Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Rave
Posts: 6152
Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:26 am

Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by Rave » Thu Nov 12, 2009 10:57 am

My drums have been sampled at 16bit. Should I stick to 16bit for the file I send to the mastering engineer or can I whack it up to 24 bit? The rest of the track is made from VSTis.

Thanks

The Carpet Cleaner
Posts: 1128
Joined: Sat May 16, 2009 2:21 pm
Location: Paris

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by The Carpet Cleaner » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:25 pm

I'll say that whatever you do in live, always export at 24 bits 44.1khz, without normalizing or dithering. Also, try to leave around 6Db of headroom for the mastering stage.

If I understood well, every process in Live, even a simple gain change, make your project in 32 bits. Exporting in 32 bits can be a problem if you want to open the files in a different DAWs though. And I beleive exporting from 32 bits to 24bits doesnt decrease the audio quality (the 8bits being only for process calculation...)

That's probably all wrong so anybody please feel free to correct, so I learn too :mrgreen:

davepermen
Posts: 2198
Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:38 pm
Location: Switzerland
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by davepermen » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:33 pm

afaik it uses 32bits, but floats, that means, yes, 24bits for precicion, and 8 bit for the actual "scale". means you can make your track 256x as loud, it will have the identical binary footprint as long as it stays in live, only the exponent of the float went from 0 to 255.

but to get the best out of your vstis, use 24bit. and if you have some effect on the drums, they are not 16bit anymore, but 32bit float, too.. as the effect may change details the 16bit signal didn't even had.
http://davepermen.net my tiny webpage, including link to bandcamp.

ChiDJ
Posts: 2241
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:59 pm
Location: CHick-A-Go!
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by ChiDJ » Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:17 pm

Go to 24
"Let you're body feel the sound! Let it cover you up and down!"

Image

Tarekith
Posts: 19072
Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2005 11:46 pm
Location: Ableton Forum Administrator
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by Tarekith » Thu Nov 12, 2009 3:19 pm

24bit definitely, even if all your individual tracks are 16bit you want to render at 24bit.
Tarekith
Ableton Forum Administrator
https://tarekith.com

Rave
Posts: 6152
Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:26 am

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by Rave » Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:10 pm

Thank you gentlemen

mdb
Posts: 220
Joined: Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:59 pm
Location: N. Korea

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by mdb » Thu Nov 12, 2009 11:32 pm

.
Image

bridgealantee
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon Nov 17, 2008 1:14 am
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by bridgealantee » Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:50 am

I would HIGHLY suggest using a higher sample rate than 44.1. Use at least 48, but higher is always better. Just remember to dither if you are going to bounce to 16 44.

ChiDJ
Posts: 2241
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:59 pm
Location: CHick-A-Go!
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by ChiDJ » Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:53 am

bridgealantee wrote:I would HIGHLY suggest using a higher sample rate than 44.1. Use at least 48, but higher is always better. Just remember to dither if you are going to bounce to 16 44.

Your sig says "Lo-Fi Hip Hopish" so why would you go over 44.1?

Educate me.
"Let you're body feel the sound! Let it cover you up and down!"

Image

bridgealantee
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon Nov 17, 2008 1:14 am
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by bridgealantee » Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:27 am

ChiDJ wrote:
bridgealantee wrote:I would HIGHLY suggest using a higher sample rate than 44.1. Use at least 48, but higher is always better. Just remember to dither if you are going to bounce to 16 44.

Your sig says "Lo-Fi Hip Hopish" so why would you go over 44.1?

Educate me.
I am a freelance Mastering and Mixing Engineer, with an education in audio engineering. So I do a lot of making stuff sound as nice and clean as possible. I assume most people want their stuff to sound like commercial recordings, so I feel I can give advice to people wanting to get the best sound. My own sound is just that, I personally like dirty raw ish, so that's what I make. That being said I like my recordings to be as high quality as possible, so I can control which elements are dirty and maybe have a sparkling hi res synth tone.

Tone Deft
Posts: 24152
Joined: Mon Oct 02, 2006 5:19 pm

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by Tone Deft » Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:36 am

bridgealantee wrote:
ChiDJ wrote:
bridgealantee wrote:I would HIGHLY suggest using a higher sample rate than 44.1. Use at least 48, but higher is always better. Just remember to dither if you are going to bounce to 16 44.

Your sig says "Lo-Fi Hip Hopish" so why would you go over 44.1?

Educate me.
I am a freelance Mastering and Mixing Engineer, with an education in audio engineering. So I do a lot of making stuff sound as nice and clean as possible. I assume most people want their stuff to sound like commercial recordings, so I feel I can give advice to people wanting to get the best sound. My own sound is just that, I personally like dirty raw ish, so that's what I make. That being said I like my recordings to be as high quality as possible, so I can control which elements are dirty and maybe have a sparkling hi res synth tone.
CDs are 44.1k 16 bit, do they sound bad? do you think you can hear the difference between 44.1k and 192k? between 16 bit and 24 bit? do you know how low the audible level of those differences are?

seems that often the choice of sample rate should be made to choose one that matches your other processing steps to minimize SRC processes.
In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?
-Moz

shatzer
Posts: 166
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 4:37 am
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by shatzer » Fri Nov 13, 2009 1:38 am

bridgealantee wrote:I would HIGHLY suggest using a higher sample rate than 44.1. Use at least 48, but higher is always better. Just remember to dither if you are going to bounce to 16 44.
True, but if you're sending it to a mastering engineer then you should NOT dither. And leave atleast 3 - 6 db of headroom with no eq, compression, or limiting on the master.

bridgealantee
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon Nov 17, 2008 1:14 am
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by bridgealantee » Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:28 am

shatzer wrote:
bridgealantee wrote:I would HIGHLY suggest using a higher sample rate than 44.1. Use at least 48, but higher is always better. Just remember to dither if you are going to bounce to 16 44.
True, but if you're sending it to a mastering engineer then you should NOT dither. And leave atleast 3 - 6 db of headroom with no eq, compression, or limiting on the master.

But if you are recording at 24 48 and you are giving your mastering engineer a CD, you have in fact lost your only chance to dither. I would ideally like to get a drive with 24 48 files and dither them myself, but often the artist just wants to send you a cd. I agree with the rest though.

Tarekith
Posts: 19072
Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2005 11:46 pm
Location: Ableton Forum Administrator
Contact:

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by Tarekith » Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:33 am

Usually they send it as a wav or aiff on CDR though, not as CD Audio. At least in my experience, never had anyone send me a red book CD to master from.
Tarekith
Ableton Forum Administrator
https://tarekith.com

The Carpet Cleaner
Posts: 1128
Joined: Sat May 16, 2009 2:21 pm
Location: Paris

Re: Mastering at 24bit or 16bit

Post by The Carpet Cleaner » Fri Nov 13, 2009 2:43 am

- Your sampling rate should be the same as your final media support (is that clear?). Ok for example you're making music for CDs, mp3, whatever : your sampling rate should be 44.1khz. Now, if you're making music for movies, that will end up on DVDs, then yea, make it 48khz.

- Why do we record 24bits instead of 16bits? it's not for sound quality because it will end up in 16bits anyway. It's because when you record in 24 bits you just have a lower noise floor (- 146 dB for 24bits, -98db for 16bits).

- and yea like tarekith said, you dont send an .aiff or wav in the cd ! ideally, dithering should be apply one time only.

Post Reply