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Post by jin167 on Jan 27, 2019 23:32:56 GMT -6
Interesting. I think Antelope is ready to release their 32 bit converter as well and it looks like more manufacturers will be releasing their own version of affordable 32 bit converters in the near future. Now the question is.. do we need 32 bit converters? I watched Ian's youtube video on bit depth and dither a couple of days ago and thought about whether or not there's any benefit in recording in 32 bit instead of 24 bit. Given that the noise floor of our converters is above the theoretical noise floor of 24 bit what's the point of recording in 32 bit? I think there could be a good reason for it but I just can't see it from my end. Any thoughts on this matter?
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Post by Blackdawg on Jan 27, 2019 23:50:12 GMT -6
I've done location recording where recording in 32b saved my ass from an unexpected explosive bass drum. Gotta love John Luther Adams haha
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Post by jin167 on Jan 28, 2019 0:27:10 GMT -6
Interesting. I thought the headroom of a converter is determined by its supply rail rather than its bit depth. Would love to how 32 bit was useful in your situation!
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Post by notneeson on Jan 28, 2019 8:53:37 GMT -6
Help me understand what problem this is a solution to?
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Post by svart on Jan 28, 2019 8:59:34 GMT -6
Interesting. I thought the headroom of a converter is determined by its supply rail rather than its bit depth. Would love to how 32 bit was useful in your situation! This is true. True headroom is a function of voltage level before compression(saturation) of your analog sections, but there is also digital headroom. More bits means higher resolution for the same voltage swing, so if you scale the voltage ratio differently into the converter, you can make it *look* like you're getting more top end digital headroom, however you're more likely to lose more bits to system noise as well, so you're probably only getting a marginal increase in precision for a much larger increase in costs. Physics is against you on this one.
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Post by svart on Jan 28, 2019 9:02:15 GMT -6
Help me understand what problem this is a solution to? The problem that everyone now has 24bits available to them even on the cheapest interfaces so people are not buying the expensive stuff anymore, so they needed to recreate the "your gear isn't good enough to stand out against the other guys unless you buy this" again.
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Post by EmRR on Jan 28, 2019 9:16:13 GMT -6
Is this somehow 'last mile' infrastructure, built out solely because we are seeing 32 bit data transfers between devices? Hard to see a practical point. I suppose in making digital noise floor well beyond what might ever get brought to the fore with processing, you have a tiny improvement on paper, but still not one that isn't trumped by analog noise floor.
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Post by jin167 on Jan 28, 2019 9:36:55 GMT -6
I just hope that I don't get peer pressured into buying a 32 bit converter just because everyone else is getting one..
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Post by Blackdawg on Jan 28, 2019 13:39:47 GMT -6
Interesting. I thought the headroom of a converter is determined by its supply rail rather than its bit depth. Would love to how 32 bit was useful in your situation! I don't really understand it either. Basically doing a location recording in the middle of no where(seriously) outdoors. Doing a recording of John Luther Adams 'Song Birds' I believe. I've got a Quad array of 4006a DPA mics on tall stands sort of in the center of percusive insturments spread out all over the land and hills. Marimba is right in front and tons of other stuff all over. Rig is in the back of two UTVs due to terrain. Grace m802 Micpre amps using them as the converters for the first 8ch. Master clock for the whole system. Goes into one Avid HD IO box. 8 digital 8 analog. Recording in PT HDX Native via thunderbolt on a mac mini. This is all in road cases and being powered by two deep cycle car batteries. Anyways due to lots of reason, didn't really get a real sound check. Last movement has bass drum which is probably 150 yards away up on a hill above my mics. Guy smacks the shit out of the drum. Peaks badly. Shit. However, upon listening back even after telling John that we got blown out by the drum(which he laughed at and sort of knew would happen) it was not clipped. PT shows it "clipping" but not a hard clip. And you do not hear it clipping. It is more than useable. I have no idea why that is or how it happened. Hopefully someone else can say why. What is odd is the Grace converters are 24bit no matter what and they clipped. So there is some distortion on the drum hits. But it sounds nothing like what we hard during the actual performance, which was bad. Now, its fine. sooo..... yeah. No idea. But i do everything in 32 bit float in PT for that reason. Thats just one of the more obvious examples I know of that it happened.
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Post by jeromemason on Jan 28, 2019 13:59:54 GMT -6
Eh, they'll produce 64 bit stuff eventually and find some way to be a have to have for the folks out there that don't understand how this stuff works. At least the folks that know or care to research this, they'll rest easy knowing there can't be any difference.
