Thanks Curt, and I do understand your reasoning as well. I just felt
that people would take from the thread that there was no real benefit
to 24 bits, and felt obliged as some others did, to try to explain
why in certain circumstances (and ones often encountered by nature
recordists) that's not quite true.
So now I guess I have to convince people to start recording at 32
bit! (believe it or not, there will most likely be a 32 bit, 384k
recording format at some point).
Or we could start a discussion about why 96k is better than 48k! :)
Tim
On May 14, 2007, at 6:26 AM, Curt Olson wrote:
> 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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