# What sample rates and bit depths do you work with?



## dman007 (May 1, 2020)

I'm a Cubase user, but this could apply to other DAWs too. 

I usually work at 48kHz 24 bit (for media composition/orchestral) - or I should say that's what I export a mix to. In Cubase, I have templates with 48kHz 32-bit float. 

What do you work at? 

What are the advantages and disadvantages of 24-bit vs 32-bit vs 32-bit float?


----------



## d.healey (May 1, 2020)

No point in using 32bit, hardly any point in using 24bit but that's what I use. 48khz is good, if you're recording something you want to pitch/time stretch then a higher rate can improve the quality.


----------



## Dietz (May 1, 2020)

48 kHz / 24 bit is perfectly fine as long as you don't have to make dispositions for heavy DSP work (then I would suggest to stay in 32 bit FP), or absolutely future-proof archiving duties (... because in the latter case DSD would be the format of choice anyway).


----------



## dman007 (May 1, 2020)

Which is best for working with orchestral (and other) sample libraries? 24 bit or 32-bit float?


----------



## d.healey (May 1, 2020)

dman007 said:


> Which is best for working with orchestral (and other) sample libraries? 24 bit or 32-bit float?


24bit you will (likely) never need 32bit - your DAW performs all calculation internally at 32bit or higher anyway.

You might enjoy these videos:


----------



## ptram (May 1, 2020)

If it is for archival purposes, considering the current trends with young people's hearing faculty, I would be fine with 16kHz...

Paolo


----------



## Leon Portelance (May 3, 2020)

24 bit, 48k


----------



## NYC Composer (May 4, 2020)

24/48 as well.


----------



## KallumS (May 4, 2020)

I've been using 96khz and 32bit for some unknown reason but after seeing this thread I think I switch to 48khz/24bit.


----------



## Dietz (May 4, 2020)

KallumS said:


> using 96khz and 32bit for some unknown reason


... it's called "marketing"! ;-D


----------



## peladio (May 4, 2020)

Always 48/24 here..


----------



## DS_Joost (May 4, 2020)

24 bit, but 44.1khz. 

44.1 is enough for music and no one in hell is gonna convince me otherwise. I will die on that hill. I also always get problems with audio drivers with anything higher.


----------



## peladio (May 4, 2020)

DS_Joost said:


> 24 bit, but 44.1khz.
> 
> 44.1 is enough for music and no one in hell is gonna convince me otherwise.



Unless you work in film and TV where 48/24 is the standard..


----------



## chillbot (May 4, 2020)

peladio said:


> Unless you work in film and TV where 48/24 is the standard..


This sounds dumb every time I say it but every *TV* production company I work with insists on getting 48/16. Never understood it but that's what I deliver. I work at 48/24.


----------



## peladio (May 4, 2020)

chillbot said:


> This sounds dumb every time I say it but every *TV* production company I work with insists on getting 48/16. Never understood it but that's what I deliver. I work at 48/24.



Interesting, I always have to deliver 48/24 .aiff or .wav..


----------



## DS_Joost (May 4, 2020)

peladio said:


> Unless you work in film and TV where 48/24 is the standard..



Foobar, right click, convert. Done.


----------



## Monkberry (May 4, 2020)

44.1/24 bit.


----------



## Dietz (May 4, 2020)

chillbot said:


> This sounds dumb every time I say it but every *TV* production company I work with insists on getting 48/16. Never understood it but that's what I deliver. I work at 48/24.


It might very well be that you were in contact with people who have "Picture!" written all over their forehead, with little to no idea about audio (apart from the fact that they somehow need it, dang). Their knowledge might come from the early Avid days, when we indeed had to deliver in 48/16/split stereo. :-P


----------



## chillbot (May 4, 2020)

Fair enough.


----------



## Manaberry (May 4, 2020)

24/48 here as well


----------



## Manaberry (May 4, 2020)

DS_Joost said:


> 24 bit, but 44.1khz.
> 
> 44.1 is enough for music and no one in hell is gonna convince me otherwise.



Well, as soon as you use plugins that don't oversample, having headroom to manage the aliasing with saturation for instance is quite useful.


----------



## nas (May 4, 2020)

48k / 24 bit


----------



## Nicholas (May 4, 2020)

48kHz / 24 bit project, export to 48kHz / 32bit float


----------



## AllanH (May 4, 2020)

I use 48k/32 bit float. I chose 32 bit float, primarily because it's a more "native" format. My audio interface supports 32 bit floats, and Cubase calculates in 32/64 bit floats. There is (imo) really no reason to up/down scale from 24 bit int. My guess is that memory usage is identical based on alignment.


----------



## d.healey (May 5, 2020)

AllanH said:


> I use 48k/32 bit float. I chose 32 bit float, primarily because it's a more "native" format. My audio interface supports 32 bit floats, and Cubase calculates in 32/64 bit floats. There is (imo) really no reason to up/down scale from 24 bit int. My guess is that memory usage is identical based on alignment.


Are you working with your own audio recordings or with sample libraries? I'm don't think any sample library is using 32bit samples.


----------



## Sunny Schramm (May 5, 2020)

48khz, 24 bit


----------



## Rossy (May 5, 2020)

Just started yesterday and as this is my very first attempt at scoring to picture, I'm hooked. This is so much fun and I wish there were more opportunities like this, it's great to have no music and only effects, I can clearly hear how my music has impact. It's a great learning experience and I can't wait to download nucleus tomorrow and start implementing it.


