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

Jan Depner eviltwin69 at cableone.net
Sun Dec 19 17:54:42 PST 2004


On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 19:22, Mark Knecht wrote:
> 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.
> 

    I've been exporting 24 bit and have no problems with them.  I've
also done 16 bit with no problems.  I'm using the latest CVS.

Jan





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