As most of you, I am so used to get my final master down to 16bit and adding the extra step of ‘dithering’ (using either Izotope’s Ozone 8 dither, which is great, BTW! or Logic’s POW-r#1 algorithm) that I don’t even think about it anymore. It became as automated as digesting food!
But I was thinking…do we still need to reduce bit rate these days? I mean…nothing will be printed on CD anymore (for those who don’t know it, AUDIO CDs only takes 16bit resolution and 44.1Khz sample rate). Everything now is online and streaming, so 24bit would be better for our costumers at the end.
Just thought of creating this topic to start the discussion.
Thanks and all the best to everyone.
In my opinion 16 bit is enough for music. Maybe for sfx 24 would be better? I don’t know.
Even that our DAWs and VSTs work in higher bit depths, samples very often are in 16 bits so it’s not as big difference as many suppose The biggest theoretical difference may be for those who record instruments in 24 bits. But to be honest I do not hear difference between 16 and 24
BTW in our situation more important is sample rate value which in videos is always 48k, not 44,1 and which can make little peaks after conversion. But is 44,1 instead of 48 so important? Not really. Is it unprofessional? Maybe
I agree with you. Many sound libraries still use 16bit, so delivering files in 24bit doesn’t (in theory) improve the quality at all…and yes, sample rate does take priority over bit rate in this case…48K is the industry standard…and I just love how you put it “But does 44,1 instead of 48 so important? Not really. Is it unprofessional? Maybe” Hehehe very good. Having been working as screen composer for over 10 years now and I totally agree!
But I just thought that we can maybe eliminate the extra step of reducing the bitrate ourselves when uploading. After all, it doesn’t hurt to just upload our masters in 24bit. Sure, file size is a bit bigger, but, mostly in AJ, since we are not uploading huge zip files, the difference is not that great.
I recently got new pair of monitors (Genelec 8330A, which sounds fantastic! specially in the high-mids to high…super clear!) and my studio has sound treatment…and to be really honest…I can’t quite hear the difference between 16 and 24 myself, so…I am with you on this!
Anyway, let’s see what others think! All the best…and by the way…I find your work amazing! Truly inspiring! Keep up the great work you are doing!
Yes I did, and highly recommend it. The auto calibration works really well and makes a huge difference! I am moving my music studio to a new place next week and the first thing I will do is to run it again.
considering that most of the music nowadays is listened in mp3 / streaming, through crappy phone/table speaker or budget hearphones, i would not mind at all!
The biggest theoretical difference may be for those who record instruments in 24 bits. But to be honest I do not hear difference between 16 and 24 
