IN THEORY, I agree with Scott. Recording at 24 bit is preferable. The theoretical noise floor of a 24 bit recording is -144dBFS. You're not going to get that. On a very high end converter, you MAY see -130dBFS, much more than that, you're going to run into electron noise. Mathematical computations don't have to take into consideration hardware, so 32 bit floating will technically give you better sound.

On a M-Audio 2496, which is probably the most recommended PCI card around, your A/D converter has a dynamic range of -100dB, A-Weighted, but they don't give you a whole lot of specifics about how they tested it. The D/A portion gives you about 104dB, again A-Weighted. The A-Weighting is important, because it will give you 2-4dB better specs than no weighting at all. Very few companies that I am aware of use non-weighted numbers. Those are the REAL numbers to look at. Also, how does the company test things like THD+N?

M-Audio makes a decent product, for only $100.

Look at something like the Digi 003 Rack, and you're not going specs that are too much better. Dynamic range of 110dB, which isn't bad, but THD+N of -103. They don't tell you how they read that. At what input level and what frequency?

My point is that most gear that you're going to get is going to use between 18 and 20 bits, the rest is just noise.

By all means, record at 24 bits, it'll give you *something* over 16 bit, but don't expect miracles.

Gary

I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!