[bstaley]

I missed it when he said he mixes to 48k. I would recommend against doing this if your final goal is audio CD. You may gain a little bit of fidelity at 48k but I think you actually lose more when you finally resample to 44.1k.

Mark is correct in saying that there is really no difference in using the UltraMaximizer when you mix or using it after the fact in Sound Forge. For me personally I find that I don't want any "mastering" type plugins on my master fader because it affects the way I mix. It's almost a crutch to me. I like to get the mixes sounding as good as possible without any of that stuff and then bounce it. That way, any extra EQing/Compression/Maximizing I do just makes my exisitng mix sound better. This is not necessarily the right or wrong way, it's just what works for me.

Mark, I wasn't sure if you were agreeing or disagreeing with me on your third point. Let me clarify anyway. When you run the IDR it will dither and noise shape down to 16 bits. It just doesn't throw away the last 8 bits for you automatically. The file is still 24 bit but the last 8 bits are only storing zeros. You then need to let Sound Forge truncate those empty 8 bits. In Sound Forge, when you right click on 24Bit and change it to 16Bit, it is the same thing as going to the Process menu, choosing Bit-Depth Converter and selecting "16Bit" with Dither set to "none" and noise shaping set to "Off". That is what truncates it. I hope this clears it up a little.