[Ardour-Users] Saving disk space

[Axel 'the C.L.A.' Müller]

On Sat, 1 Oct 2016 18:24:38 +0200
Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 1 Oct 2016 15:46:15 +0200, Robin Gareus wrote:
> >On 10/01/2016 01:30 PM, Axel 'the C.L.A.' Müller wrote:
> >> A more elegant solution would be if the import dialog had a "keep
> >> bit depth" option
> >
> >That is a great idea!
> 
> FWIW I'm not arguing against this option.
> 
> >Increasing the bit-depth of existing audio files on disk has no
> >benefit.
> 
> As long as you keep this in mind...
> 
> On Sat, 1 Oct 2016 12:17:38 +0200, Axel 'the C.L.A.' Müller wrote:
> >Only exception where the audio file bit depth might matter a little
> >again is when you plan to do internal bounces. But then you could
> >still switch to a higher bit depth after the imports have been done.
> 
> ...and don't forget to use floating point by accident, when it is
> useful. To avoid such an accident, it is secure to use floating point
> for everything, even if importing an existing integer audio file
> doesn't benefit from transforming it to floating point.

After putting some more thoughts into it I tend to propose an
all-in-one-trouble-free option in "Session Properties -> Media" for
that. Ardour would decide itself it is safe to keep the bit depth or if
float format should be used. This would completely overwrite the
"Sample Format" option in that tab and import as float even if Sample
Format is not set to float, if required.