smmd 07.07.2009 from petaluma ---24bit & 16 bit

[ScS]

24 bit - http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=527063
16 bit - http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=527101

Surprise Me Mr.Davis
The Mystic
Petaluma,CA
2009-07-07

(4 Channel Recording)

Source:(FOB/DFC/15'from stage/10'high)
Schoeps MK41(DIN)+MK22(ORTF)>KC5>CMD-2Uxt>Sound Devices 788T@24/96

Transfer:788T>Soundforge 9.0(mix,fades)CD Wave>FLAC(level 8 )

Recorded By: Brian Lee (blee421@hotmail.com)

Lineup:

Nathan Moore-vox,guitar
Brad Barr-vox,guitar
Marc Friedman-bass
Andrew Barr-drums

*w/special guest Marco Benevento the entire show-keys

24 bit tracks :

1.Poor Boy
2.Summer of my Fall
3.Ladies and Gentlemen(?)
4.Ambrosia Drunk
5.Bottles and Roses
6.One Sick Knave
7.Sissyfuss
8.Little Boat
9.I Hate Love
10.The Shouters
11.Everything Must Go
12.Joelle
13.The Real Morning Party
14.The Real Morning Party cont.
15.I'm In No Hurry To Get To Heaven
16.One of us Standing

16 bit tracks

Disc 1
1. Tombstone
2. Poor Boy
3. Summer of my Fall
4. Ladies and Gentlemen
5. banter
6. Ambrosia Drunk
7. Roses and Bottles
8. One Sick Knave
9. Sissyfuss
10. Little Boat
11. I Hate Love

Disc 2
1. The Shouters
2. Everything Must Go
3. Joelle
4. The Real Morning Party
5. I'm in No Hurry To Get To Heaven
6. One Of Us Standing
7. Silly Like A Goose

Notes:
Whole show with Marco Benevento

[BrentW]

How do you convert a 24-bit recording? My FLAC software is not handling it. Out of curiousity, what's the difference between 24bit and 16bit (other than 8bits..)? Benefits from one to the other?

I can play the FLAC files through an alternate software but can't convert them to WAV for buring on disc. Any help would be much appreciated.

thanks

[ScS]

i'm sure there is a multitude of software that allows you to convert 24bit to 16bit. i used some freeware called foobar2000 to convert them from flac24 to wav. that seemed to work just fine when i wanted to play them through itunes and/or burn them to disc.

fyi, harry posted a 16bit copy of the same source. it has better tracking (i.e., the real morning party isn't chopped in two).

here's a link to that:
http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=527101

24bit is a fuller copy of the music than 16bit. while both are lossless files, 24bit has slightly more quality than the 16bit is. i'm sure harry or cleantone can explain it much better than i can. that seems to be the basic gist, though.

[harrymcq]

Yes, 24 bit is just a bit higher resolution file. Sounds better (on the best equipment) but a lot of audio software and mp3 players aren't designed to be able to handle it... If you aren't using pro or audiophile quality equipment to listen though you probably won't hear much difference. It is better to work with on the computer because with 24 bit the computer has more to work with so any artifacts will be reduced. I record live stuff at 24 bit 44.1khz sampling rate generally. I will convert to 16 bit when I share but if I record at 44.1 then I don't need to resample. I really hear less of a difference in the sampling rate than I do on the bit depth.

I re-seeded this one because I was just about to seed my audience but this one sounds much better. I was stuck up by the SBD and he was on the middle of the floor. Also he has some sweet Schoeps and I have the rinky-dink Rode NT-4... Retracked for obvious reasons.

[etahn]

24 bits is the sample size. Digital recording is kind of like motion picture filming. Every so often you 'take a picture' of the sound. The sampling rate is typically in the thousands per second. Common choices are 44.1 kHz (44,100 samples per second - this is the rate that CDs are encoded at) and 96 kHz (more than twice as many samples in a given time interval). There is still some debate over whether human ears can actually hear the difference between 44.1k and 96k. Remember that the typically stated range of human hearing goes from about 20-20,000 Hz. That's .02-20k. Significantly less than 96k.

OK, so that's the timing side of it, the sample rate. 16 bit and 24 bit are sample sizes. each of these little pictures that we're taking gets stored somewhere as a set of 1s and 0s. For example, a 16-bit sample might be 1001110000001110. Note that there are 2^16 (about 65,000) possibilities here. So for each of these 44.1k (or 96k) pictures that we are taking, we have to choose which picture (of the 65,000 possible) we want to use to represent that instant of sound. This is what D/A converters do. They make that decision. They choose between thousands of choices, thousands of times a second. I know you're probably thinking that 65000 isn't a lot of choices, but it is.

For some though, it's not enough. And that's where 24-bit comes in. with 24-bit, we have 8 more bits or 2^8 (256) times as many choices. 65k suddenly becomes about 17 million. So whereas before the sound of marc tapping his shaker on his string half an inch above the pickup might have resulted in the same picture as him tapping it 3/8 of an inch above, now those can be different. It's kind of like when computer screens used to be 1 color, and then they were 8 colors, and then 256, and now millions and millions. As far as who can or can't hear the difference, I'm not going to argue. But I doubt that many of us have equipment that can reproduce the differences, even if we do have the ears to be able to tell.

I should also say that I'm not an expert, and this is my understanding based on some knowledge of math, a little dsp, and a lot of assumptions. If I'm blatantly wrong anywhere, please straighten me out.