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RE: bit confused here.......

Posted by Tony Lauck (A) on July 2, 2015 at 18:41:15

In Reply to: bit confused here....... posted by Tom Schuman on July 2, 2015 at 17:59:51:

"What is meant by PCM 48/32? Do you mean 32 bit resolution and 48kHz sampling rate?? I don't think so."

Yes, the common interface formatinside computer systems today for PCM data is typically 32 bit (IEEE) floating point as it enables digital signal processing without overload and/or loss of resolution. The extra bits aren't doing much for you unless the computer is doing DSP, but then they aren't costing anything either because the computer data is processed more efficiently on word boundaries. Normally this is not stored in computer files to save space on disk, but it is common to store intermediate files created by audio editors and other post processing software in 32 bit floating point since this avoids the slight degradation from each conversion from 32 bit floating point back to 24 bit fixed point.

It is possible to hear changes to 24 bit audio files where only the low order 24th bits change. How signals at such a low level are perceived defeats my understanding, but they can be perceived, at least by some people.

Another format used by some software and some DACs is 32 bit integer. This is what I send from HQPlayer to my Mytek DAC when sending PCM. This is even higher resolution than 32 bit floating point if the signal levels are properly scaled, but this is less practical for software that does complex DSP. Also, most processors have been optimized for floating point arithmetic.

Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

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