# Newbie here, for Trailer Music production, what sample rate/bit depth to produce at?



## Q009 (Aug 1, 2019)

Hi! 

I have had a search for info on the forums pre posting the question as I know how annoying constantly repeated questions can be, but can’t find the answer so:

If I were to produce a Trailer Music album, what sample rate and bit depth should I be working at?

Any insight from those with professional experience in this field would be greatly appreciated as I am just starting out. 

If there is a thread in this I missed can someone please point me in the right direction? 

Thanks a lot


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## JohnG (Aug 1, 2019)

Do you mean for your compositions to send to a trailer music house, or to deliver to Warner Brothers?


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## babylonwaves (Aug 1, 2019)

usually contractors tell you what they what. if you produce it yourself, i guess 48k/24bit PCM is a good starting point. if you want to send it of, make a 320 kbps mp3. john might knows more about WB specs then I do.


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## Q009 (Aug 1, 2019)

Thanks for the replies guys! 

I am talking about for my compositions to send to a Trailer house

The support is appreciated


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## JohnG (Aug 1, 2019)

@babylonwaves is right about 48/24, though of course there are lots of ways to fry that fish.

I use 48/24 for writing, and my template splits out a lot of things -- dozens -- so that the engineer for the trailer house can just take my tracks straight in and mix them together with the live tracks.

They usually record live elements at 96k, from what I've seen, but our sample libraries typically weren't recorded that high. I've never seen persuasive arguments that turning 48 or 44.1 samples into 96 does anything worth the brain damage. [edit: in other words, I don't think you gain anything meaningful by upsampling or converting samples to 96k that originally were recorded at a lower resolution.]

Tor writing, you can just write in stereo at 48 or 44.1 and worry about delivery when there's something to deliver. Plenty of very well known guys work at 44.1 -- one of them, who's among the most successful alive, thinks it's dumb to work at 48 since most of the samples (so far) have been at 44.1.

Just write great music and the rest you can figure out.


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## Richard Wilkinson (Aug 1, 2019)

48/24 and then you'll hear it in a massive film trailer squashed to death and in f*cking mono...


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## chillbot (Aug 1, 2019)

Maybe slightly off topic... but this has always surprised me, so I would love to hear other people's experiences with it. In writing for television (not for library companies but directly for production companies), I have been almost uniformly asked for 48/16. And they will not take 48/24. This includes major network primetime shows as well as cable.


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## JohnG (Aug 1, 2019)

chillbot said:


> In writing for television (not for library companies but directly for production companies), I have been almost uniformly asked for 48/16.



Yes. ABC wanted that and nobody ever explained why.

Maybe they reason that, by the time they dub it and broadcast it, the sound goes through innumerable "destructofiers" that effectively negate whatever advantages of 24 bit there might have been in the first place?


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## Farkle (Aug 1, 2019)

Chillbot,

I've only written directly for 2 TV shows, one on Nickelodeon, and one on Fox. The music editor got 24/48 from me both times, and they accepted that without a problem. I don't know if that's for all TV, just my experience. And that was 10 years ago. Who knows what it is nowadays? Not me, that's for damn sure. 

But, for what it's worth, that was my delivery spec for TV, back in 2009.

Mike


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## chillbot (Aug 1, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Maybe they reason that, by the time they dub it and broadcast it, the sound goes through innumerable "destructofiers" that effectively negate whatever advantages of 24 bit there might have been in the first place?


Yeah, Ferx, and John, so the biggest reason I have been given is that it takes too long to convert when importing cues (into what I'm not sure, used to be Avid), so apparently these production companies that I'm dealing with are all working at 16-bit. It wouldn't be a problem with a handful of tracks but when writing 200 cues per season with submixes, maybe 20GB, they don't want to convert. But yes it surprises me that 16-bit seems to be the norm, at least in my world.


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## babylonwaves (Aug 2, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Tor writing, you can just write in stereo at 48 or 44.1 and worry about delivery when there's something to deliver. Plenty of very well known guys work at 44.1 -- one of them, who's among the most successful alive, thinks it's dumb to work at 48 since most of the samples (so far) have been at 44.1.


i do that too. and i upsample to whatever needed during export. I find the entire 44.1 vs 48 debate pointless, i don't think anybody will hear a difference. working in 44.1 gives me 10% more calculating power and, as you said, it's the native format of the majority of the libraries i use.
I mostly work for events and they always want 48/24. they can't tell you why though. I assume that it has to do with the playback systems they use.


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## FrontierSoundFX (Aug 6, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Yes. ABC wanted that and nobody ever explained why.
> 
> Maybe they reason that, by the time they dub it and broadcast it, the sound goes through innumerable "destructofiers" that effectively negate whatever advantages of 24 bit there might have been in the first place?



It would certainly reduce the file size. That's not of great concern these days, but maybe its a holdover from some calculated storage/cost ratio? Just speculating.


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