24 bit.....where to begin??

[metamorphosis]

Argh! double post. Sorry!! :)

[metamorphosis]

I'll hopefully be installing a new M audio 2496 card soon and as I've never worked in anything other than 16/44.1 before...I'd like to know what would give best sound results with the new card?
I've heard people using 24/48k and those using more than that. What are the pros and cons?

Steve

My experience:
44k-48k: Smoother bass, finer highs @ 48k
48k-96k: Bugger-all - but noticable in an end-mix if mixing multiple tracks together..
16-bit: Good, crap for low-volume/high-dynamics recordings (essentially gets dragged down to 12-bits).
24-bit: Great- finer, higher detail in everything, vaguelly 'warmer sound' (question of taste in this area, autechre, for example, use 44k-16bit almost exclusively...).

Mixing at a higher bitdepth/sample rate and then resampling down at the very end using something like Cool edit pro's excellent dither algorithms will give you a much, much higher quality sound than doing everything at the 'cd' rate.

Every producer worth his/her salt knows this.

If you can't hear the different between a track recorded at 24-bit/96 then mastered/effected and resampled/dithered down to 44k, vs the same track recorded in at 44k - you need more 'ear-training' - or just better speakers.