two questionsabout bit depth in PT

[thenewyear]

I am bouncing to stereo several sessions in PTLE for transfer to a PTTDM 24 bit 44.1kHz session for mastering.

1. Some of the original sessions are 16 bit. Should I change them to 24 bits as part of the bounce in LE?? & if so should i have a dither over a unity master fader?

2. I have heard that as the mix bus inLE uses 48 bit math internally i should use a dither on a 24 bit master fader set at unity even when bouncing 24 to 24 bit. Is that correct?

Thanks in advance,

[Riccardo]

Let the Mastering Engineer do any sample rate conversion!
Please!

[thenewyear]

I amn't touching the sample rate. all the sessions are 44.1 te engineer has asked me to turn up with all:-

multiple mono, 24 bit, 44.1kHz AIFF

he is doing it for free as a favour & Idon;t want to tun up with files of different bit depth.

[ProFool]

make sure you dont use any dither

[Riccardo]

Originally posted by thenewyear
I amn't touching the sample rate. all the sessions are 44.1 te engineer has asked me to turn up with all:-

multiple mono, 24 bit, 44.1kHz AIFF

he is doing it for free as a favour & Idon;t want to tun up with files of different bit depth.

I understand kinda.
If the M.E. has asked you that.........fine.......still I am

It is a free world after all (more or less....)

Rule of thumb: always deliver your mixes at the hoghest possible resolution and let M.E. do ANY format conversion.
Can't see what difference is going to make if they are spli monos or stereo interleaved......anyway...as long as you are happy.....

[thenewyear]

Thanks for the replies,

so far i have been preparing the files with no dither & no master fader so I suppose I was right.

Another quick question.

When bouncing from 16 bit to 24 bi file what happens to each digital word?? Does it get 8 zeros written on as the least significant bits??

If so what happens when the Mastering Engineer applies plugs/fades& finally a dither onto those 8 zeros??

thanks in advance (again!),

[ProFool]

Originally posted by thenewyear
Thanks for the replies,

so far i have been preparing the files with no dither & no master fader so I suppose I was right.

Another quick question.

When bouncing from 16 bit to 24 bit file what happens to each digital word?? Does it get 8 zeros written on as the least significant bits??

If so what happens when the Mastering Engineer applies plugs/fades& finally a dither onto those 8 zeros??

thanks in advance (again!),

I supose your work session was at 16 bit?
But why not use a master fader?

as for those 8 zeros the ME wil put that back to 16 bit, thats the standard for any cd player etc.

greetz

[thenewyear]

yes the original sessions I am asking about were 16 bit.

i wasn't using the master fader to avoid excessive amounts of the dreaded alsihad mix buss degradation...

i do know that the ME will take the files back to 26 bit I jsut wanted to check I was following a sound process (ie. increase bit depth to master).

Thanks again,

[Bob Olhsson]

The session bit depth refers ONLY to that of the source files. A mix will always come out at 24 bits.

I hear a definite benefit from dithering to 24 bits using an L-1 set to do nothing else. This isn't always obvious listening to the 24 bit files but the results are usually richer sounding in the final mastered product. I've never heard a master fader set to zero cause any degradation while failing to dither always causes measurable distortion.

[ProFool]

Originally posted by Bob Olhsson


while failing to dither always causes measurable distortion.

So is it ok to use dither while printing the mix and then use dither again at mastering to ? Or only when using a 24 bit dither on the mix?
thanks

[Bob Olhsson]

There's a lot of dead wrong information about dithering in software manuals and magazine articles.

The way to maintain the highest quality is to keep the longest word length for as long as possible. Every signal processing computation involves a word-length reduction that needs to be dithered to whatever word length it returns to the application as or gets written out to a file as.

Ideally a mix would be dithered to 24 bits, mastered and finally dithered down to 16 bits for the CD. Back when mixes HAD to be done to 16 bits, some people preferred the sound of not dithering their mix and this idea of only dithering once began appearing in print. My experience has been that 24 bit dither is only a positive while 16 bit dither used to be a trade-off. Also some software sounds better writing to 16 bits than 24 but I suspect it was just poorly written.

[ProFool]

Must have missed this one http://gearslutz.com/board/showthrea...&threadid=9873

[BrianT]

I have a suggestion.

Make every reasonable variation of output you can. Shouldn't take too long. Dither and no dither, etc.

Put each differenct type of file on IT'S OWN, seperate clearly labeled CD. When you get to the mastering session, ask which he prefers, and if possible, why?

Worst case you're totally covered, best case, the guy will appreciate the effort and question (I would) and take a few minutes to let you hear why he prefers A over B, right there in his room.

I'm really big on learning as much as possible for myself, in person, as opposed to doing what I'm "supposed" to do because I read it somewhere. And BTW, you may find his preferences are different than yours.

Use your own ears whenever possible, because everything we do musically is still always a matter of personal taste.

Regards,
Brian T