Creating 24bit CDs, Masterlink, only option??

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:52 pm

16-bit isn't going to kill you, but 24-bit has an awful lot higher resolution (16-bit having around 65,000 points of resolution, 24-bit have 16.7 million) and 48dB more dynamic range, no dither noise, etc., etc., etc.

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:27 pm

24 bits does not provide greater resolution. It provides greater dynamic range for inexperienced hands and incompetent postprocessing. They could & should take your 16-bit 44.1kHz material which they could up convert to 24-bit to suit their needs. The noise floor of your microphone preamps is greater than the noise floor of 16-bit digital processing. So none of this really makes any sense. Beginners, all of them. Clueless beginners. But if you have cut quality sounding tracks, that's all that should be necessary. Nobody can tell the difference between 16-bit & 24-bit when listing to playbacks. Inherent electronic signal to noise prevents any noise for from being lower than -105 DB generally speaking. It doesn't matter that 24-bit provides for 140 DB dynamic range when electronics can only deliver less than 110 DB and rock-and-roll typically isn't included in such specifications. Tell them to get off of their high horse and that you're delivering quality tracks. Let them play with it as they need to.

Silly silly silly boys
Ms. Remy Ann David

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 5:37 am

No matter what the bit depth or the sampling rate it still goes back to garbage in garbage out.

I get people who want to master at 196 kHZ and 24 or 32 bit. There stuff could well fit into 44.1/16 but they want this nirvana of audio perfection. Most times the song writing, the playing, the recording and the mixing is problematic at best and down right BAD at the worst so the quality of the audio DOES NOT REALLY MATTER ALL THAT MUCH.

Musicians and budding recording engineers would be better served by worrying about things like playing in tune and writing and recoding GREAT music than chasing something that in the end really does not matter all that much to the overall "sound" of their recording.

196 kHZ and 32 bit is JUST a way for the manufactures to sell more equipment. DVD-A, SACD never caught on because basically people want to listen to their music when and where they chose and don't want to sit in a room with a calibrated multichannel monitoring system to listen to their IPOD with headphones. They are listening in their cars, in their bedrooms and out walking to classes.

If it were me I would keep it at 24 bit up until the final mastering and let the mastering engineer dither it down to 16 bits

YMMV

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:32 am

RemyRAD wrote:

Sure. You can dither a 24-bit recording to 16 and a hide those additional eight bits in the noise floor. Big Deal. WTF ??

These posts of yours are embarassing Remy. Your bad advice to use 16 bit resolution is made even worse by the fact that your posts are otherwise very knowledgable and informative...

Your claim that 16 bit audio has plenty of dynamic range is misleading: the bottom end of that dynamic range is crunchy as hell.

Here's my standard dither test: I take a snare sample, run it through a long reverb impulse, then drop the gain by 40 or 50 dB (ie: only half way down the dynamic range that Remy claims for 16 bit audio). I then export a control version at 24 bit, another at 16 bit with no dither, and then further 16 bit files with the dither I wish to evaluate. The resulting files can then be normalised to hear the results at sensible listening levels:

1. 24 bit file. This sounds just like the original version with a nice smooth reverb tail that decays to silence.

2. 16 bit file with no dither. Note the horrible crunchy distortion, and the dead stop when the signal drops below the LSB.

3. 16 bit file dithered with the free MDA dither plug. Note that the reverb tail no longer sounds distorted, and that it continues for longer than the undithered version. But, the dither noise itself is quite obnoxious.

4. 16 bit file dithered with the MegaBitMax Ultra algorithm included in the Izotope Ozone mastering plug. Note that the dither noise is now much less audible (despite actually having higher peak levels) because the noise has been pushed towards the ultra low and high frequencies to which we are less sensitive. (Encoding this file as an MP3 may have added some artifacts: hard to tell as I am currently using my built-in laptop speakers in a hotel lobby!)

Remember, all this is happening at -50dB. In other words, if you work at 16 bit resolution you are at best burying your low level detail in dither noise, and at worst turning it into a crunchy distorted mess. This will be compromising the subtle differences between left and right channels that provide good stereo imaging as well as the subtle details that provide the depth and space around a good acoustic recording.

Think back to your math lessons: you have to perform a series of calculations, and you need the final answer to 2 decimal places. If you round down to two decimal places after each calculation your errors accumulate each time, so the correct way to do it is to preserve as many decimal places as possible throughout each calculation and only round down once when you have the final answer.

I have no doubt that your 16 bit recordings sound good Remy. But I also have no doubt that they would sound better if you worked at a higher resolution up to the final stage, because this is a basic law of mathematics. Working at 16 bit means rounding down after each calculation and in these days of 24 bit converters and cheap data storage it is totally unneccesary.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:24 am

All those samples prove is you know how to screw audio up.

If I record my snare in 16bit then in 24bit. Both at 44.1khz. Will it sound mental either time?

