KVR Audio

XnuXnu · Post by **XnuXnu** » Tue Mar 05, 2019 7:56 pm

Hey guys,

This is probably in the wrong thread since I don't usually post up here and will like be a noob question for some of you but I'm looking to get some insight about something regarding mastering. I recently had an engineer whom I went to ask for 24bit 44.1 stereo files to be submitted over for the job (which I sent over accordingly to his requirements) and noticed that when I received the final results, after checking on the "get info" tab of the file, it said the following:

Sample rate: 44,100
Bits per sample: 16

I'm not too familiar with the whole mastering process but am looking to get some clarification on the matter to see if the final result that was sent back to me was supposed to be at 24bits (which is what I sent over to the engineer) or if he did some rendering, etc that resulted it to become 16bits instead.
Like I said, complete noob here with the mastering process but am interested to know more about it and hopefully someone can shed some light on the subject since I'm not entirely sure how much of a difference there is between a finalized mastered at 16bit vs 24bit and if I should be contacting the mastering engineer back to ask about the concern (if there really is any).
Thanks everyone

XnuXnu

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:02 pm

It's because 44.1 16 bit WAV or AIFF is the audio standard for CD production and iTunes. Is that what your master is for?

https://fileinfo.com/help/cd_audio

XnuXnu · Post by **XnuXnu** » Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:21 pm

I would believe so, the songs are being uploaded to Bandcamp, Youtube, Spotify, etc so I wasn't entirely sure if there would be any issues that may arise since they were 24bit 44.1 stereo wave files when I originally submitted them over to be mastered.
I appreciate the clarification on the matter, I'm a complete novice with this stuff so this was something that I was curious about and also interested in understanding more about.
Thank you!

imrae · Post by **imrae** » Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:00 pm

Yup, sending 24-bit to mastering engineer, who then handles the truncation to 16-bit for playback, is ideal.

jancivil · Post by **jancivil** » Wed Mar 06, 2019 12:23 am

They're likely in the habit of outputting Redbook standard. I don't know if uploading a 16-bit vs a 24-bit to soundcloud or bandcamp means anything, but I give a codec as much as I can before they compress it to 128kbps. So it's either old-school or negligence, I couldn't say. I would specify 24-bit unless I was going to mass-produce a CD (I'm not), which has to be Redbook, 16-bit 44.1 (and other niggling things).

Looking for some insight on mastering