[ardour-dev] How to record 24-bit audio files?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 13:32:07 -0500, Paul Davis
<paul at linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote:
> >Is there a way to record 24-bit audiofiles instead of the default
> >32-bit ones? I mean something like choosing session bit-depth in
> >ProTools.  I'm thinking about easier interchangeability of audiofiles
> >between different audio applications in different DAWs. Many computer
> >based systems use max.  24-bit resolution, which IMHO is pretty much
> >enough in most cases.
> 
> I think you are a little confused.
> 
> Ardour's native files are ordinary RIFF/WAV IEEE floating point
> format, which uses 24 bits to store a mantissa, and the remaining 8
> for the exponent and other flags. They have 24 bit precision for
> absolute accuracy, but can also contain values way outside the normal
> dynamic range of a 24 bit file. This is useful for containing a mix
> whose values went outside the 24 bit range.
> 
> Ardour does not attempt to "fake" 32 bit resolution. If ProTools has
> problems with importing its native files, its because they (like a lot
> of other software) don't properly handle this 100% legal WAV
> format. Software that does (like anything using the libsndfile
> library) can read them with ease.
> 
> Meanwhile, you can always *export* audio from Ardour in a number of
> different formats, most or all of which will be importable by PT and
> other non-standards-compliant software.
> 
> Note that main reason to use 24 bit files has nothing to do with
> resolution but disk i/o bandwidth. You get a significant savings by
> storing only 3 bytes per sample instead of 4. Ardour might switch to
> such a format one day in the future, to accomodate higher track
> counts.
> 
> --p
> 

Hi,
   About 2-3 weeks ago I posted (I think) a message about 24-bit
export files being mostly noise. Has this been looked at? (Is it
reporoducible by anyone else?)

   16-bit export continues to work fine.

Thanks,
Mark