So What Bit Depth/Sample Rate do you use?
 

For the longest time I have been recording at 24/44.1, but lately have been questioning whether to go back down to 16bit as most of the finished work now a days is listened to in some sort of compressed format. What do you guys think?

So are you recording at 16/44.1, 24/44.1, 24/99.2, etc.?

16/44.1 does the trick for me.

yeah, I am really hard pressed to hear much of a difference when recording 24 bit vs 16 when doing all electronic songs. I definitely do hear a difference when recording vocals (but that is a rare occasion), but again even with that I ultimately have to dither down to 16bit or prep the song for compression.

why not just do a short project.
record the whole project,mix and export\sum in 16/44.1 and record mix and export\sum in 24/44.1...

44.1/24 works for me.

24 bit gives you quite a bit more of a noise margin and dynamic range.

Doesnt make that much difference anyway - most software deals with audio data as 32 bit for internal processing.

I think it makes most difference if your media is going to be CD or vinyl. MP3 is such a mess anyway that I wouldnt worry about it.

There loads of people who say everything has to be 96/24 or better and winge like hell if it aint - ignore them - my simple rule is use whatever works best for the processing power you have available and the complexity of tracks you need to deal with - in my case 44.1/24 has been a very workable compromise. I dont think dropping to 16bit actually gains you anything in reduced CPU load - at most it may let you record/play more separate audio streams.

yeah,24 bit gives you a bit more headroom.

accualy Vst plugins will use almost twise as much resources when runing them on 32/96000,sounds fucking great but as for today no home studio can run an entire project in this state and also most home studios dont have the proper DA\AD convertors.

"They" are coming up with storage dvds that will be able to deal with this kind of stuff,so in few more years no one will have to dither ever again! :D

Thats probably got more to do with the efficiency of many VSTs - they do seem to slaughter your average computer - what tends to hit the worst tho is crappy audio drivers.

I also use Reason v3 alot which allways uses 32 bit float internally - I can get away with running loads of synth modules and fx in that on my old(ish) 3.2Ghz PC.

I tend to manually bounce parts to audio straight away anyway - a hangover habit from pre-computer days and it still serves to free up CPU and/or synths for other uses.

24/44 for me here.

Just seems to give more to work with at the mixdown stage (specially if I end up mixing down completely within the computer).

And in my opinion....so it should....

I'd say for 85% of us...16/44.1 is ample (and lets face it....most of our favourite 80's songs were at these rates). The higher bit rates and frequencies are only going to be fully exploited if the end user is listening to your song on a high end hi-fi. You must face the reality that for trance and techno....most listeners are not of the kind to own high end hifi. Nope, these are the people who like to turn on their 'Bass reflex SME' all the way up.....for those really thumping beats....

Same goes for clubs and venues. The fidelity is shite......and its only because of extreme eq-ing that certain sounds (hi-hats etc) have what appears to be some clarity. You will certainly hear no difference between 16/44.1 and 24/192 in a club setting.....what you will hear is differences in eq-ing....

This naturally leads me onto the specs of new sound cards......one must bear in mind that figures and stats sells products. If it doesnt look good on paper...... products these days just dont seem to sell to well. More is not always better.....and id be more than happy to pick up a ?1000 16/44.1 card because it would piss all over your cheaper 24/96-192 types.

Alas no one does this these days.....a familiar story with analog synths.

DS

I'd hazard a guess that in the 80's people were mostly using analogue, not digital? Digital exploded moreso in the early 90's. Early digital stuff sounded crap.

I use 44.1KHz @ 24bits. Gives significanly higher SNR/headroom when recording external sound sources. My old SoundBlaster had just 70dBs at best, when using 48KHz @ 16bits. Imagine 24 channels of that lot....