----------



## AllanH (May 5, 2020)

d.healey said:


> Are you working with your own audio recordings or with sample libraries? I'm don't think any sample library is using 32bit samples.



Primarily sample libraries. My thought process was that since reading from disk is already much slower than accessing memory, I should take any (hopefully one-time) conversion hit during sample loading. All processing by Cubase would then be in 32 bit float. In practice, I could not tell any difference between 24 bit int and 32 bit float. [I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about, but my software engineering brain arrived at this as most-likely being the best]


----------



## d.healey (May 5, 2020)

Rossy said:


> Just started yesterday and as this is my very first attempt at scoring to picture, I'm hooked. This is so much fun and I wish there were more opportunities like this, it's great to have no music and only effects, I can clearly hear how my music has impact. It's a great learning experience and I can't wait to download nucleus tomorrow and start implementing it.


Wrong thread?


----------



## Rossy (May 5, 2020)

d.healey said:


> Wrong thread?


So sorry


----------



## Geomir (May 7, 2020)

I have a simple question about sample rates and bit depths! I hope it fits into this topic! Let's say I am starting a new song project from scratch, and I am seeing this:






In the right column I can obviously select the "sample rate" and the "resolution" of my song project. I understand most of you would choose the "standard" 48 KHz / 24 bit for high quality sound.

But my question comes here: Let's say that in this particular project *all* the libraries that I am going to use are 44 KHz / 16 Bit (Hollywood Strings Gold, Hollywood Brass Gold, Symphonic Choirs Gold, VSL Synchronized Special Edition, etc).

Do I have *any* reason to select 48 KHz / 24 bit instead of my libraries' default 44 KHz / 16 Bit? Will I gain anything in sound quality, since my libraries already hit a lower limit?


----------



## AllanH (May 7, 2020)

Geomir said:


> ...
> 
> Do I have *any* reason to select 48 KHz / 24 bit instead of my libraries' default 44 KHz / 16 Bit? Will I gain anything in sound quality, since my libraries already hit a lower limit?



I would say "yes": 16 bits give your DAW a total of 2^16 = 65,536‬ distinct values to represent -1 to +1 (the raw audio). 24bits gives it 2^24 = 16,777,216‬. In other words, you gain an additional 8 bits of resolution corresponding to 256 levels between "each of the 16-bit bits".

This allows effects (compression, etc.) to introduce less-noticeable noise. Many inserts do actually up-sample to higher internal resolution to avoid the "rounding" problem. However, your DAW may not, and so I see no reason not to take the higher precision.

Here's a good link from Wikipedia, that explains it in more detail and also discusses how this relates to noise and dynamic range.


Audio Interface: I would want to ensure that my audio interface runs in the same bit-depth as my DAW as that reduces the amount of processing required to hand off the audio from the DAW to the audio interface.

If you need to deliver in 16 bits (e.g. CD), you should (imo) down-convert as the very last step after mastering.


----------



## Geomir (May 7, 2020)

AllanH said:


> I would say "yes": 16 bits give your DAW a total of 2^16 = 65,536‬ distinct values to represent -1 to +1 (the raw audio). 24bits gives it 2^24 = 16,777,216‬. In other words, you gain an additional 8 bits of resolution corresponding to 256 levels between "each of the 16-bit bits".
> 
> This allows effects (compression, etc.) to introduce less-noticeable noise. Many inserts do actually up-sample to higher internal resolution to avoid the "rounding" problem. However, your DAW may not, and so I see no reason not to take the higher precision.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the detailed explanation and the useful link! I can understand all the math behind it (my first university degree is in Mathematics after all!), and the advice to work my project as high as possible and downgrade only at the last step is really smart!

My main question is if all of this would have any effect since all my sound source will be coming from 24 KHz / 16 Bit music libraries.


----------



## AllanH (May 7, 2020)

I'm not sure there is a universal answer to your question. Cubase, for instance calculates in 32 or 64 bit floating point internally, which eliminates the concern about accumulation of rounding errors.

I have chosen settings that keep the number of conversions to a minimum, as the intuitively seems the best. I cannot hear any difference between 24 bit integer and 32 bit float but I do believe I can hear some hissing at low volumes for 16 bit with some effects processing. I'm not sure if you save any memory with 16 bits over 24. That could be, as 16 bits align nicely.

Another mathematician, I see


----------



## Geomir (May 7, 2020)

AllanH said:


> I'm not sure there is a universal answer to your question. Cubase, for instance calculates in 32 or 64 bit floating point internally, which eliminates the concern about accumulation of rounding errors.
> 
> I have chosen settings that keep the number of conversions to a minimum, as the intuitively seems the best. I cannot hear any difference between 24 bit integer and 32 bit float but I do believe I can hear some hissing at low volumes for 16 bit with some effects processing. I'm not sure if you save any memory with 16 bits over 24. That could be, as 16 bits align nicely.
> 
> Another mathematician, I see


Wow did you also study Math? You know, music composition is connected with Math (in a way)!

OK so just to feel "safer", from now on all my music projects will be 48 KHz / 24 bit, just to make it sure that I get more detail and less noise! After all not all my libraries are 16 Bit!


----------