I remember when they talked about extending the response of analog to go up into 50khz and while that's not perceivable to our ears it somehow increases fidelity. So I would bet in 5 years they'll make 64 bit converters and come up with some way to say it provides unlimited headroom. After that we'll get the 128 bit ones and somehow that increases it further and the 64 bit ones are dogs shit.
It's all a game, but hey, maybe it'll make a difference, maybe we just think what we have now sounds great and when we hear these super converters we will enter another industry revolution. Who the hell knows.
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Post by kilroyrock on Jan 28, 2019 14:01:22 GMT -6
Interesting. I thought the headroom of a converter is determined by its supply rail rather than its bit depth. Would love to how 32 bit was useful in your situation! I don't really understand it either. Basically doing a location recording in the middle of no where(seriously) outdoors. Doing a recording of John Luther Adams 'Song Birds' I believe. I've got a Quad array of 4006a DPA mics on tall stands sort of in the center of percusive insturments spread out all over the land and hills. Marimba is right in front and tons of other stuff all over. Rig is in the back of two UTVs due to terrain. Grace m802 Micpre amps using them as the converters for the first 8ch. Master clock for the whole system. Goes into one Avid HD IO box. 8 digital 8 analog. Recording in PT HDX Native via thunderbolt on a mac mini. This is all in road cases and being powered by two deep cycle car batteries. Anyways due to lots of reason, didn't really get a real sound check. Last movement has bass drum which is probably 150 yards away up on a hill above my mics. Guy smacks the shit out of the drum. Peaks badly. Shit. However, upon listening back even after telling John that we got blown out by the drum(which he laughed at and sort of knew would happen) it was not clipped. PT shows it "clipping" but not a hard clip. And you do not hear it clipping. It is more than useable. I have no idea why that is or how it happened. Hopefully someone else can say why. What is odd is the Grace converters are 24bit no matter what and they clipped. So there is some distortion on the drum hits. But it sounds nothing like what we hard during the actual performance, which was bad. Now, its fine. sooo..... yeah. No idea. But i do everything in 32 bit float in PT for that reason. Thats just one of the more obvious examples I know of that it happened. I do know that PT HD stuff has a built in "soft clipping" in their HD interface units (or did on the 192 i/o i owned) to never let you ruin perfectly okay recordings. Maybe that's your savior?
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Post by christopher on Jan 28, 2019 14:44:42 GMT -6
I'm personally excited to see this. I know there's obvious bias against it being an improvement, as so many people don't want to spend money on new converters ;P
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Post by Blackdawg on Jan 28, 2019 14:45:32 GMT -6
I don't really understand it either. Basically doing a location recording in the middle of no where(seriously) outdoors. Doing a recording of John Luther Adams 'Song Birds' I believe. I've got a Quad array of 4006a DPA mics on tall stands sort of in the center of percusive insturments spread out all over the land and hills. Marimba is right in front and tons of other stuff all over. Rig is in the back of two UTVs due to terrain. Grace m802 Micpre amps using them as the converters for the first 8ch. Master clock for the whole system. Goes into one Avid HD IO box. 8 digital 8 analog. Recording in PT HDX Native via thunderbolt on a mac mini. This is all in road cases and being powered by two deep cycle car batteries. Anyways due to lots of reason, didn't really get a real sound check. Last movement has bass drum which is probably 150 yards away up on a hill above my mics. Guy smacks the shit out of the drum. Peaks badly. Shit. However, upon listening back even after telling John that we got blown out by the drum(which he laughed at and sort of knew would happen) it was not clipped. PT shows it "clipping" but not a hard clip. And you do not hear it clipping. It is more than useable. I have no idea why that is or how it happened. Hopefully someone else can say why. What is odd is the Grace converters are 24bit no matter what and they clipped. So there is some distortion on the drum hits. But it sounds nothing like what we hard during the actual performance, which was bad. Now, its fine. sooo..... yeah. No idea. But i do everything in 32 bit float in PT for that reason. Thats just one of the more obvious examples I know of that it happened. I do know that PT HD stuff has a built in "soft clipping" in their HD interface units (or did on the 192 i/o i owned) to never let you ruin perfectly okay recordings. Maybe that's your savior? Not sure myself.. But I was using the Grace AD for the front end for the first 8ch anyways. So discounts that theory..Its super odd.