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:43 am

If you record your snare at 16 bit resolution, while leaving 6dB headroom for unexpected peaks, you will end up with only 15 bits of information. If you then compress that audio by 6dB and add make-up gain you will end up with distorted rubbish filling the bottom 2 bits of your 16 bit file.

Every time you save a file at 16 bit resolution you are adding a layer of distortion or dither noise, which is cumulative, so even if your ears aren't sensitive enough to notice it after only one truncation, after 2 or 3 the sound will be noticeably colder and more brittle, with worse stereo imaging and less sense of depth and space.

If there were two types of analogue tape available, both at the same price, but one had much better dynamic range and a lower noise floor, which would you choose?

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:56 am

IIRs,

I agree with your findings, but I don't think it applies to Remmy's real world microphone recoding model that she is referring to. If the OP used effects heavily, that could be a different thing entirely.

With a sample, when you are listening to the tail of reverb on a snare you are listening to something that is almost entirely synthetic. In the real world, a -105dB noise floor, as Remmy mentioned, is just about the best case. In a musicians bedroom/home studio even a -96dB noise floor is good.

You could model this as a -96dB white noise with a -96dB artifact noise from the conversion, and -6dB of intended signal. (assuming the dynamic range of the song is 6dB)

Then the question is can you hear a -96dB signal with -96dB noise? Barely. And the real question: Will anyone notice it buried under the full tone signal? I doubt it.

The OP has recorded in 24bit, but can only export at 16bit. If the sound is normalize inside the BOSS recorder, and then exported he will have a dynamic range of 96dB.

In your mention on math lessons you are right, there will be rounding errors if processing audio at 16bits. This would be a problem if you were doing lots of processing at the 16 bit level. This is especially true of fader adjustments. However in the OP’s case there is minimal processing. The error is 1 / 2 bit at the 24 to 16 bit conversion inside the BOSS. In the DAW there is no loss from the 24 to 32 bit conversion, and there may be a 1 / 2 bit loss when converting 32 back to the target of 16bit.

So the biggest error is 1 a bit or -96dB. This is the same as the dynamic range of the target media.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:10 pm

If your equipment is limited to 16 bit resolution then you have no option but to make the best of it.

However, Remy has repeatedly advised people who use 24 bit converters and 32 bit or better audio processing that they should record and export 16 bit files. Whether the difference is audible in all cases or not is hardly relevant: the difference IS there as a mathematical inevitability, and multiple stages of truncation will accumulate those differences until eventually it is audible to anyone.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:24 pm

IIRs wrote:

the difference IS there as a mathematical inevitability, and multiple stages of truncation will accumulate those differences until eventually it is audible to anyone.

I agree with you here. I thought you were referring to the OP's problem, and Remmy response to it, not a general trend that you saw.

Sorry for the confusion.

-Steve

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:35 pm

Wow there's a lot of info to take in.

Well in my situation I have not choice but to take the files from the recorder in 16bit form. The guys are just mixing the tracks. Im giving them a guide mix of course.

What I will do is give them both (16 and 24bit) even though the raw files are 16bit. I'm getting a Yamaha N12 with Cubase AI next week so I won't have this problem again. I'm a songwriter before an engineer BUT I'm determined to get a good grasp of as much technical Knowledge as I can to produce good sounding demos for artists and publishers.

If you want to hear some of my tracks recorded on the BR900CD go to www.myspace.com/briandunlea

And I want to say thanks so much to all of you for your efforts and help. I'm shocked (in a good way) by the amount of feedback I got. It's very educational.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:42 pm

GeckoMusic wrote:

IIRs wrote:

the difference IS there as a mathematical inevitability, and multiple stages of truncation will accumulate those differences until eventually it is audible to anyone.

I agree with you here. I thought you were referring to the OP's problem, and Remmy response to it, not a general trend that you saw.

Sorry for the confusion.

-Steve

No worries. Smile

I probably should have posted the above in a different thread, but I'm sat in a hotel in Hamburg with nothing better to do and Remy's 16 bit proselytising finally annoyed me enough to dig out my dither test files...

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:13 pm

Hey all. Just a quick add on question.

Do any of you own an Alesis Masterlink?
I'm asking because I work in a musical instrument store and the Alesis Distributor has offered me a unit for 500 euro. They're going for around 750 euro on websites in Europe.

I'm buying a T.L. Audio 5052 Ivory II stereo preamp/comp/eq for some tracking and basic mastering for my own demos. I'll be using a Yamaha N12, Macbook Pro and Cubase.

I was wondering would the results be better mixing down through the 5052 to the Alesis than mixing to Cubase? The 5052 has the option of digital out which would by pass the Masterlink converters. I've read they're not great. Good but not great!!

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 3:43 pm

(Yes, I have one).

But I don't see a particular advantage over simply running it back into Cubase.

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 7:32 pm

Okay. I think at this stage I'm just looking for a reason to buy one. The more I think of it the more I realise I just think the masterlink is cool. I can burn 24bit data discs from the mac right?

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:19 pm

Yep. The Masterlink is a great thing - Don't get me wrong. But if you have an interface and a computer, it's relatively unnecessary.

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