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RE: 20-bit processing

I have no problem with a 16 bit recording being marketing as having been made from a 20 bit production process or 20 bit master (today it would probably be 24 bits). However, it is inaccurate to call it a 20 or 24 bit recording. Back in the early 90's this might not have been deceptive, but today there true 24 bit recordings available to the consumer, so a claim that a RBCD has more than 16 bits constitutes deceptive advertising. In this sense, I agree with Todd.

For these improved recordings to benefit from the extra bits, then dither will be needed at the time of conversion into 16 bits. Without dither noise the extra bits are simply thrown away. Conversion software such as Izotope allows for control over the amount of dither noise added, perhaps to allow the extra noise to be reduced if the original recording has a certain amount of suitable noise to start with.

Incidentally, my experience has been pretty clear: most of the problems that I have heard when converting to 44/16 from higher resolution occur in the conversion stage from 176/24 or 88/24 down to 44/24, and not in the stage from 44/24 to 44/16. Since much of the material I have been working with comes from cassette tape, one would think that neither the sample rate nor bit depth are particularly critical. However, this is has not been the case. Some cassette masters sound very good when played on my Nak CR-7a deck, before and after digitization at 88/24 for eventual release in 44/16.



Tony Lauck

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

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