Depending on your daw settings, when a song project is created using both 16 and 24 bit depth material, one or the other will be automatically or manually converted to match the daw setting as audio files are imported into the daw.

Pg Music audio tracks are 16 bit depth. If your audio interface is set to 24 bit depth and your using RealTracks, either your audio or PG Music audio is being converted. As two or more tracks are summed into a single track the daw is most likely using 24 bit, 32 bit, 32 bit floating decimal, 48 bit, 64 bit or 64 bit floating decimal calculations to maintain fidelity of the summed signals.

It use to be the advice was to keep the same bit depth throughout a project until dithering was used during the last step of conversion to 16 bit for CD mastering.

While the advice may be a good ideal to strive for, as a practical matter I think the inherent limitations of home recording such as noisy recording environment or people double tasking as performer and engineer create more quality of sound issues than whatever noise is introduced by multiple conversions.

You go Rockstar_not. I couldn't type that many zeros without loosing count!

I believe the increased headroom 24 bit depth recording provides overshadows any other consideration in a home studio. The additional 12 db of headroom may mean the difference between grabbing the perfect take versus the prefect take ruined because of a passage was recorded too loud.

Jim Fogle - 2025 BiaB (Build 1128) RB (Build 5) - Ultra+ PAK
DAWs: Cakewalk Sonar - Standalone: Zoom MRS-8
Laptop: i3 Win 10, 8GB ram 500GB HDD
Desktop: i7 Win 11, 12GB ram 256GB SSD, 4 TB HDD
Music at: https://fogle622.wix.com/fogle622-audio-home