Stereo Tool

Hello all.

In Windows 7+, you have the ability to switch the audio modes from 16 - 24 bit. In Breakaway, switching to 24 bit didn't work, but I notice that in Stereo Tool it does. I'm not an audiophile or scientist, but should this make any difference? My files are all 16 bit, mostly FLAC a few MP3. Perhaps it's placebo effect, but to me it seems to sound better. Not sure how to quantify "better". My default feeling is if it's brighter, it's clearer, so it's better. I know that's not usually the case for actual audio pros.

So my major question is given all the above, does switching audio modes to 24 bit make any difference with Stereo Tool?

Thanks.

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America's Country
Totally RAD Radio

I wouldn't expect a noticeable difference, especially if you're using the noise gate which should remove most of the noise from having less bits. However, Windows tends to do weird things when converting sample formats so I wouldn't bet anything on it...

Hans, thanks much! I was also given this article from Wes Keene that goes into great detail about bit depth and bit rates of digital music files:

http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

A bit of a read, for sure, but very good information. It pretty well details what Hans said in his reply, just not real big gains, if at all.

-Timmy

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America's Country
Totally RAD Radio

Just no need. Tracks are already 16bit. Stream must be 16bit.. why bother with 24.

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control point
control point2

Well, yes and no. Every 6 dB you decrease the level means loosing a bit. So, if you feed your sound card at -24 dB, then you actually have 12 bits of audio of the 16, and using 24 bit mode would help. Similarly, using more than 16 bit for input can be slightly beneficial if you want to boost the level REALLY a lot, for example if you boost classical music by 30 dB in quiet parts (you probably wouldn't want to do that, by the way, but as an example).

In those cases, using 24 bits would lower the noise level a bit. However, the noise gate will do something similar, and you can also still use the Dequantizer if you really want to do some crazy stuff

There is also "dither".

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control point
control point2

Well, if that's NOT used (which is what I hinted on when talking about the conversions in Windows, I don't know if it dithers or not), anyway, if it's not used the difference is bigger. Still I don't think you would notice it.