Converting 16 bit sessions to 24 bit

[Doug Oliver]

Fellow home recorders,
I recently built a killer system consisting of a Pentium 4- 2 Ghtz,
512 mb Rambus, SCSI 10,000 rpm hard drives, 24bit Delta 44 sound card, etc. I'm running XP on it and I honestly can't imagine a system running any better. From what I read, allot of you are improving your systems
too and its amazing the technology that available to the home recording studio. Software as well as hardware. Twenty years ago the quality we can achieve would have cost a pro studio over $100,000.
Anyway, what I was hoping to ask you fine gentlemen is this:
I recorded about 30 to 40 of my original songs on various systems over the years, all in 16 bit. The last 10 to 20 songs have been on my new system in 24 bit.
I do notice a difference , the 24 bit songs sounding brighter, punchier, and more powerful in the bass. Rather then re-record my old 16 bit songs to 24 , are there things that can be done to the 16 bit songs to improve their sound (relative to the 24 bit songs)?
To begin with, with Cool Edit Pro I can convert the 16 bit songs to 24 bit.But that really won't improve the sound (or will it?). But it will allow me to apply 24 bit processing (EQ,compression, reverb, etc)
Fortunately I didn't do too much processing to those old songs because I was still learning the art of recording and was holding off on adding FX.That will allow me to work with relatively untouched tracks.What I'm getting at is this - will the 24 bit processing make the 16 bit
songs sound like they were recorded in 24 bit (or close to it)?
Is there anything else I can do to turn 16 bit recordings into 24 bit songs? Will mastering (I have Ozone) also improve matters?
This is very important to me because some of those old recordings took countless hours and some of the guitar solos will be
very hard to pull off again. In the past I've tried to reproduce special solos, but you never quite get the same feel.
I thank you VERY much for your time and advice. This forum contains the best collection of people any forum could hope for. Its been the best resource I have for recording my own music as appossed to going
to a pro studio, where the pressure of the clock, engineer, and budget makes it hard to truely capture the spirit of the music as you intended for it to sound. Home recording allows you to relax, take your time, redo tracks and takes until you get it right, and record at 2:00 in the morning if you're so inspired.
Thanks again
Doug

[PapillonIrl]

Hi Doug,

I don't think you can record in 24-bit with XP, a Delta soundcard, and CEP1.x. CEP has yet to support 24-bit when recording using WDM drivers which is what XP uses.

pAp

[Doug Oliver]

Papillon,
That issue was address awhile ago. My CEP says "Recording in 32 bit" on the status bar at the bottom, and when I'm recording in 16 bit it says, "Recording in 16 bit" .
That was a while back when the WDM drivers first came out for CEP/Win 2000 support, that there was a 16 bit max.

[PapillonIrl]

Cool.

That means I can get right of my '98\2000 dual boot then ? What changed exactly ? M-Audio update their drivers or Microschlock ?

pAp

[PapillonIrl]

Actually, upon thinking about that, I think you're wrong. CEP only supports WDM up to 16-bit, full stop.

XP uses WDM.

The M-Audio driver support 24-bit in WDM.

CEP only supports WDM up to 16-bit, full stop.

Even if you are getting that 'Recording in 32-bit' message. I have my doubt as to whether you actually are.

Anybody else have any thoughts ?

pAp

[windowman]

I think you're right Pap. I started out with an SB Live card and the default recording rate with it is 16/48. But I had both Cakewalk and CE setup to record at 16/44.1 not knowing that the card couldn't do that. Of course CE and Cakewalk both recorded at the default rate for the card and then resampled from 48 to 44.1 on the fly. Sounded great and I never noticed it until one day I "DID" notice that some of my longer tracks weren't staying in sync. So like a lot of guys that started with an SB Live I learned the hard way that you have to have your software set to record at 48 all througout and then dither the finished project to 44.1 when you're done.

CE always said 16/44.1, while I was really recording at 16/48 though. Of course it was 16/44.1 after resampling "as" I was recording. Maybe that's what's happening with Doug's setup too. If that's what's happening though then I imagine his tracks aren't staying in sync either though?

Doug, why don't you do a little test; record a 5 minute strummed guitar track (or something like that) and then play and record the same exact thing on another track and see if they stay in sync or not. You should start to notice them falling apart around 2 1/2 minutes into the recording if CE is upsampling on the fly. At least it seems logical to me that this would happen. That might tell you what's going on. It's worth a try.

[This message has been edited by windowman (edited 01-15-2002).]

[PapillonIrl]

Quoted from Syntrillium Support:

"You can verify that the signals are greater than 16-bit by bringing the file into edit view and zooming in to sample level. If you begin to notice that the little squares are falling in between sample values (on the Y-axis) as opposed to being right on the line, this is telling you that you're in greater than 16-bit depth. For more details on how to verify that, contact support@syntrillium.com"

Quote from Jim Smitherman (same thread):

"...the Big Question: will cool2000 upgrade anytime soon to support WDM, and 24 bit under win2k/XP? Isn't this sort of unavoidable if you want to keep your client base? Does working in 32 bit mode (playing back at 16) get around this limitation, at least for editing purposes? I fear i'm using cool less now that I'm running win2k (and, yes, 9x is THAT bad. good riddance) and I've used cooledit since the windows 3.1 days."

