file types and storage

[GPDoc]

Mark and Paul, I sure appreciate all the help. I will look into the software options, as you suggest. So, if I already have a song transferred from my recording equipment to my computer, then would Audacity allow for the modification of the song from 44-16 to 48-24, or would the use of Audacity require that the song be on a DAW?

It has nothing to do with a DAW. I think you would just drag and drop your WAV into Audacity, set to 48-24 in the preferences, and that would be how Audacity would treat it from now on. HOWEVER, I don't think you can choose 24bit as a WAV export option in Audacity, only 16 or 32. But internally it can work at 24bit. At least that is how I understand it.

Tom

As always, it took me forever to figure it out, but, Great Success! I got Audacity up and running, resampled my 44-16 piece to a 48-24, and it all worked. Wooo Hooo. And Tom, I figured out that if you click on the down arrow next to the name, on the left of the wave patterns, then click on "format" you will have the option to click 24 bit. Thanks again everyone.

[CTWF]

As always, it took me forever to figure it out, but, Great Success! I got Audacity up and running, resampled my 44-16 piece to a 48-24, and it all worked. Wooo Hooo. And Tom, I figured out that if you click on the down arrow next to the name, on the left of the wave patterns, then click on "format" you will have the option to click 24 bit. Thanks again everyone.

Oh, yes, that works. Also, the "Spectrogram" view is cool - I have just seen that the first time. But how to export as 24bit WAV still eludes me. Might be impossible.

Tom

[GPDoc]

As always, it took me forever to figure it out, but, Great Success! I got Audacity up and running, resampled my 44-16 piece to a 48-24, and it all worked. Wooo Hooo. And Tom, I figured out that if you click on the down arrow next to the name, on the left of the wave patterns, then click on "format" you will have the option to click 24 bit. Thanks again everyone.

Oh, yes, that works. Also, the "Spectrogram" view is cool - I have just seen that the first time. But how to export as 24bit WAV still eludes me. Might be impossible.

Tom

Well, the jury is still out with me. As a test, this morning, I created a song on my Tascam 32, set to 48-24, expecting that I would be able to load this resampled file onto that new song, but it did not work. I also don't know how to check on the song to see actually what are the settings of the song. I just know what I set them at on Audacity, but I have no way to verify what I actually got. Any idea of how to do that?

[GPDoc]

Tom (and anyone else who knows), I found another reference that referred to Audacity as a 32 bit system, but if it's impossible to export 24 bit, then what is accomplished by setting up the resample at 24 bit (or any other setting)?

[CTWF]

Well, the jury is still out with me. As a test, this morning, I created a song on my Tascam 32, set to 48-24, expecting that I would be able to load this resampled file onto that new song, but it did not work. I also don't know how to check on the song to see actually what are the settings of the song. I just know what I set them at on Audacity, but I have no way to verify what I actually got. Any idea of how to do that?

I have not looked it up, but my suspicion is that when you export to 16bit or 32bit WAV, Audacity keeps the sample rate you told it to use. Here is how you can check a WAV file's specs using VLC: https://superuser.com/a/966386

The information VLC shows me seems to be correct, i.e. as specified by me either when exporting from Audacity or from my DAW (Cakewalk). Bummer that Audacity cannot also export at the apparently often requested 24bit, but maybe your DAW can?

Tom

[CTWF]

Tom (and anyone else who knows), I found another reference that referred to Audacity as a 32 bit system, but if it's impossible to export 24 bit, then what is accomplished by setting up the resample at 24 bit (or any other setting)?

My guess would be that technically it is exported as 32bit, but it sounds like 24bit. So, in theory you could have a better sound, but you won't if you tell it to stick with 24bit. Just a guess. It's like saving a black and white image as a 16bit GIF - you are not using all these colors because you made it black and white, but you could have. Really just a guess.

Tom

[GPDoc]

My equipment has the option to create a 48-24 formatted song. So I would just have to figure the best way of sending it. This last task was attempting to change the song which was recorded as 44.1-16 to a 48-24 in case it was asked for. FYI, I thought I would try Cakewalk, but I can't get it to load, and I've seen that it is a 32 or 64 format, so could have the same problems?

[AlanHall]

Tom (and anyone else who knows), I found another reference that referred to Audacity as a 32 bit system, but if it's impossible to export 24 bit, then what is accomplished by setting up the resample at 24 bit (or any other setting)?

Audacity will do all its internal computations as 32-bit floating-point math. Otherwise there'd be lots of signal-to-noise loss during tracking and mixing. That's all that means, it has nothing to do with what the files look like when exported.

When I get home this weekend I'll look to see what options I can find with Audacity. I haven't seen 24-bit WAV files as an option, but that could be for lack of trying

[GPDoc]

Thanks. Since I read earlier that 48-24 was the common requirement of end users, I thought everyone was doing it. Did I get the wrong idea about what the folks with the contracts are going to need? Or is there more flexibility?

[AlanHall]

I haven't landed any contracts - yet - so my info is based purely on personal use. I track at 44.1k because up until a few years ago I'd always put my rough mixes onto a CD to listen around on. My file IO is 24 bit because that's the best I can do on my hardware (actually only 20 bit on the AD converters). It's easy to downsample 24 bit WAV files to 16 bit outside of a remix, upsampling without remixing doesn't really gain anything. Data in the 8 LSB doesn't magically appear. To get good quality 24 bit masters, the DAW has to mix to that output configuration.
If I should be recording at 48k, I should start doing it immediately to avoid headaches in the future. So thanks for this excellent discussion