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Originally Posted by Duardo You've actually got it backwards...you don't start at the bottom and count up, you start at the top and count down. Whether you're mixing on a 24-, 16-, or 8 bit system, 0 dBFS is the loudest you can get and if you take a 16-bit file that peaks at 0 dBFS and import it into a 24-bit system it will still peak at 0 dBFS and be just as loud as it was in the 16-bit system...no less and no more. More bits don't let you get louder, they let you get quieter.
In addition, most DAW users don't even come close to using the full 144 dB dynamic range they have abailable theoretically, or even 114 dB, or 80, or 60, at least not as far as popular music is concerned...put in most commercial CD's and you'll see that the meters probably don't go more than 10 dB down. It is true that there would be artifacts if you tried to push a signal that truly utilized 144 dB of dynamic range through a 114 dB "hole" but they'd all be so quiet you wouldn't hear them.
-Duardo |
But, that said, headroom is the key to this discussion. Many of the problems that people have with ITB summing have to do with inadequate headroom. When adding several tracks that all approach 0db together, there are mathematical shortcuts taken, which cause certain types of unpleasant distortion. These distortions can be avoided by either a) lowering the levels of the individual tracks going into the summing equation, or b) sending the tracks to an external analogue mixer which will sum them there, then bringing them back into the DAW at a lower level. The sound of these two options are slightly different (significantly different if you're sending enough signal to your mixer to cause some clipping), but both solve the "digital gauze" problem.