Thank you, Tim and Lou, for pointing out the SD web page.
http://www.sounddevices.com/tech/24-bit.htm
Just so no one gets the wrong impression by me starting this thread, I
understand the exponentially finer gradation of detail 24 bit has over
16 bit. Have all along. To many folks it's a no-brainer. But in an
imperfect world we're always faced with trade-offs. Lou mentioned that
drives are cheap these days, so drive space is no longer much of an
issue. And Tim pointed out how cheap DVD blanks are too. In the field,
however, battery and media consumption still can be an issue. Thus the
one trade-off that can still have me conflicted. SD's low-saturation
examples were helpful on this, especially in light of some of the
low-level ambient environments many of us frequent. The statement at
the bottom of SD's test page is a great summary:
> What you hear is that the tracks recorded at full signal level sound
> largely identical, whether recorded at 24 bit or 16 bit. However, the
> tracks recorded 40 dB down are very different. Most important is how
> usable the low level 24 bit signal is after normalization. It is
> definitely noisier than the full gain recording but it held up quite
> well. The 16 bit recordings highlight how important recording full
> scale digital is in a 16 bit environment."
Curt Olson
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