64 Bit FP Audio Engine?

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Its all not important at all. In REAPER you can select bit depth of audio engine, and while there is noticable difference in 8-bit, i can't hear any difference between 12-bit and 64-bit at all, even at very very quiet sound level. Go figure...

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Eta Carinae wrote: I have, and I've also read about gain staging.

From what I understand, DAWs already process internally at 32bit, and some plugins process at 64bit internally. But the only advantage to EXPORTING in 32bit is that you have unlimited headroom.

That's fine if you're a novice who doesn't know how to set your levels correctly. But as 24bit already provides more dynamic range than the human ear can hear, there really is no need to export things that loud.

But if there are other uses, perhaps you can share them with me? Because right now, it seems like you've been misinformed.
It doesn't have to do with headroom. When the conversion happens there's dithering or truncation taking place - so either adding noise or distortion (quantization error). Of course converting from 32 bit floats to 24 bit fixed, this is very low level, completely inaudible, and unlikely in the extreme to ever be made audible, even with substantial further processing.

I'm actually with Bill on this one, though. With most DAWs I just keep everything in floating point, and when the time comes I'll convert to a delivery format myself. Converting formats can only degrade the quality of the audio, so regardless of how trivial the degradation is there's no reason to do it when you don't need to. I think it is a bit silly for professional level audio software to not allow you to choose your preferred format.

That said though, I'm skeptical that it makes any audible difference outside of an artificial scenario contrived to make it so.

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To me an option to bounce to 32 Bit would make sense, since then you would keep the same file and number format that the internal stream already is throughout the pipe. Making it an option would leave it to the user if he/her wants to go that extra mile or not.

Just my 2 personal cent though. ;-)

Cheers,

Tom
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." - Rumi
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I will echo some of what contrast said. However, there is great material on the subject of dithering out there written by the likes of Bob Olhsson, Ian Shepherd, and Paul Frindle.
And if you’re bouncing tracks internally, to remove plugins and reduce CPU overhead – you should definitely dither ! (Unless you’re saving at 32-bit floating point)
http://productionadvice.co.uk/when-to-dither/

And a fantastic video explaining dither

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRlohQw-1DY

We should be in control of making this choice, and it should not be a limitation of Bitwig. Bitwig is an amazing and forward thinking music creation tool, and it should never compromise the audio.

In addition to dithering, keeping files in 32-bit float also allows for greater precision in further processing of the audio files. We might bounce something, reprocess, bounce again, chop it up, take it out to iZotope RX4 or MetaSynth, bring it back in, chop, and bounce again. With 32-bit float you will never have an issue with sound degradation.

There are further benefits of keeping audio files in 32-bit float, and the information is out in the Googles. As I said before, headroom is just the tip of the iceberg. I use proper gain staging so I hit plugins at optimal levels, so I don't consider the headroom argument (removing the possibility of clipping) as the most important benefit of 32-bit float audio files.
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Thrown into the big wish list!

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dom@bitwig wrote:Thrown into the big wish list!
Thanks for taking the time to read this thread, and for your comments. :)
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You're welcome!
I think we'll add it is an option in the general preferences...

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:tu:
"Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." - Rumi
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dom@bitwig wrote:You're welcome!
I think we'll add it is an option in the general preferences...
That is fantastic! Christmas apparently arrives early this year. :)
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Nobody said when! ;-)

"Soon",
Dom

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dom@bitwig wrote:Nobody said when! ;-)

"Soon",
Dom
Haha, got it. I think my response was aimed at your decision to add the feature. Pretty happy about it being on the list.
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curious how big the big wishlist actualy is :D

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Curious how Bitwig would look like if they would implement every feature request of every single user :D
(also would be an interesting topic for a creative design study)

OK, but the 64bit one is more earthed, doesn't make anything more fiddly.

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To above video. He does show an example whats happening. But this is a much better video explaining the diffrance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1nmEMV ... u&index=10
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dom@bitwig wrote:If and when dithering from 32bit to 24bit makes sense or not is also an interesting and much discussed topic... the bits that get truncated will not ever reach your converters anyway, as you only write the result of a finer calculation to a file, so not changing the signal further by dithering it should be avoided, but this is pretty dumbed down and a lot more involved and it is too late over here to dive into that today.
So do you personally only apply Bitwig's triangular dither when exporting as 16 bit?

I would find this very interesting, if you have time to dive in one day!
dom@bitwig wrote:You're welcome!
I think we'll add it is an option in the general preferences...
Could this be one of the secret 1.4 features? :D
has anyone see Maitake ?

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