32 Bit floating point audio

32 Bit floating point audio

Apa sih 32 bit floating point audio? Mari di simak lebih original karena dalam bahasa Ingris....

The Theory

32 bit floating point audio files have a theoretical dynamic range of up to around 1680 dB. Compare that with the 144 dB available from 24 bit recordings and you will realise that it’s quite an improvement! In terms of resolution that’s a lot more than the human brain could ever decipher. Add to that the fact that there is no audio interface currently available that has Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Analog converters that are anything but either 16 or 24 bit and you may begin to wonder - what’s the point?

The Advantages

So having your 24 bit recordings in 32 bit floating point format will not change the quality of the initial recordings themselves, but creating audio files in this format before they are processed by plug-ins will help you avoid the following:

• Clipping during AudioSuite rendering
• Unnecessary noise introduced by AudioSuite dithering
• Rounding errors during signal processing

These issues then are mostly caused by the fact that with either 16 or 24 bit audio the data requires conversion at the point of processing.

The Disadvantages

So, it is a ‘good thing’ from a quality point of view to have your audio in the 32 bit floating point format from the start, but is there a downside? 32 bit files are 50% bigger than their 24 bit counterparts, and 100% bigger than the 16 bit equivalent. For example, 60 seconds of 44.1 kHz mono 16 bit audio will take up roughly 5 MB of hard drive space and require a data throughput of 83 kB/s. These figures will double at 32 bit. Still not huge numbers by today’s standards maybe, but 10 minutes of a 64 (mono) track session recorded at 32 bit and 192 kHz will take up roughly 28 GB and require data throughput of 48 MB/s just to play back.