I ask a simple question - there isn’t any “hubris” involved. If you don’t hear any difference between 64 and 32 bit mixing just say so and move on - no need for a digital audio catechism.
I learn a lot from jimbob’s posts. Many others will to. He was talking to all of us. He gave great reasons why there should be no difference and examples of how there could be. Many of us are interesting in the technical crud.
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At this point I could care less about all the technical crud. Its much more interesting to know about real opinions based on what people have actually heard. And if they hear a difference, all it takes is two files to see if anyone else can hear it
I’ll do two mixes of a fartones recording for you and you can decide for yourself. How’s that?
although the technicalities (?) of 64 bit mixing is very interesting, i cannot find any details of ‘nocents’ audio setup (soundcard/amplifier/monitor speakers) etc - your are all barking at the moon without this information - even then everything is relative to “is my audio system (and my ears)better than yours” do Gold plated connectore make your soiund, sound better etc -
DR J’s post is also on-point. In most systems analog noise dominates quantitization noise. It is not unusual to find that the SNR of the mic preamps is limited to less than 20 equivalent bits (regularly less than 16 bits). On my DM24 mixer, assuming the specs are correct, there should be no need for trim pots since the dynamic range of the preamp plus the gain range of the trim pots is less than the theoretical dynamic range of the 24-bit converters. Now I don’t trust the converters (or any others) to be accurate to 24-bits so I still use the trims but hopefully you get the point. Other elements in the system may obscure the differences we are discussing, even if they would be otherwise perceptible (although I doubt this topic would be).
I really do want to encourage the technical part of this discussion because it is empowering to understand how things work and what is important and what is not. These relatively esoteric discussions might inspire someone to make a contribution to the field. I debated these kinds of issues for years and in fact it greatly contributed to my ability to earn a living. Even apparently small differences become significant in some situations and with a detailed understanding you may be able to solve problems that seemed esoteric at first but are not.
One example I use is a problem we were having with the mute on a headset which worked by shorting the microphone output with a capacitor. The mute was not meeting its specification and I asked the engineer what the ESR (effective series resistance) of the capacitor was. He said that he didn’t know exactly what is was but that it was less than an ohm (which to him meant it wasn’t important). In many cases this would not have been a problem but I asked him to draw a simplified schematic of the voltage divider consisting of the source and load impedances and the ESR of the capacitor represented by a resistor and asked him to calculate the ESR that would be required to get the results he was seeing. He did so and it turned out that it was about 0.3 ohms. We then looked up the capacitor spec and, low and behold, the ESR was 0.3 ohms. If that capacitor was used for decoupling this would not have been an issue, but because of the application (and the wide dynamic range of human hearing) it was the whole story.
You do not always know what will be important so you have to go through the effort of understanding the context before you can safely discount a piece of information. In this case he had mentally discarded the critical piece of information without adequately analyzing the situation. In other cases the reverse happens, people obsess over factors that reasonably simple analysis can eliminate as unimportant. I try to keep things centered and hopefully help others along the way. I am not always right but I try to be thoughful and try to write posts that are helpful not just to the participants of the thread but also the “lurkers”.
I do believe in science and it is important to understand that many “opinions” can be substantiated (or possibly disproved) by proper science. Anecdotal evidence can be helpful in the absence of better information but there are limits to the usefulness of unsubstantiated opinion (of which there is plenty on the web). Opinion backed by science is best for technical issues because science is the basis of technology.
jimbob, no need for a lengthy rehash of all the issues. i’ve been well aware of them for years, probably like a lot of other people who’ve done lots of investigating on their own.
I ask a simple question - there isn’t any “hubris” involved. If you don’t hear any difference between 64 and 32 bit mixing just say so and move on - no need for a digital audio catechism.
nocents, I find that incredibly rude, or am I misreading you?
I don’t think he was trying to be rude, he’s just not interested in the theory, only real examples. That’s a reasonable request. The details of his analog system are beside the point, he just asked for any examples where people thought things sounded better using 64 bits. Now, I agree with Jimbob that this kind of anecdotal evidence is worth nearly zero. Like he said, it’s only meaningful when it’s overwhelming (as it would be comparing CD with 64-bit LAME encoded MP3 – we all KNOW we can hear the MP3 artifacts, and if anyone wants to prove it with a double-blind study, fine!)
But there’s no harm asking the question. We’re all still waiting for any replies.
It’s also good etiquette to be tolerant of tangents in a thread.
So please let’s not bicker, and see if anyone posts any experiential data. Meanwhile, if folks want to discuss the theory, we can’t stop 'em. But I think it’s been pretty well covered already. BTW, Jimbob, I can’t say for sure but I think your math is correct. I think there are some other factors but still I think you’re in the right ballpark.
It is important to realize that many viewers of this forum are completely new to these issues. New users are added every day and they probably have not gone over all the old threads. We have posts asking for basic information such as how to connect to their PC. Many of these issues have been covered dozens of times in the archives but it is still news to the newer members. For them it is a “hash” not a “rehash” so I try to write for both the experienced and inexperienced. I am not writing specifically for one person’s benefit so I would hope that the more experienced members will be patient if the replies do not address their issues exclusively. If you want pure individual replies you should arrange a private message.
On this issue I can’t do anything but a theoretical response since I still use 3.3 which is 32-bits only.