Now, having read the article, there is one item about DAW recording not addressed; on the 'input' side - as this article deals with mainly audio in the DAW and the output quality (which I wholly agree with).

If you have the ability to choose 24 bit depth with your audio card while you record audio, instead of 16 bit depth, there are some distinct advantages to this.

It allows what some might call 'laziness' in paying particular attention to the gain of your input signal relative to the full dynamic range of the A/D conversion. The reason:

For every bit of A/D converter used, there is something called quantization noise. First a little background. When you record audio into your computer, the A/D converter in your interface converts the continuous signal, into a stair-stepped signal, where the height of the steps relate to the bit depth of the converter, and the width of the steps which is related to the sample rate. Quantization noise is the noise that results from the A/D converter deciding which 'stair' to put an instantaneous piece of audio on. Down near zero level, the A/D has to decide - does this audio go on the lowest stair or the next one up? For 16 bit depth, there are 2^16=65536 discreet levels to represent the full analog dynamic range of the input signal. For 24 bit depth, there are 2^24=16777216 discreet levels to represent the full analog dynamic range of the input signal. The steps for 24 bit are much much much smaller.

Imagine a signal down near zero level, and the A/D is flipping back and forth between the lowest stair and the next one up. This results in some actual noise in the reconverted D/A signal.

With 24 bit audio, this noise that results is 48 dB below the noise for 16 bit audio. (There's a 6 dB reduction in quantization noise for every additional bit available in an A/D converter).

One strategy to minimize the effect of this noise for 16 bit audio is to try to maximize the amount of A/D converter dynamic range available for each track. This does take some work, and it does pay off in the end. If you don't follow this strategy, you can experience some 'stack up' of quantization noise across lots of tracks that sounds like hiss in your final mixed signal.

With 24 bit audio, you can actually not worry so much about this - each track has a quantization noise floor 48 dB below what they would be with 16 bit audio - and you can easily live with audio that peaks perhaps 10-15 dB below full-scale and not experience any noticeable 'stack up' of quantization noise.

Run an experiment for yourself to check on file sizes and you'll see that for the same sample rate, 24 bit audio really doesn't eat up all that much more space than 16 bit audio.

Several people here recommend 24 bit audio at 44.1kHz sample rate for recordings of source tracks. I wholly agree and have experienced the benefits of working this way (mainly in the fact that I can set levels more quickly and get on with the task of recording inspiration).

-Scott

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