If I want to record at 24-bit sound, do I also need to set my freeze files bit depth to 24? The default is 16, however I purchased the 24 bit version of N-Track.
Thanks,
R
Nope. Freeze file bit depth is a user selectable thing. Set were you want it.
The default could be made to match the version registered, but the only real difference in registered versions is recording and playback/mixdown support. Things like default settings don’t usually change simply because the app is registered 16 or 24 bits…I could be wrong. 
As long as you “thaw” the tracks for mixdown it probably doen’t make a difference. It might not matter even if you don’t. The freeze function creates a temporary mixdown of the frozen tracks to avoid the CPU demands of the effects. I don’t know what happens to signals to the aux channels, it seems like that would require a separate mixdown for each aux but all this should be handled in the background. The upshot is that if you set it to 16-bits you will be monitoring at 16-bits (for those tracks) and if you set it to 24-bits you will be listening at 24-bits if your sound-card supports it or 16-bits if it doesn’t. Ideally the “actual” mixdown resolution would be affected only by the settings in the mixdown dialog. Flavio can answer this more definitively.
Jim
Thanks guys - exactly what i was looking for.
- R
One note, a cool thing is that in the same project, you can freely mix files of different bit depths. So for instance, if you record everything in 16 bit and your friend sendss you a file you want to import but it is in 24 bit, n-track will happily use the two bit depths. You cannot mix sample rates in the same project though. Just a little fart fact.
Personally, I freeze to 32 bit. Perhaps belt and suspenders/over doing it, but I don’t want to have to think about dither etc in those files as I am certain all the freeze funtion does is a quick mix down and import. So all that stuff is getting thrown though the mix engine and is being truncated if not at 32 bit when frozen.
I think you’ve got it Bubba. Perhaps for a little bit of fidelity’s sake, one should use at least what their soundcard is running at. 24 or 32 for 24 bit soundcards. Whatever you want for 16 bit cards but I don’t see the potential for any gain in fidelity if your playback is still limited to 16 bits. Maybe because of the dither thing though… hmmm…
D – thinking… yeah, I know it’s scary! 
I recommend freezing to 32 bits, same as n-Track uses internally.
That way, if you don’t have the level set perfectly, you won’t lose any fidelity. Or, if there’s “clipping”, it won’t actually cause “clipping”. (That is, if the channel is going over 0dB, the peaks won’t get leveled off using 32-bit format, since it’s floating point.) The 32-bit format also uses less CPU, though not a big difference.
It’s the “no fuss” setting. Of course, use a smaller setting if you have disk space or disk bandwidth issues.
And yes, it’s a minor point in any case, assuming your track isn’t clipping like a banshee. (Banshees clip, don’t they?)
I guess if they wail loud enough Banshees could clip 
Makes sense Jeff.
D
Actually, banshees always clip. That’s why we never hear any decent banshee recordings. 
Obviously you haven’t met my mother.