Jim

Answer from Synt. Support:

"Well Jim, I can't really comment on N-tracks.

I can tell you that we're very aware of the WDM issues facing the PC-audio world, and will certainly keep you posted as things develop.

---Syntrillium, M.D."


In fairness, it seems as if Microsoft have made it notoriously hard for code-slingers to write for the WDM model. Cool Edit Pro 1.x uses primarily MME drivers, which '98 uses.

I think I'll keep that dual-boot for the moment, and see if CEP2.0 allows me to get rid of it.

Cheers,

pAp

[PapillonIrl]

http://forums.syntrillium.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4503&FORUM_ID=10&CAT_ID=4&Topic_Title=MAudio+MME+drivers+for+XP&Forum_Title=Hardware+and+Sound+Cards

pAp

[Doug Oliver]

I guess I was wrong. I could have sworn that the CEP/M-Audio/WDM driver/WinXP(or 2000) combo worked at 24 bit. I just spent a small fortune upgrading to a Pentium 4 - Win XP system to get the best possible quality, and now I find that I may as well be using a Pentium 1 with a SoundBlaster.
To me it, the new system seemed to produce recordings that sounded far better then anything I ever recorded before. guess it was a case of subconscious suggestion - I thought it was better, so it sounded better.And, as I mentioned, CEP says "32bit,44z" on the status bar, and I know from before that when I recorded in 16 bit, it says ,16bit,44z".
Now what???? Do I buy a new sound card, new recording software, or just say "screw it, it sounds good enough".
I'm going to print all of the above info that you gentlemen posted, research this whole thing, and try to figure out what to do.
Although the one thing I do know is this, since using XP, my system is STABLE, STABLE, like never before. Not one crash. And certian things, like for example I had a very long song with about 30 tracks and dozens of FX, punchins,edits etc.that my old system just could not mix down. It always would stop half way through the mixdown and I'd get a message saying "Error...." (can't remember the message). But after building my XP system, the same song mixed down, super quick, no problems. Just one of many examples of the increased stability.So XP has to stay.Whatever I decide will be either the sound card, or CEP.
The thing is... I love CEP.Any word on CEP ver 2.0 yet? You mentioned possible 24 bit WDM support.That would be the ticket.
Perhaps I should just leave things as they are until then.
In your opinion, is 24 bit recordings a very noticeable difference, or after dithering and mastering,does it really matter?
Are there any sound cards that work with XP using MME or ASIO drivers?
By the way, to answer your question, my tracks never go out of sync, even after 7 minites.
Thank you guys for the input.

[windowman]

SB Live can use MME and ASIO. But then your back at 16/48. I don't use synths so I don't know beans about it but I thought ASIO was something synth players used with a Mac. Anyhow in order to use ASIO w/SB Live there's hack (sort of) you can get here:
http://people.freenet.de/apslive/

A lot of guys run two cards in their setup; one for regular wave recording and the other is often a SB Live that they use with this hack (gives about 4 to 8 milsec latency to an SB Live) and ASIO to run their synths. Like I said though, I don't know much about it. You might ask around in a soundcard forum.

I think that the WDM drivers will work with XP soon too and allow you to record at 24 bit. Hopefully you won't have to wait long.

In the meantime, I had suggested here a while back that it may be benefitial to record at 16 bit and then take your mixdown wave and up it to 24/88.2 before working with it (i.e. normalizing, and so on.) Since we make the most changes to the finished stereo wave instead of the multi-tracks that's where it would be really advantages to have 24 bits to work with since you loose bits with every save. Well, lo and behold, I suggested that at Roger Nichol's forum a couple of weeks ago and got a couple of responses from guys who are already doing that. Apparently it's not a bad idea. I'm gonna start trying it myself.

[robert]

Well,

Regarding this 16 bit / 24 bit thing, as I said, is not so
important. The difference would be noticeable on a very
high-fidelity audio system. But imagine that all this 24 bit fuss
is only for perfectionists.
These are the reasons why you shouldn't care about the 24 bit
sound:
1. YOU are not producing directly something that would target the
final music market.
2. YOU have to focus on the creative side of things. A good
artist can do miracles in 16 bit, even analogue, while in 24 bit
a piece of crap still sounds like **** . So it's not the bitrate
that matters...
3. Even the big record companies studios' are overdoing things.
Imagine that it all sounds noticeable only on VERY HIGH FIDELITY
EQUIPMENT, while 85% of the listeners hear the prouctions on
equipment like home stereos, car stereos or FM Radio and Mp3. So
not even the final mix that hits the market is not really
exploited for the fact that it was produced in 24 or 56 bit.
Now that you already spent that much money into the equipment,
well, maybe it would bother you that it actually does not work at
it's maximum. That's your problem: not that someting actually
sounds the way it does, but that you invested the money and you
wanna see the results.
So my advice is that 16 bit would suit you fine, but if you have
a 24 bit why not take advantage of it?