What (Almost) Everybody Gets Wrong About Bit Depth

16 bit? 24 bit? 32 bit?? How much of a difference does bit depth really make? And are these differences you can hear for yourself?

Justin Colletti dives deep into this topic to clear up the common misunderstandings around bit depth in audio and helps make you make the best choices for your productions, whatever DAW or interface you may be using.

[robertpucci]

I've been a recording engineer for 30 years and this is the first time I can understand what this is all about. Thanks you so much!!!!

[anonagain]

This is probably the clearest and most complete discussion of bit depth I've seen. Also read your article Justin - thank you!!!

[zmix]

I love this one Justin. If you ask a dozen mastering engineers what they think the difference between 16 and 24 bit audio is, they will fill your ears with superlatives and anecdotes.
Please note that there are no converters or preamps that have a dynamic range anywhere near 24 bits, and, when properly dithered, 16 bit audio has "infinite" resolution, so the "Greater room for gainstaging errors" in 24 bit is a false premise, because you're not gaining the theoretical 48dB of additional dynamic range, and simply using more bits isn't changing anything except the theoretical noise floor due to rounding errors (and the dither), which the converter, preamps and especially microphones are contributing to much more than even16 bit dither is.

[nero]

Thank you for everything you've done and please don't hesitate to discuss more complex topics like this in the future ! 😍😍

[boreasstudio]

This video by far is the best on bit depth. The dither and 32FP topics were the best I have heard explained clearly.

[ernestgrouns]

Thanks Justin! The idea of time vs. intensity really helped me separate the two dimensions and get it straight in my head. Really appreciate your explanation here, huge help!!

[RRD]

I think that i'm lucky to understand what you just explained right here because its high level content ! Keep it up and thank you !

[Mista]

I'm only here because I've been using 48000kHz forever with a 256 buffer size. However, I'm wanting to start streaming myself producing instrumentals live using OBS to stream and I don't want to have a higher input delay. Because of that, I'm considering dropping my sample rate to 44100 and also my buffer size down to something much smaller but I don't want it to have a huge impact on the quality of my recordings/uploads. Would it be a significant difference going from 48kHz down to 44.1kHz as well as dropping the sample rate from 256 down to maybe 96, or possibly even 32? I can't believe how many arguments online there are about this and everyone seems to claim a million different things! Zero clarity on this subject!

(NO PUN INTENDED)

[bagoodale]

Greatest teacher for the nerds! Such a great job as always

[HedgehogYK]

I have a question about an analogy I read. Pooring 16 milliliters into a 32 milliliter bottle. That means that other 16 milliliters of space is just silent waste, so when truncate back down to 16 bit... Does it try to include the wasteful air and get squashed with the 16 milliliters in the same 16 bit size? Or is that empty space discarded thus making 32 bit perfectly harmless for upconversion? VirtualDub2 doesn't have a 24 bit options and I'm dealing with WMA SRS audio so I'm concerned. It was only until recently that AviDemux 2.8.0 got WMA Lossless and I'm on 32 bit Windows so I can't use it. Encoding Spirited away for my XT2041DL via VP9+Opus.

[BxrHavik]

This is by far the best video explanation of everything related to bit depth, with a little history added to help you understand even more. Also thank you for being so unbiased to the whole thing. Its rare to find videos and people like you out there lol.

Liked and subscribed (:

[ashcatlt]

Most of the point of 32 bit floating point in general is that it lets us go over 0dbFS. There are any number of reasons we might do that at some point in a signal chain. We'll turn it down or squash it down or round it off somewhere down the line, but right at this point we'd rather just let it go over. 32 bit files are mostly for when we want to "print" a signal that might go over 0dbFS. One common example is when printing a mix. You've mixed it to where you like it, then put some pseudo-mastering chain on it, then adjusted the mix some to make it maybe respond better to a later mastering step. Now you want to print that mix, but without the mastering plugins, but when you bypass or remove them, your mix peaks above 0. You could turn down the master fader, or just render it at 32 bit FP and move on. We might argue that proper gain staging would have avoided the issue altogether, but in the 32 bit world, gain staging is arbitrary, and it really doesn't matter what we did as long as it sounds good in the end.

[rickdeaguiar-musicreflecti]

Justin, I made the decision to up my home studio skills this year and seek out good instruction on recording. I came across your YouTube channel. I wanted to tell you that I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing all your insights and expertise. You have a wonderful way of teaching and it has helped me so much to understand the basics and beyond. Really appreciate you and your channel :)

[RocknRollkat]

00, 11:44 ---- ".... you have that much more room to basically screw up...."
SO TRUE !
I came up on 1 mic., 1 mono tape deck, 1 basement, in 1961.
"Screwing up" in those days cost you BIGtime !
Experience is a great teacher !

[sixto]

One of the most underrated podcasts when it comes to audio!

[diegorodriguezcanal]

I think you have not mentioned that some recorders use a dual A/D converter to overcome the 120db dynamic range limitation of the analog circuits when recording in 32 bit float. Each of the A/D converters covers a different range than the other. That way it is possible to achieve a true widest dynamic range.

In field (location sound) recording sometimes it is invaluable to have room to be able to recover from extreme situations. A good example would be a shoot and run documentary. In some occasions being able to get a whisper back to an intelligible level without touching the noise floor is crucial. The same goes when you can recover a very loud source without clipping.

Thanks!

[jeffmaestro]

So glad I found your channel. Please keep bring us the best information on YouTube! Thanks for giving us your time and knowledge

[da_Fez]

Good visual description of bit depth at 19:30

[themotownboy]

Regarding dither, adding it smooths out the fade of the audio when it gets near the lowest decibel in loudness so that the fade sounds natural, more like it does in analogue. Without dither, those last few seconds of a fade will sound brittle and choppy, the closer one gets to complete silence.

[kaComposer]

This is awesome, thanks!

I think we can accurately discuss the "data" as having a higher or lower resolution, but the term becomes problematic when applied to the perceived audio. Higher resolution data ≠ higher resolution audio.
Higher resolution data = lower noise floor.
Ironically, audio data/bit-depth is a great example for understanding what "data resolution" actually means. It's text-book. But the term "resolution" should definitely not be applied to the sonic result of that data (two very different domains).

Great video!