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Post by svart on Jan 28, 2019 15:29:25 GMT -6
It'll be like any other converter..
Those that spend the cash will hear a difference.
Everyone else who listens to the myriad of A/B tests posted after that won't hear much difference at all, to the derision of those who insinuate they alone have golden ears and everyone else is deaf.
The modders will praise the devices until people buy into them, then 12 months later claim that only their mods can bring out the best of the gear they were praising a few months prior.
Life goes on.
Sound about right?
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 28, 2019 15:56:26 GMT -6
Help me understand what problem this is a solution to? Sales of bigger, faster hard drives?
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 28, 2019 16:03:16 GMT -6
Help me understand what problem this is a solution to? The problem that everyone now has 24bits available to them even on the cheapest interfaces so people are not buying the expensive stuff anymore, so they needed to recreate the "your gear isn't good enough to stand out against the other guys unless you buy this" again. The difference in quality now isn't related to "how many bits" and hasn't been for quite some time. Differences in quality are more related to analog sections, clock stability, and power supply quality.
Maybe 32 bit might provide some incremental benefit when going out to hardware processing multiple times in a hybrid situation. Maybe. I'm skeptical.
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 28, 2019 16:11:43 GMT -6
It'll be like any other converter.. Those that spend the cash will hear a difference. Everyone else who listens to the myriad of A/B tests posted after that won't hear much difference at all, to the derision of those who insinuate they alone have golden ears and everyone else is deaf. The modders will praise the devices until people buy into them, then 12 months later claim that only their mods can bring out the best of the gear they were praising a few months prior. Life goes on. Sound about right? The elephant in the room is that you generally can't judge very small differences in quality with an internet video anyway. Not only do you have the problem of degredation in quality caused by the basic encoding required to make a video, you also have no way to determine if the audio has been monkeyed with. If the vid is from a source with no axe to grind and differences are fairly obviouis, sure, but as small as any difference between high end converters?
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Post by svart on Jan 28, 2019 16:39:19 GMT -6
It'll be like any other converter.. Those that spend the cash will hear a difference. Everyone else who listens to the myriad of A/B tests posted after that won't hear much difference at all, to the derision of those who insinuate they alone have golden ears and everyone else is deaf. The modders will praise the devices until people buy into them, then 12 months later claim that only their mods can bring out the best of the gear they were praising a few months prior. Life goes on. Sound about right? The elephant in the room is that you generally can't judge very small differences in quality with an internet video anyway. Not only do you have the problem of degredation in quality caused by the basic encoding required to make a video, you also have no way to determine if the audio has been monkeyed with. If the vid is from a source with no axe to grind and differences are fairly obviouis, sure, but as small as any difference between high end converters? If it's too small for an internet video to resolve, it's too small for the inherently large price increase..
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Post by popmann on Jan 28, 2019 16:53:21 GMT -6
I don't agree with that...at ALL...
But, I don't think the OP question...this idea of recording 32bit integer holds any water. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it inserts a danger for those NOT recording 32INT (which apparently Cubase added?)--if the chip is sampling a 32bit word length, how does your DAW get 24 to write to disk?
end of the day--this looks like a great box for Mac Cubase users--in app control of the hardware DSP...nice sounding Neve color trannies...will it sound good? I'd put my money on yes. Would that be because someone's sampling and writing a 32bit word? No.
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Post by popmann on Jan 28, 2019 16:59:14 GMT -6
Way to bury the lead mang...affordable 384khz sampling.
But, also--there's none of those nice sounding transformers from last year's little Steiny interface--it's being digitally emulated--thus the 32bit. That all has more to do with the unit's DSP having all the head/footroom it needs....
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Post by jin167 on Jan 28, 2019 17:31:42 GMT -6
well, my question was whether or not we need a 32 bit converter. I was using Yamaha's new interface as an example and I had no intention of bashing it in any way. From what you're saying I guess Yamaha had a good reason to implement 32 bit converter in their design but does it apply to other designs as well (audio interfaces/converters without internal dsp, non-cubase users)?
The 384kHz sampling rate is a whole new issue and I'm still undecided on that matter so I won't comment on it.
