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As always with bit depth's it's important differentiate what parameter they are in fact describing in what context.
It could describe:
the OS's throughput- which has no effect on the audio quality - but can allow for faster processing speed or larger/denser sessions to be handled IF the application running on it has been optimized to take advantage of this
the application's throughput - which again has no effect on the audio quality - but would allow it to handle more/faster processing and/or larger/denser sessions if it's running on a similarly compatible OS.
the DAW's internal processing math - which is the amount of places that are allowed when something like a multiple or divide occurs - and can be further differentiated as fixed point (aka "integer"), floating point, and single or double precision.
a plugin's internal processing math - which can in fact be different and even larger (as long as the host app allows for this) than what the DAW does during its own native processing.
the bit depth of returned figures after an internal processing calculation is done - after a calculation is made generally the returned figure is not at the larger bit depth size that are done for the internal processing calculations but at some easier to handle size before it is passed on to the next signal process. For many applications this is a 32-bit floating point IEEE file (which is in fact a 24bit + 8bit mantissa) or a 24bit fixed point file. For the app I use it's a full 32bit fixed point file.
the bit depth of a source or rendered file
Best regards,
Steve Berson
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