Posted by Scott Dorsey on 04/22/06 12:48

Romeo Rondeau <noone@home.com> wrote:
>>> It was the big marketing push for 24-bit on the multitrack. It's not
>>> necessary in most cases. 16-bits are more than fine for most things at
>>> the multitrack level. At the two-track, things are different, you have
>>> reverb trails to contend with there...
>>
>> You have reverb trails on every single track. Assuming you are recording
>> in a room and it isn't some sort of virtual project.
>>
>> Really you are talking about the space and the breath of the actual
>> sounds. Tape gets more of it. When you start losing this (X 24) you're
>> screwed.
>
>Huh? We were talking digital...

Right. And losing the reverb tails has nothing to do with the word length
anyway, it has to do with low level linearity issues. This being the 21st
century, pretty much all the low level issues have been solved with dither
and sigma-delta converters. You can throw a decent converter set like the
RMA ADI-8 on the front end of the DA-38 and get 16 bits that sounds a whole
lot better than the 24 bits on the DA-78.... and still be paying under $1k.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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