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Post by Blackdawg on Jan 28, 2019 18:11:27 GMT -6
well, my question was whether or not we need a 32 bit converter. I was using Yamaha's new interface as an example and I had no intention of bashing it in any way. From what you're saying I guess Yamaha had a good reason to implement 32 bit converter in their design but does it apply to other designs as well (audio interfaces/converters without internal dsp, non-cubase users)? The 384kHz sampling rate is a whole new issue and I'm still undecided on that matter so I won't comment on it. For Live sound the 32 bit extra headroom is great I'd think. I don't see how someone wouldn't be for more bits on the front end of any audio device. It just makes it that much harder to clip. Seems worth it to me. I record in 384kHz a lot. I also think its worth it though and plenty would disagree on that front..but whatever.
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Post by popmann on Jan 28, 2019 18:25:52 GMT -6
well, my question was whether or not we need a 32 bit converter. I was using Yamaha's new interface as an example and I had no intention of bashing it in any way. From what you're saying I guess Yamaha had a good reason to implement 32 bit converter in their design but does it apply to other designs as well (audio interfaces/converters without internal dsp, non-cubase users)? Then that's easy. Not to my understanding. The "live use" pointed out above is again, DSP related, not conversion. anyone clipping their ADCs live or not is simply...I mean full scale will clip always...unless you build the analog to square wave first, which might be an interesting design...you don't get more headroom in the converter. Well...sort of...foot room--but, analog to full scale mapping is going to be analog to full scale mapping...so, if you're clipping your mic preamp/ADC now, you will wit hthe 32bit, too. If anything it would allow you to turn the whole calibration down...but...24bit already allows WAY more of that than I've ever experienced people actually USING...so... 384, for the record--isn't really new. SACD/DSD is basically 384 in the time domain and 88.2 in the frequency domain circa late 90s. (back then) That's what I assumed we'd ALL be using by now. The "most analog sounding" of all digital ever. I never even considered that someone would put content manipulation above sonics. Ha. Talk about ME having a UUUgge blind spot. 384 is just "dxd" which is DSD made into linear PCM so that you can ALSO do PCM based content manipulation. Cubase has supported 384 for a lot of years, but only some REALLY expensive IO units supported it.
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Post by jin167 on Jan 28, 2019 18:37:01 GMT -6
well, my question was whether or not we need a 32 bit converter. I was using Yamaha's new interface as an example and I had no intention of bashing it in any way. From what you're saying I guess Yamaha had a good reason to implement 32 bit converter in their design but does it apply to other designs as well (audio interfaces/converters without internal dsp, non-cubase users)? The 384kHz sampling rate is a whole new issue and I'm still undecided on that matter so I won't comment on it. For Live sound the 32 bit extra headroom is great I'd think. I don't see how someone wouldn't be for more bits on the front end of any audio device. It just makes it that much harder to clip. Seems worth it to me. I record in 384kHz a lot. I also think its worth it though and plenty would disagree on that front..but whatever. I think clipping has less to do with the bit depth of a converter. You can easily clip a 32 bit converter if the supply rail can't cope with the incoming line level signal. I guess the biggest problem with the 384kHz/32bit is its size which is over 5 times what is considered to be a standard mastering grade format at the moment (96kHz, 24bit).
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Post by jin167 on Jan 28, 2019 18:45:05 GMT -6
well, my question was whether or not we need a 32 bit converter. I was using Yamaha's new interface as an example and I had no intention of bashing it in any way. From what you're saying I guess Yamaha had a good reason to implement 32 bit converter in their design but does it apply to other designs as well (audio interfaces/converters without internal dsp, non-cubase users)? Then that's easy. Not to my understanding. The "live use" pointed out above is again, DSP related, not conversion. anyone clipping their ADCs live or not is simply...I mean full scale will clip always...unless you build the analog to square wave first, which might be an interesting design...you don't get more headroom in the converter. Well...sort of...foot room--but, analog to full scale mapping is going to be analog to full scale mapping...so, if you're clipping your mic preamp/ADC now, you will wit hthe 32bit, too. If anything it would allow you to turn the whole calibration down...but...24bit already allows WAY more of that than I've ever experienced people actually USING...so... 384, for the record- -isn't really new. SACD/DSD is basically 384 in the time domain and 88.2 in the frequency domain circa late 90s. (back then) That's what I assumed we'd ALL be using by now. The "most analog sounding" of all digital ever. I never even considered that someone would put content manipulation above sonics. Ha. Talk about ME having a UUUgge blind spot. 384 is just "dxd" which is DSD made into linear PCM so that you can ALSO do PCM based content manipulation. Cubase has supported 384 for a lot of years, but only some REALLY expensive IO units supported it. didn't mean it as in "new" new. I meant it as in whole new different topic. Language barrier.
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