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My experience is that if we are just talking about a single truncation of 32bit to 24bit then because any distortions from quantization errors are way below the noise floor that the diffference between the two files is imperceptible even when played back on a great quality 24bit DAC. I should note that 32bit data MUST be converted by your DAW app to 24bit prior to having it played back by your DAC in all cases anyway - so no one is actually listening to 32bit audio anyway!
The issues with the introduction of degradations for many DAW apps is if they continously truncate from a higher bit rate to 24bit while passing the data from one signal process to another (the app I use, SAWStudio gets around this problem for the most part by returning and passing a full fixed point 32bit DWORD after computations are done in 64bit fixed point in any of its signal processes) - but again, ime, a single truncation is really not going to hurt anything. Then again, adding dither to the least significant 24th bit when requantizing from 32bit won't hurt at all either (and in fact might help - especially if requantizing occurs numerous times - which often does happen in a DAW when mixing tracks).
Best regards,
Steve Berson
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