything would be the way to go.
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In that case I'd start by loading the 24bit file, then add the 16 bit file and let it pad it out the additional 8bits of the second with zeros.